The challenge around content creation is often just starting

Creating content for your website, blog and social media can be time consuming especially when you work for yourself and have a lot of other work on the go.

Many people chose to outsource their content to a freelancer writer or communications consultant, which is a great idea if you aren’t a confident writer or just don’t have time to write.

However, if you are self employed or a small business owner and don’t have the budget to outsource (or you are the writer and are running a business like I am) you just have to do it yourself.

Use your downtime to build a bank of content

I realised that I had to take the advice I gave to a potential new client. We were talking about ideas to grow her brand and profile - as things were a bit quiet on the business front for her. “Now is the ideal time to start building a bank of content so that when you are busy you have something lined up and ready to go”, I said. I also advised her on creating a blog and gave her some tips for different types of interesting content she could post.

In the car on the way home it occurred to me that I needed to follow my own mantra. It had been about six months since I had planned to add a blog to my website. Hmmmm. My excuse was that I had just been too busy, which was true to a certain degree. Deep down however I knew that part of the issue was that once I had launched the blog, I had to find the time to keep adding content to it. Nothing is worse after all than going to someone’s blog and they haven’t posted for months or years. That was the slightly scary part. When would I find the time to do it?

Get a couple of words on the page and plan

The solution was that I just had to bite the bullet and start. I had a bit of time waiting for a client to come back to me to progress a project so I put a few words on paper. These ones in fact!

It didn’t mean that I had to complete the article in one go, which I didn’t, or prioritise it above client work. It simply meant addressing one of the hardest things, which is actually just starting.

Not only did I get some words on the page but, as a walked to pick my daughter up from school, I created a virtual list in my head of other things I could write about when I next found a window. I wrote these down in a notebook when I got home so that I am spending my next amount of free time writing rather than staring at my screen to come up with ideas.

And there you have it. My first blog post at just over 500 words. It took over six months to get me to this point but I know that it won’t take that long before I do the next one. I just needed to start!