Has it been a hot minute since you posted on socials? Or maybe you haven’t quite plucked up the courage to really get stuck into it yet?
Well my friend, this video is for you. I’m sharing a roadmap with you to overcome your mind drama and finally start hitting that publish button on your posts.
Talking points include:
- The thoughts you need to change about posting content
- What your ‘success’ metrics should be if you’re new to posting content
- The one thing that will dictate the results you get
Don’t let fear and pressure hold you back from creating my friend, the world needs to hear your story!
Video Transcript
So, my friends, today we are going to be talking about content creation and specifically about how to start creating content if you've never done it before or if you've created content in the past and now been on some sort of extended break where you are coming back to creating and I want to share with you some of my advice and thoughts and maybe a little bit of a roadmap with you about how to actually get to the point where you are creating content. And I'm not going to do this from a marketing perspective. I'm going to do this from the perspective of talking to you as the human that has to actually do this and touch on some of that mind drama that might be happening that is stopping you from just creating in the first place.
So let's get into it!
Now just as a quick thing, what makes me qualified to talk about this, in my opinion, is that I have been creating content for my business pretty consistently for the past five years and I have gone through multiple different processes, approaches. I've tried batch creating, I tried creating in the moment. I've tried all sorts of different even tools to help me create content and put it out there in the world. And I've learned quite a lot about the whole process of it. And ultimately I'm going to give you the big takeaway now: the most important thing that you can do is find the process for creating content that works for you. And that process, my friends, might not stay the same. It certainly doesn't for me. I know at different times in my life, depending what else I had going on around me, different approaches to the act of creating content works and yet and other scenarios that very same approach that previously worked became the thing that actually held me back.
So through all of this I you to keep an open mind, but I am of course going to give you some more specific thoughts to walk away with other than, hey, you got to figure it out for yourself because I know that's not super helpful either.
So before we even actually talk about creating content, what I first want to do is just acknowledge and bring awareness to maybe some of the thoughts that you might be having right now or that you may not be aware of but are hidden underneath layers of distraction and procrastination.
And the reason, again, I feel like I can speak to maybe what these thoughts might be for you is that I myself have experienced them. And also many, many of my clients have experience and too. So I really recognize what that scenario is like, where you are in a position of ultimately feeling like you're starting from scratch. And there is firstly this inherent pressure because we have been brainwashed and indoctrinated into the belief that consistency is the most important thing.
One of the first things that I know can really hold people back is the idea that once you start creating that fear, you are never allowed to stop. And if you do, then stop, or if you aren't able to keep up with this initial system that you created or this initial schedule that you created for yourself, then the minute you stop, the whole thing becomes a waste of time and ultimately creates this belief that look, if you are able to keep up with your own schedule, then there's no point in even starting because you're ultimately setting yourself up to feel bad about your lack of commitment or lack of follow through or whatever, or the way that you want to beat yourself up because you haven't been able to stick with something. The fear of finding yourself in that place where you have stopped again can often be something that really does hold you back from starting in the first place. So I just want to actually bust that myth that honestly, I want you to think of every single piece of content out into the world as a paint stroke, right? Just a singular paint stroke. And over time, it's the accumulation of those paint strokes that creates the full picture for somebody. And now if somebody was to discover you on day 365, they aren't going to go back and check. What was the gap between those individual paint strokes? No, they're just going to be they're taking in the full picture.
More specifically, if we were like this to Instagram, if somebody discovers you for the first time, what they might do is go back and look through all of the posts that you've created. And again, they don't care when that was made. And so this idea of we have to stay consistent, while it absolutely does have merit, there is truth to it that, you know, momentum does build.
It is not the full story here and it is not the be all and end all.
And I know there's often the saying of consistent doesn't mean constant. But if you are in this position where you have not been posting for quite a while, I actually just want to invite you to just drop this whole narrative around the importance of consistency because it's creating an unnecessary level of pressure that quite frankly, isn't helping you.
