For those of you who’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ll know that I started publishing a lot more in the month of March.
This is the first of two articles I’m going to publish about my new content creation process.
In this article I’m going to share with you the secret to how I’m doing it.
In the next article I’m going to tell you the benefits I received from increasing the amount of times I’m publishing.
Delegation (Once Again) is King
I’m not a bad writer. In fact, I really enjoy writing.
The thing that was most difficult for me to realize is that while I might be good at writing a blog article, I’m not the best in the world.
I need to delegate the things that I’m good at doing so I can concentrate on what I’m best at doing.
This is where Alexandria Powell enters the scene. Together we have found a way for her to focus on her unique ability — writing, so that I can concentrate on my unique ability.
This simple act of delegation has completely changed the way that I view my content creation process here with my company.
A Look at my Editorial Calendar
You can see in the following image I have set a target to publish three times per week.
I want to have one video every Monday sharing something inspirational people can use to get started on the right foot.
On Wednesdays and Fridays I want to publish text content in the form of blog articles.
In the past I was publishing perhaps one or two blog articles per month.
Now, I’m publishing eight blog articles per month, and four videos per month.
If I didn’t have the following two workflows set up, there is no way I would be able to churn out this much activity on my blog.
The Secret Ingredient
You might be jumping ahead with the thought that I just hired someone to write all my articles.
The problem with the expert industry is that most often the expertise, the very thing people will come to us to hear, exists only in our heads. Content creation is not easily outsourced!
[shareable cite=”Jason R Owens” text=”Content creation is not easily outsourced! Here’s the next best thing.”]Content creation is not easily outsourced![/shareable]
Until we get to the days where we can sit down into a matrix-style chair and have somebody download our brains, it will remain very difficult for us to find ways to scale content creation.
Meet Alexandria Powell, the person who almost single-handedly has transformed my content creation process.
As you’ll see in the upcoming workflows, we found a way to download information from my brain and put it into my blog.
Once we tackled this step, content creation began to flow like water.
For those of you who are experts, public speakers, workshop leaders, and published authors, I highly recommend you contact Alexandria to set up this exact same workflow in your business.
My Workflow for Video Creation
I employ our time-tested technique called block scheduling. I usually shoot all of my videos on a Saturday morning.
In a few hours I’m able to create and upload all of my videos for the month, yet the blog posts that announce those videos still remain outstanding.
Here is the workflow for creating 4 video posts to show on each Monday:
- Jason – Records videos on iPhone (time: ~ 30 minutes)
- Jason – Edits and trims the video on iPhone (time: ~8 minutes)
- Jason – Uploads the video to YouTube (time: ~ 30 minutes)
- Jason – Sends video ID, headline, and publish date to Alexandria (time: 20 minutes)
- Alexandria – Creates and schedules 4 video posts (one for each Monday in the month)
At the end of this workflow each of the videos I have hosted on YouTube are scheduled to be released on a given Monday morning for each week of the month.
[shareable cite=”Jason R Owens”]Block scheduling your content creation is key to success.[/shareable]
Likewise there is a corresponding blog post that announces this video to all of my blog readers. These are also scheduled and ready to go for every Monday morning for the month.
At this point I have maybe 2 to 2.5 hours into the entire process of capturing the idea, jotting a few notes on the flow of each video, shooting and uploading all four videos, and sending over all of the descriptive text to Alexandria so she can publish the corresponding blog posts.
My Workflow for Blog Creation
As a precursor to this workflow, I usually use a tool called Evernote to capture all of my blog article ideas. I like Evernote because it is available not only on my desktop, but my laptop, too.
It’s also available on my phone, so I have Evernote with me everywhere I go. I usually use Evernote to make a very quick notation as to what the blog article would be about.
Once I have chosen the ideas I’m going to use for a given month, here are the steps I follow to turn these ideas into blog articles:
- Jason – Uses voice dictation on a word processing app on my phone (the Pages app on my iPhone) to create a first draft of the blog article. (time: ~7-10 minutes)
- Jason – Sends article to my Content Manager, Alexandria.
- Alexandria – Enters a more polished version of the article, chooses a featured image to capture the theme of the article, sets up any tweetable quotes inside the article itself, and schedules the article for publication.
As a rule of thumb it takes me about 20 minutes from capturing the idea, jotting a few quick notes for an outline and then creating the first draft for each regular blog post.
If I have to create any additional images or include screen capture images, like I had to do for this post, that will add another 15-20 minutes depending on the level of detail.
Total Time
In all I am probably putting in about 6 hours of work per month to create 4 short videos and 8 blog posts.
Again, I can’t stress how important it is to find someone who can help you do the very things you are not world class at doing. This has completely transformed my content creation process here at my company and I have a feeling it could greatly help yours as well.
[shareable cite=”Jason R. Owens” text=”Find somebody who can help you do what you aren’t best at doing!”]Find somebody who can help you do things you aren’t world class at doing so you can focus on what you do best![/shareable]
[reminder]What are some tips you have found helpful in creating content for your expert business?[/reminder]