Produce Content Like a Content Machine

You've likely got a lot of ideas you're excited to share. But if you're like most, you might find it intimidating to be constantly churning out content. I'm talking social media posts, videos, live broadcasts, PDFs, workbooks, workshops, digital courses, and other form of content that keeps your business alive and relevant to your audience. The good news is that a simple framework can help you capture and organize your ideas through so that you always have something new and exciting coming through the pipeline. And when you routinely produce amazing content, well, your audience becomes more and more loyal to you. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches and and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lifting. And I am your host, Andrew Donovan. Hey, hey, hey. Let's have this most important conversation about how you can become a consistent content producer. I titled this episode Produce Content Content like a Content Machine. Because really your business in many ways needs to operate like a machine. And that includes the kind of stuff that you're producing for free online, through social media outlets, through different platforms where you do video graphics, et cetera, and through the platforms where you produce paid materials as well. So I put together a very simple five step framework that I use in order to achieve this. And you know, I know that producing content on the regular can be something that gets a little bit intimidating sometimes. One, because it can be very time consuming. Two, because a lot of the time consuming things can end up being free things that you produce, not revenue producing things. And that gets a little bit wonky sometimes when we find that maybe a big portion of our business time every week is gets allocated to producing stuff that you just post for free on YouTube or Instagram instead of investing that time into producing content that you sell to your clients, to your audience. And so the question comes to play, how do I balance these things out? How do I know how much time to allocate toward producing amazing graphics for Instagram and Pinterest and funny videos on TikTok versus producing content. Like what workbooks and courses and frameworks that I can package up and sell. So I think that this framework that I've put together for you here in this episode will be really valuable for you.

Okay.

Producing content is something that I personally really enjoy now. Sometimes I find myself wanting to gravitate toward a certain kind of content more than others. Sometimes I'm in the mood to write and so I, I'll step in and work with my copywriters and my Assistants to work on email content or blog posts. Sometimes I don't want to write at all. I just want to make funny content. And so I'll walk around the house, I'll sit in my car in a parking lot making funny videos. And, you know, I don't think that there has to be steadfast laws about what you're doing in terms of content production, like what kind of content and the formats and all of that. The point for me is that you create a rhythm that your audience can rely on. So if you're building a following on Instagram, and that Instagram following is intended to fuel your marketing machines where you eventually sell your physical products or your digital products or both, then you want to make sure that you're consistently generating stuff that's going to keep them engaged. You and I both know that a disengaged audience is, is. It can be tricky to resurrect sometimes because if you disappear, say you take two weeks off for vacation and you don't produce anything, and then the algorithms say, okay, well, I guess this girl or this guy's not showing up for the audience, we're going to decrease their visibility. Then you have to earn your way back up. So once you decide that you're gonna start producing content online, you really have to keep the engines running. It's not really something that you can turn off. The good news is I know that your mind is always turned on, and I know that whatever niche you're operating in, it's something that you have a lot of passion about, and it's something that you have a lot of expertise on. And that means that there's a lot of good energy and ideas that are available, accessible to you. It's just a matter of collecting, harnessing, organizing it, and then turning into content. So let's dive right into this five step framework, how to become a content producing machine. All right? Step number one is learning what your flow feels like. For me, I spend a lot of time every day focusing on whether or not I feel in flow. And if I feel out of flow, then I pause and I find out how to get back in flow. In fact, I've been recording a lot of funny videos this weekend and even this morning. And so before I did this episode, recording, my mind was in funny mode, not in like inspiring, useful marketing mode. Okay. And so I wasn't feeling a lot of flow for this. So I paused, I sat down, I took some deep breaths, I tuned into what that part of my brand feels like, the part of Andrew Donovan's brand. That feels like strategic marketing advice. The part of me that feels like I can produce inspiring, highly usable content. And when I tapped into that inner feeling, my flow started churning. My flow started flowing. Okay, so a lot of times when people feel like writer's block or they feel like they're kind of stuck in terms of the content they're producing, maybe you feel like you sometimes don't have anything useful to say. That's a lack of flow. And so that's why, I mean, you know my recommendations for this. I suggest that you spend 15 or 20 minutes every day meditating earlier in the day. I suggest that you spend time intentionally indulging in the things that create inspiration, the things that get you excited, the things that feel satisfying. Because the more time you can spend in flow, the more you're going to become magnetic for inspiring thoughts and ideas that you can then turn around and turn into really cool content for your audience. Okay, so step number one, focus. Find what your flow feels like. I mean, you can focus outward on outside things that inspire you. If you like nature, if you like getting a massage, if you like running, if you like to swim, if you like to take your dog on a walk, whatever. Outside things that you can focus on that inspire an inner flow, that's great. I also really recommend that you spend time on the regular with yourself. Like, not with your kids, not with people that you coach, not involved, not responding to social media comments, but finding quiet stillness within and finding what your inner inspiration really feels like.

