You try to post content your blog once a week, but lately, when you sit down to write, you’ve been hitting a wall. Your mind dismisses every topic that arises with a litany of unhelpful complaints.
That’s so not relevant.
Who cares about that?
Nothing new here, girl. Not at all!
And then, sometimes, your mind can take you to an even more unhelpful place.
No one’s going to read it anyway.
It’s not like someone’s going to read my post and sign up for my services tomorrow.
And before you know it, you’ve wasted a couple of hours staring at the screen. Or you’ve pitched into procrastination mode, busying yourself with tidying your desk or cleaning out the junk drawer. Or you’ve given up completely and moved onto something else, something easier.
What’s going on here?
Losing Sight
Once, when I was still in my corporate job, one of my team members was on a cross functional committee planning our annual client event. The purpose of the event was to entertain our clients as a thank you for being loyal customers and to showcase our thought leadership and new products and services.
At one point, my team member expressed how frustrated she was.
She said a senior committee member had spent most of the last two meetings discussing the individual parts of the client gift, down to debating which type of teakwood foot scrubber should be included in a spa basket. Time was running out and there still important aspects of the thought leadership presentations which had not been addressed.
This person had lost sight of the event’s overall objectives and was steering the committee to focus only on the entertainment aspect.
It Takes Two
I’ve seen this same type of thing happen with coaches, healers and creative entrepreneurs in their content creation.
Creating content as part of your business also serves two purposes. It helps your business by giving voice to you and your expertise, laying the foundation for your audience to see you as someone who can help them. And it helps your potential clients by giving them practical, free guidance to help move them forward in their own journey.
Like that senior person on the committee, it’s easy to lose sight of both of those objectives when creating content and to unconsciously slip into focusing more on the ‘how this is going to help my business’ aspect.
And when that happens, there’s an incredible amount of pressure - pressure to make each article absolutely relevant, wildly insightful or innovatively on point. Which in turn often stifles your natural creative impulse.
But when you widen your focus to remember that second objective, what do my potential clients need to hear, then you can step back and take a more open approach.
Shifting the Focus
So how can you take a more client-centric approach to creating content?
There are a couple of really great ways I help my clients do this when we work together, but to get started, here are a couple of steps to point you in the right direction.
Get Quiet
Find some time where you can be alone and uninterrupted. Spend a few minutes grounding yourself and quieting your mind. You can do some deep breathing, a relaxation exercise. For me, doing 10 minutes of stream of consciousness writing, following by some deep breathing usually does the trick.
Visualize
Think about your ideal client and bring one person to mind. This could be an earlier version of yourself, a previous client, or someone you know that you think could really benefit from the type of work you do.
Really spend a few minutes here, visualizing this person, where’s she’s at, what’s on her mind.
Write
Now, get out a pen and paper. While still holding your ideal client in your mind’s eye, ask yourself a few questions and start writing about that person.
What is she struggling with?
What’s the hardest for her right now?
What keeps her up at night or fills her with dread when she wakes up in the morning?
Write for at least 15 minutes, but don’t let yourself stop there if you’re on a roll.
Take a look and reread what you’ve written. Imbedded in your piece are the things your clients are struggling with, and these can be used as powerful topics for future content pieces.
When you get stuck writing content, take a step back and see if you’ve been accidentally forgetting that what you’re writing is also designed to help your clients, and is not just as a vehicle to move your business forward. Then spend a few minutes looking at the world through the eyes of your ideal client, brainstorm their problems to incorporate those into your content piece. By having considered your ideal clients perspective when creating your piece will help ensure it’s what they want to read.
And that, in turn, is exactly what will help your business grow.