E357: Where I draw motivation from and how I come up with ideas.
These tactics are sure to demolish any writer's block anybody has.
Try these things instead of procrastinating content creation.
00:00 604 Days of Consistency 01:03 Motivation 03:06 Descript 04:46 Generating Content Ideas 05:30 Microsoft To Do List 05:45 Misc Sources 06:26 Hooks 07:16 Viral Tweets 09:20 Audience Questions 10:26 The Lexus Naming Story 11:34 Content Opportunities 12:46 Ideation and Execution
#contentcreation #contentmarketing #digitalmarketing #writersblock
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
I posted videos for 604 days in a row now I have not missed a day even when I was sick with the neuro virus. So sick, it's a super bad stomach virus. I was in Barcelona visiting my ex-girlfriend. I was so sick and I still posted. I still posted a video. Haven't missed a day of posting videos, haven't missed a day of posting podcasts. This is 357 days in a row doing this podcast. And so on this episode of The Edward Show, I'm going to talk about some of the ways that I get ideas for content. Because I was just asked in one of my podcasts, this is a shout out to Renaissance Man. He said, "I'm a first time builder working on an audio transcription and summarization app any inputs on how I can generate content ideas during and after building." And it seems like these days there's no shortage of things that I want to talk about and make videos about. So I'm going to share some of the ways that I get ideas from my videos. First of all, what motivates me? That's something that I've been wanting to talk about. I believe it was back in 2015. This guy, his name is Casey Neistat, actually see him all the time here in New York. He pretty much pioneered daily vlogging. He was the first one to do daily vlogging and do it really consistently and get popular doing it and he put so much work into these daily video blogs and he did it all himself. He shot himself, he edited himself, he starred in all the video blogs, and he did this for three years and I think he only missed one day. But he did it for three years and he would make videos about how much crazy work it was and how little sleep he was getting and how his wife would go to bed and his kids would go to bed and he'd be in a closet editing just so he could get out his vlog for the day. And it was so hard core and did it get results. Casey Neistat, you might have heard of him. He's super famous now. He started getting recognized all over New York City. He can't go anywhere now without people going, "Hey, Casey, you can't go anywhere now." He's that big. He made many millions of dollars and his app, which is why he started daily vlogging to promote his app, which is actually why I started making my videos to promote one of my apps. And he got so big that CNN acquired the app just for him, just to have his brand. And the journey watching his journey for three years was something that inspired me and lots of other people, lots of other people felt so motivated by watching Casey be consistent with these vlogs and they were great vlogs too. Very few people who were trying vlogging were putting in the amount of work and expertise into his videos because he was a filmmaker before this and I derived tremendous motivation from that. Something else that I get motivation from, it's me being able to share my ideas. Something changed in my content when I started using the script. I talk about this tool all the time on the show. I have no affiliation with the script. I wish they had an affiliate program. It became so much easier for me to share my expertise, my discoveries, my thoughts, everything when I started using the script because the script, it uses AI to remove all the gaps between words. So if you have long pauses, those are removed, it uses AI to remove retakes. So you can say the same thing over and over and over again. And then it will only use your best take. And then you edit in the transcript instead of the timeline, it's like editing a Word document, editing is much easier. And what happened was it just became so easy for me to make videos that the separation between my idea and putting that to life became very thin. There was very little separation and I could just have an idea and 20 minutes later the video would be done. That's not the case for everything. Some videos I put more work into, but if there was an idea that I just wanted to execute really fast, for example, when I was returning back to New York from Europe, I had an hour wait in the airport, I put out two videos in that time. I conceptualized, I shot, I edited, and I uploaded two videos in that hour long wait. Just because the script makes it so easy and these were ideas that I had, I wanted to do and I just did them so the motivation that I get from seeing what's possible when you're super consistent and having reduced the work to actually make my ideas come to life, these things keep me going. How do I get these ideas? How do I get these ideas? I'm going to say a bunch of ways just off the top of my head. I actually have a list. I was showing this to Avni who was on my podcast two days ago, Avni Barman, Tremendous Marketer. She has a huge following herself and I was showing her, I use the Microsoft to do this to write down ideas for videos that I have because I'm constantly coming up with ideas and I put out one to three, sometimes more videos every day, but then especially when I get going, I always have more ideas. I'm always hit with more inspiration. Once you start doing something, it's easier to do it more and so I get more inspiration, more inspiration, the more that I actually produce. So I use a Microsoft to do list app, why Microsoft to do list? I had a different to do list app before this. I don't remember what it was called, but it was acquired by Microsoft and turned into Microsoft to do and then all of my items were just onto that. So that's what I use. Where do I get ideas from? A bunch of different places. One, there's my long, crazy history doing digital marketing and SEO. So I've done crazy things. I have a marketing journal. I record everything, what I'm doing, the results, how I'm doing it. So sometimes I look to that marketing journal for inspiration or ideas for things that I want to talk about. I look on different subreddits for things that I want to talk about. I use the Instagram marketing subreddit, the SEO subreddit, the entrepreneur subreddit. Actually just today, something that I did is I will sit down in front of a text edit, empty text edit document and just start writing and I'll write different hooks. A hook is what comes at the beginning of a piece of content that hooks people in to engage with the rest of the content. To read the rest of the content, to watch the rest of the video, to listen to the rest of the podcast and I will sit down and just write beginning sentences