2017 Content Excellence Challenge: The November Prompts

It’s time again for our pair of Content Excellence prompts! All year, our community has been working with these each month to create better work, and to create more of it.

This month’s prompts could potentially be swapped, because they’re both ways to do better work and more work. They go together like (dare I say it?) pumpkin and spice.

So … let’s make it happen.

November’s Creativity Prompt: Make some lists

We’ve talked in the past about keeping a creative journal you can use to hold all of your content ideas. Get into this habit and you’ll never have to face that sinking feeling of, “I have nothing to write about.”

But just in case your own journal isn’t overflowing today, I spotted this suggestion from our friend Tara Gentile of CreativeLive and the CoCommercial community.

This is her suggestion on how to very quickly brainstorm dozens of ideas about topics you’re genuinely passionate about. I’ll use her words to describe the process, which I’ll bet you can knock out this afternoon:

“… list out 10–20 ideas or topics you vehemently disagree with in your market. Then, list out 5–10 aspects or features of your product or service that you’re incredibly passionate about. Finally, list out 5–10 misconceptions your potential customers make and how your offer turns them around.

“You now have a huge list of things you can speak or write enthusiastically about. Try creating emails, blog posts, podcast episodes, or videos from this list. Try speaking to local groups about something on the list. Try bringing up list items in your next sales call.”

– Tara Gentile, Creative Live

Once you have your list started, you’ll find ideas popping into your head to keep it populated. And each idea could well be the start of a series or a collection of related pieces of content.

November’s Productivity Prompt: Make some connections

I just returned from a great conference, where I saw dozens of good friends. There was hugging, there were late-night conversations, there might have been some beer.

And it reminded me all over again what a potent source of energy it is to connect with people who care about you.

If you’re not building what you want to build, find someone to talk to.

Now, sometimes social media is an okay place to find this person. I’ve had some great late-night heart-to-hearts on Facebook chat. And Tara’s CoCommercial community is a wonderful place to find support.

But whenever you can manage it, it’s so much more profound to connect in person — or at least over the phone.

To make more time for that, you may in fact need to put some hard boundaries around the time you spend on time-suckers like Facebook. (My productivity tool of the year is the Freedom app, which lets you do exactly that, for the specific sites you have the hardest time managing your time with.)

How about you?

What’s going to be on your enthusiastic topic idea list? Want to share a few of those items with us?

How about your connection list? Is there someone who’s always had your back, professionally or personally? What will you do to respark that connection?

Let us know in the comments. 🙂