So let's just park that idea there, and especially because I know that for some of you, this belief that I have to be concise with something or I have to, once I start creating content, that's it. I've got to stay on that treadmill. It can lead you into this idea of, well, okay, I'll create 30 days worth of content in advance and then I'll post that so that I've got a bit of a headway of giving myself room to breathe so that I won't fall behind because I'm planned so far in advance.
But what that actually does, again, if you are in this place of never having really posted you, put you in a position where suddenly this is pressure on you to create these 30 incredible pieces of content instead of like, you know what, I'm just going to create one and see what happens. It's such a cycle of perfectionism and procrastination that can be born out of this idea that when we start, we just have to keep going.
So let's just park that idea. Let's just move away from that. And instead, let me give you a couple of new thoughts to play with to help get you closer to the point of creating and publishing work.
And the first idea that I really want to give to you is to change your metric of success from: did the post perform well? Did the Post do something for me and my business? Did the Post create engagement? Did it have X, y, z result?
Instead, I want you to change this to: Did I press publish on a post or not? If yes, that is success in those early days, the act of actually publishing is going to be way more informative and helpful for you than actually what the Post then goes on to do.
Because when you are the business, when you are somebody that is creating content for yourself, you know, you are putting yourself out there into the world to talk about your office, to talk about what it is that you do that can feel really unsafe, terribly scary for us as the individual doing that, particularly if in your past you have maybe felt like it's not acceptable, it's not okay to put yourself out there.
Maybe you've been in scenarios when you were a kid in school where you were made fun of for being you, and so suddenly this to doing on the world stage of the internet is terrifying. And so in those early moments, what we have to do is show ourselves that it's safe. We have to show ourselves that it's okay for us to publish content on the Internet that is safe for us to do, and we won't learn that by just noodling that idea over in our heads.
We learn that through actually creating the experience. We learn that through actually publishing something on the Internet, giving ourselves permission to go and hide and switch off our phone for an hour, if that's what we feel like we need to do to help ourselves feel safe, help ourselves feel okay with the act of hitting publish, It's really about training yourself because when we do that, we can then see that look, I can post and nothing bad happens. It's okay. And through doing this repeatedly over whatever time period, although I do recommend doing it as often as you do feel comfortable with, or at least comfortable feeling comfortable with, if that makes sense. Because really we're increasing our tolerance. And if we take this same idea and instead think about if we were going to try and increase our tolerance to the cold, what we might start with simply a five second blast of cold water in the shower and then on the next day we might increase it to 10 seconds.
And over time we can gradually increase our tolerance to that cold water and be able to endure it and feel safe and calm and relax and with a more regulated nervous system. It's the same with content creation. We have to train ourselves. We have to build up that tolerance over time, and we have to be okay with the fact that that's what we need to do.
It's an important part of the process. It's highly unlikely that you're going to go from a position of like, I feel really uncomfortable publishing content and posting content on the Internet to overnight suddenly being okay with it because you created 30 posts in advance or whatever, or the more strategic approach you want to take. It's something that we have to experience, and so you have to give yourself permission for it to not feel great at the beginning. You have to give yourself permission to actually really just focus on posting whatever you need to post out into the world before you get to the point of actually really trying to add any extra pressure for that content to do anything other than get you comfortable with the process of creating content. So just like if you were going to run a marathon, just like if you would training for something, you know, you've got to put the miles in first. You know, you have to build up the tolerance and the physical and mental fitness to be able to move closer to whatever your end goal is. And honestly, if you were running a marathon like you found out right now today that you got into the London Marathon or the New York Marathon, you wouldn't beat yourself up because tomorrow you aren't able to run it. And yet, for some reason, when we start a business for the first time, all we are suddenly going to start creating content for our business. For the first time, we beat ourselves up because we are able to instantly be an expert and incredible at it in a day. So give yourself compassion there, but also recognize that you will need to just change that success metric when you're starting out from ‘Did this post do X, y, Z for me and for my business?’ to ‘Did I actually press publish?’ If I did, that's great. That's all I'm really bothered about at this point.
