You’ve heard about 1000 times that Content is King. It certainly is. It can get you tonnes of traffic, an excited audience and connect you with your next client or customer.

But it can be a nightmare to coordinate and feel like an uphill battle that you just can’t win.

“Is anyone out there reading this?”

“Am I wasting time that I could be spending with clients?”

“Does anyone actually care about what I’m putting blood, sweat and tears into?”

Content on social media, podcasts, blogs and videos can be a-maze-zing, darling. It really can transform and build your business. But it can also be a black hole of wasted time and effort if we’re not careful.

So today, I invite you to grab a cuppa and sit back with a pen and paper. Let’s take 5 steps from the ground up to create content that wins clients time and time again.

1. BLock out your calendar

The most effective way to create content? Block out that calendar.

Huge names in the digital marketing world swear by it, and once you’ve started blocking, I bet you won’t be going back. Book out some time to yourself in a quiet coffee shop or invite some business pals round for a cake and content - the perfect combination if you ask me.

Warning: it may take some trial and error to find the magic schedule for you. It could be an hour or two a week or a day every month. Test this out

Do it, right now. Whether it is classic pen and paper or a digital diary, get those dates booked in.

Done? Perfect, onto the next step…

2. Dump down your ideas

So it’s your chosen day of content production. And first up it’s a big old juicy brain dump.

No matter what type of content I (or my clients) are planning on producing, from podcasts to Pinterest, this is always the first step.

It might feel scary at first. In fact, I remember putting off the date I had in my diary for weeks, inching back a couple of days at a time. All becuase of the overwhelm I felt about getting started.

But let me promise you this: when you’ve got one idea down, another will come. And then another. They’ll just keep on pouring out. The hardest bit will be stopping!

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have of it.

3. Expand on each idea

Grow each idea, flesh it out from it’s title in a series of short bullet points.

For example, for this post I had written down that I wanted to share tips on creating content to win over clients. I took this rough title and gave it a list of bullet points, not too different from the subtitles you see in this post right now. I also remembered that beautiful quote above on creativity and knew I had to weave it in. So guess what? That went into a bullet point too.

Before you know it, you have a rough structure for your post. Writing it out begins to feel a little more like a walk in the park than it did an hour ago.

4. Check in on your idea

Now it’s time to reflect on your piece of content to check it aligns with your brand and audience. Look at your title and bullet points and ask yourself:

- Does this fit with my business goal? Does it feel authentic to the brand?

- Would my audience love to read this post? Will they find it useful or inspiring?

Often the content idea passes the test and moves on to the next stage. Other pieces may need their bullet points or title tweaking to fit in with your brand. And others might sit a little too far away from your audience and end up in the content recycling bin. But the more you do this routine, the better you will get at honing in on that golden content idea from the off. I know I certianly did!

5. Write out that content

Guess how many blogs I write back to back?

As many as 5 in a day.

Yes, five whole pieces of content in pretty much one sitting.

But it would take me almost double the time to create the same amount of content if I split it all up over several sessions. You see, it takes time for me to find my groove when creating blog posts - and this feedback is often something my clients feed back to me. Doing pieces of content back to back means I get to capitalise on my groove and smash out interesting and engaging content without having to stop, think and lose my focus.

Note: All content was created differently. Every person and piece of content will require different periods of time to complete. Sometimes those 5 blogs are only 2.

And that’s okay.

Those two blogs will speak about exaclty what I want to exactly who I want. Following the batching structure means no effort or time is wasted into creating content that no one will hear. How magic is that?

The final part of this step is scheduling in your content to go live when you want it to. No rushed last minute blogs to be had around here anymore - it’s all meticulously planned, prepped and sitting ready to go live. Relaxing and client-winning content!

I’d love to hear your own processes for creating content that wins over clients and customers - drop a comment below.

Following these steps, you sure as hell wont be wasting your time. With each round of content creation, you’ll pick up the groove and really get into the swing of things. You’ll be content creating experts before we know it!

Happy content making, folks!