Building a Content Creation Engine for your Small or Medium Business
Recently, I had to think about the process of content creation for a course on digitization I was running. On the surface, content creation is a simple process – anyone can write a blog or create a one-off video. However, as I thought deeper about my own experiences with content creation, I realized that the hard part was in creating content week after week for a long period of time. Sometimes I just get writer’s block and I have no desire to write while other times (such as now) I just have some thoughts in my mind which are itching to get out of my brain and onto the page.
No matter the mood, for anyone to see the benefits of content creation on the internet, they must do it regularly and over a long period of time.
As I fell down this rabbit hole, some important questions to mind:
- How can one come up with new blog/video ideas each week?
- How can one execute these ideas week after week?
- How many pieces of content should one create oneself before outsourcing it?
- What are the processes of content creation that one can set and then delegate?
- What are the tools that one can use to make content creation easier?
I realized that these were questions I’d answered for myself over the past few years. I’d inadvertently built ‘Content Creation Engines’ on two separate occasions - once for my business and then for my podcast. These 2 engines helped me make blogs, podcasts, videos, and other types of content on a regular basis with significantly less effort than it took in the first few months.
In this article, I’m going to attempt to map out this Content Creation Engine and my own journey of figuring out each piece and how it fits into the larger puzzle. But before getting to this engine, I want to discuss my initial difficulties with creating content, how that changed and how the change eventually helped my business and personal brand.
Why does Regular Content Creation Matter? A Story of my Own
Regular content creation can have multi-fold impacts on your business, especially if you’re in an industry where this process hasn’t already begun. Content creation can even impact how people view you from a personal capacity - just think about all those YouTubers you follow. You can use content to build communities of like-minded people, find new sales opportunities, reduce after sales costs, build your personal brand and much more! I’ve even been able to recruit high performers through the power of content marketing.
My first attempt at content creation was in 2016. I was tasked with creating a few YouTube videos because some customers were confused about how to correctly install our products. These videos for a niche product line in an already niche B2B business in the electrical engineering space. You can check out those original videos here.