And it could just be a picture of your cat. It could be a post where you mention your business for the first time and say, Hey, this is me, this is what I do. If you want to work with me, this is how you get in touch.
You can put simple things out there you can get used to. And I would say if you are a business owner, then I would really encourage you to create content that is somewhat related to your business because it's super easy to create this track where you're like, Oh, I'm perfectly fine if I'm just talking about here's my lunch or whatever, but I don't want to mention my business like look for the areas that maybe are holding back and just find ways to stop posting about it and then celebrating the fact that you posted and just a top tip here on this same subject.
What I love to do personally, and this is just again, how I like to work and maybe this isn't going to resonate with you. So please take it. If it resonates, leave it if it doesn't. But I actually like to almost document that process. If I was in that position, my first post would probably be something like, Hey guys, I've not been posting for a while and it's felt really scary for me to get back into it. So here I am starting the next post. Okay, I've posted one thing and now I need to keep going, but I don't really know what to say, so hey look, here's this cute picture of my cat. The reason I'm doing this is because, guys, I want to tell you about my business more, but I know I'm starting here.
Like, I just lead with honesty because it's the way that feels most natural for me. It also feels like I'm setting people's expectations in a sense and like, really just being upfront like, Hey guys, this is totally comfortable for me. I'm totally pushing myself in my comfort zone. But you know what? I'm going to share the journey with you because I think it's important.
And to be honest in most of these scenarios is probably something that you can even if you wanted to think about how is you going through this process of pushing yourself out your comfort zone? Is there anything that people, your clients, your customers, your audience could take away from that? But that is just a little tip there that instead of posting and maybe feeling like an imposter and trying to project some confidence so that you don't feel like acknowledge the discomfort, acknowledge the lack of confidence, acknowledge the fact that you're doing it and it looks messy and you are pushing through anyway. Because do you know what people love? That we love to root for an underdog. We love to root for people that are trying to do good for themselves, that are pushing themselves outside their comfort zones. So that's just a little top tip for you to help you get started.
Now, the next idea that I want to give to you and to be honest, this kind of applies either A, if you've never really been posting before or B, you've been like on a roller coaster of I post for a while and then I fall off the bandwagon and I'm silent for a month and then I get back on it and then I fall off the bandwagon. Like, if you've been in that pattern, this applies to you too. When it comes to content creation, the best thing you can do for yourself is focus way more on the process that you set up and the act of content creation rather than the results. So instead of giving yourself the goal of I want to create and publish five posts a week, give yourself a goal of I want to sit down five days a week with the intention of writing a post.
So switch your attention from the outcome to the process. And this is something that came from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, which I highly recommend, because really what you want to do is create a content habit. You want to make it easy for yourself to actually create the content in the first place. And so instead of spending all this energy, figuring out like, what's my grade going to look like? How often am I going to do a sales post versus a entertainment post, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, instead of all that, I really want you to get clear on how am I actually going to go about the act of creating content? And again, I don't mean this in terms of like what's the software I'm going to use?
I mean, you physically, when where are you going to sit down to create content? How are you going to go about that? And actually taking these videos that I've been doing all through January actually managed to continue without really thinking about it. They have it I created is the first thing in the morning before I open my emails, before I do anything else, I sit down and I recorded video. I give myself that time. And so I don't necessarily stress about did I create a video, what's the topic going to be? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, you don't really think too hard about those things. But what I do make sure that I do is actually commit to sitting down and some me, even if I sat down for half an hour and tried to record a video and failed or whatever, or it didn't work, it's still a success for me because I still committed the time that allowed it to happen.
So if you are in a position where you're like, Yeah, I want to start posting again, my intention is I want to start posting a couple of times a week on Instagram. Look at your diary. Like, look at the largest. Typically, when can you make that happen? When is going to be the time where you will make that happen and you will commit to that happening is you going to spend 50 minutes every morning?
Is it the you know, you have Tuesday afternoons free? When is that time that you can carve out and then commit to making sure that that time gets used for that purpose? And then once you're in that habit where maybe you are sitting down for 50 minutes every morning or half an hour every morning, what you can then do is be like, Do you know what?