for videos. And then oftentimes I'll write down a sentence that I really like and then the rest of the script will write itself and maybe I'll start with just some topics, for example, SEO or growing on X or growing on Instagram. And for 20 minutes, I will just free form right different hooks. And as I said before, the more I write hooks, the better my hooks become. My brain opens up to thinking of better content. This is a strategy that I really love and I do it often. Something else that I do. When I use tweet Hunter, it's a Chrome extension. I use it on Twitter X and I look at accounts, most popular tweets. You want to look for tweets that have a way higher view count than the number of followers that the poster has because that means the tweet went viral. So you want to look for viral tweets and if a tweet is good enough and I've admitted to this before, I will just read it on a video. Maybe I'll share who said it. Maybe I won't. In the description, I will share who said it though. And that is a great way for finding good content. Something that I have found is that if a tweet goes viral and you read it on a video, that video will go viral as well. You can look for tweets in your niche that perform really well and make videos with those and then adapt it to your brand to promote your brand back actually to the text edit strategy where I just free form right different hooks, you can make the topics because I said I put different topics to free form right hooks on. You can make topics around what your brand is. For example, my friend Alan, he has an AI language learning startup. I told him to make videos about why learning a language is good and problems with Duolingo and then use that to promote his startup loon. And so if you are Alan, you would sit at your laptop and in an empty text file, write different hooks around why learning a language is good and problems with Duolingo. Examples might be nobody knows it's about Duolingo, Duolingo crashed when they did this. Everyone is so angry at Duolingo for this. I just had the craziest experience learning Italian. I never thought this would happen to me when I learned Italian. Questions will never admit this but I just discovered this studying their language. This is me brainstorming hooks right now similar to how I would do it if I was sitting in front of a text file and then once you have the hook, you just write the rest of the subject matter and then you adapt it to promote your brand. Something else that happens when you make enough content, people engage with you and they ask you questions and that provides you topics for more content. Just like this podcast, I actually today, I'm like, what should I make this podcast about? And then I said, you know what, let me look at questions that people asked me. And I just started scrolling through YouTube. I see this question from Renaissance man. Thank you, Renaissance man. I said, all right, there's my subject matter for today's podcast. I have email newsletters that I look to for subject matter and I want to stress anything that I see that I think will make a good topic for videos or newsletters or podcasts. I have different lists in my to do list app for each medium and I'm pretty diligent about writing down good ideas and it is not uncommon that I won't know what I'm going to make content about on a day. I will look at my app. I will make the content in an hour or less and then it will go viral because it was just a good idea that I had down in my to do list app. An example, did you know why Lexus is named Lexus? There's a crazy theory behind this and that is because Toyota was seen as reliable and durable but not luxurious and Toyota wanted a luxury brand to export to the United States. But they couldn't do Toyota. They needed a new brand. They had a brand problem. Toyota wasn't seen as luxury and it was going to be hard to have Toyota seen as both every day but also as luxury. So what did they do? They invented a new brand and what did they call it? They called it Lexus, L for luxury, X for exports, US for to the United States, Lexus. So I saw this theory on Instagram from somebody else who was saying it. I wrote it down in my to do list app to say another time and then I think a week or two later, I'm like, Oh gosh, what should I make a video about today? Oh yeah, I saw this video. Let me do it on that. I write the script. I record it. I put in images using the script and then the video has gotten like six or seven or eight million views since then. The idea was just sitting there in my to do list app. The thing is there are so many ideas that we are being hit with every day and they're just there and we miss a lot of them. I'll give one example, something that happened recently. Marcus Brownlee put up a video of himself releasing his 100th YouTube video and he was excited because he had 74 subscribers and I watched that video and then I forgot about it. Somebody else viral video club who I've mentioned on the podcast before, he made a brilliant piece of content and he said, if you put out a hundred videos and you only had 74 subscribers, would you keep going? And then he said, well, this is what happened to Marcus Brownlee, who is now one of the biggest technology influencers on the planet. And I could have made that content too and it was right there and I just ignored it. I didn't see the opportunity, but my point is there are crazy opportunities for amazing subject matter everywhere we look. And so these are some of the ways that I pull this subject matter out from the ether that I pull this subject matter from the air that it just comes out and then I turn it into content. And so if you want to do content marketing, I hope this episode is helpful to you. I'll end it with this. I originally learned this from MrBeast and then I learned it from making tons of videos. I think I put out over 1200 now and newsletters and podcasts and MrBeast said you can put the same amount of time, money, and effort into a video. But if you spend a little bit more time or effort on ideation, the video with a better idea will perform hundreds of times or thousands of times better than the video with the worst subject matter. And there is always incredible subject matter out there. But in order to see it, you have to open your mind to it. In order to do that, you just have to start creating. And when you start creating your hit with better ideas and you're able to more effectively bring those ideas to life and present those ideas to people in ways that they want to engage with. So that's how I do what I do. That's how I get my ideas. That's how I get my subject matter. I hope this is helpful. This is episode 357 of The Edward Show. This is my daily digital marketing podcast. I do this thing every day for you all. And I'm so grateful to do it. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you again tomorrow.