No matter what I create in this half an hour, wherever I get to with it, at the end of that time, that's what I'm going to publish. Even if it feels like it's rubbish. I'm just going to get into that position where I am again now, getting myself comfortable with publishing stuff that's not perfect, but by actually focusing on the process and consistently committing time to actually make content creation happen, you are also allowing yourself to improve because again, we go back to the running analogy.
It's like if you were going to run a marathon and you said, You know what, every Tuesday I'm going to run for half an hour, inevitably you're going to get better over time. You've got to improve because as humans we naturally learn as we do things. And so by you taking that extra layer of pressure off the end result and actually focusing on the process of, you know, I'm going to just get into the habit of sitting down to create and then I'm just going to start creating and start publishing and getting used to it.
You're naturally going to improve and naturally going to find yourself actually learning as you go. So you might finally be like, You know what? Actually that time of day doesn't work for me, or I really hate the pressure of creating every day. So instead I'm going to look at how I can change my diary so I can just create on Monday mornings or whatever it is.
I'm such a huge advocate of taking messy action and learning through doing because I honestly believe it's the only way that we create real change. Because real change is not just created in the mind, right? We have to actually experience it. We have to actually go through it and create evidence for ourselves and learn what works for us.
Right? It's all well and good thinking. Oh, I think I do really see batch creation. That sounds great, but actually when you do it, you might hate it. But you'll never know until you try.
I can hear my cat scratching at the door, so I'm just going to let her in. One sec so you can see her just poking your head and she's gone. She's so cute.
But the final thing that I wanted to leave you with today is to appreciate the moment that you are in right now, because I think a lot of the time when we've not been posting for a while, we've gone quiet or we've never really posted before, we feel like suddenly when we start posting, you know, we're going to be drawing attention to ourselves.
And that feels scary. Or is the reality of the situation is there is never going to be a time in your online journey where you will have this much freedom? Because when you grow a bigger audience or once you have been posting for a while and you feel more comfortable with it, so you're actually creating more, that's when you start to do build that momentum and get more eyes on your work.
And that's great, right? That's probably what you want to work towards. If you're creating content for the purposes of your business. But this period you're in right now is an absolute gift of a time period because nobody's really going to be watching you while you're in this massive beginning stage. You get to post things in the knowledge that actually very few people are going to see it.
So it's not as big a deal as you're making it out to be in your mind. You get the message up, you get to make rubbish posts, you get to learn and let it be messy, but nobody's watching. It's the equivalent of being in a rehearsal studio right now. So instead of maybe viewing the scenario you're in right now as you stepping out onto a stage for the first time with thousands of eyes on you, that's just not what happens, right?
That is not the reality of your situation. You get to build up to that. You get to deal with those pressures and that stress and those mind dramas that come with having a larger audience and having expectations on you. That's going to come later. But you don't have to worry about that right now because that's not the situation you're in.
So embrace this time. And honestly, if you do embrace it and you have fun with it and you use it as an opportunity to really just express and see what feels good, you will then look back on it in the future with a fondness of like, Oh yeah, remember when I could just post whatever I wanted and it just didn't even matter?
I enjoy that, embrace it because my friends, that's the moment that you're in right now.
I'll admit, this episode got a little longer than I was expecting, so I am going to leave it there for you. But just to recap, firstly, change your success metric from the results of your post. So whether it did something for you to instead being Did I press post, did I publish that content?
If I did, it's a tick. That's the only thing that you really want to be looking at in that early stage to help yourself feel more and more confident with the act of hitting publish. And then secondly, really shift your attention from the end results and how many pieces of content that you created to instead dedicating time to actually create the content, focusing on the process of how you allow those posts to come into existence.
And finally, instead of seeing this situation you're in right now as a battle, see as the gift that it truly is, where you get to embrace your naivety and practice from the comfort of relative to unknown ness. So my friends, go get creative, take messy action. And most importantly, don't forget to have fun with it.