Okay.

Cause when you develop the ability to spontaneously tap into that, I mean, you'll never run out of ideas, friend. Okay, so step one, learn what your flow feels like. Step number two is, is make bullet lists and have comfortable and meaningful conversations from those bullet lists. Okay, so let me break that down to smaller pieces. Make bullet lists of your ideas. And so I use an app called Evernote. I also use just the Native Notes app on my Apple devices. And every time I have an interesting idea, I write it down. Every time. I learned this years ago because I used to try to remember my good ideas. And then later in the afternoon, I'd be like, oh, crap. What? What was that thing that I was thinking? Because it slipped my mind, and then sometimes you don't get it back. And I've learned that if it's really important, it'll usually make its way back to me when I'm not trying to force it to come back. But it's much easier to just write down all of your good ideas. So Jeffrey, my husband, he jokes all the time that if I ever died or something happened to me, he would auction off my Evernote account to the highest bidder because that's where all of my genius is stored. And so I have, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of notes in Evernote and my notes app, where I collect things into like, podcast topic ideas, blog post topic ideas, Instagram posts, funny video ideas, ideas for workshops for different niches that I operate in for my different companies that I own. Every time anything interesting comes to mind, I find a place to record it.

Okay? Okay.

And I keep it well organized. So I organized by like, like I just mentioned Instagram posts, videos, funny videos, serious videos. Whenever I think up a cool framework for like, for example, this episode, how to produce content like a machine, I immediately opened up my Evernote and wrote down my ideas for this framework. And now here I am producing it into an actual piece of content that you are now consuming.

Okay?

So write everything down and keep it organized. I like bullet lists. Okay. And I like to organize things by topics, like I mentioned. And then this is really important. Once I write something down, I try to find a person that I can talk about that idea to as early as possible. So I have my best friend, Jessica Jovanovic, almost every genius idea that I come up with, I am very quick to message her about it or to send her a voice text or, or to get on the phone because I wanna process it, I wanna talk to someone about it, and that helps me discover new nuance about that idea. Does that make sense to you? So that's step number two. Write down everything, organize it into topics into bullet lists, and talk about what you just wrote down.

Okay.

Step number three is identify your keynote topics and subtopics of those keynote topics. What I mean by that is in your business, in your brand, there are specific things that you're really focused on. So in my brand, it's really easy. I focus on law of attraction and digital entrepreneurship. So anything that has to do with being in alignment and tapping into the wisdom of the universe and letting the universe bring together all the cooperative components and you showing up as the entrepreneur who's willing to be in inspired action, who will once you're all tapped in like that, and the things that you'll actually do day to day in your business, like digital marketing strategies, like producing content, like building out super cool automated marketing machine to sell your stuff. So my two keynote topics are law of Attraction and digital entrepreneurship. And then all those other things that I just mentioned, those are Subtopics under my keynote topics. The reason why this is really valuable for producing content is. I mean, at the intro of this episode, I mentioned all kinds of forms of content. There's, like, short form, there's little graphics, there's big videos, there's long videos, there's webinars, there's. I mean, content can include you speaking on stage or you speaking at a virtual summit. So knowing what your keynote topics are, that allows you to be able to identify if something fits into your brand or not. Okay, so, for example, if I had a really cool idea about how restaurant chains could run better, that doesn't fit under either of my keynote topics. Okay, so that's not something that I'm gonna be like, how can I fit that into my content? That might be really obvious to some of you, but I see a lot of people that struggle with wanting to incorporate every good idea into their brand and business. And not everything needs to be there in your brand and business. I mean, I told you, I write everything down, but because I know my keynote topics and then my correlating subtopics, that makes it really easy for me to keep all of my ideas organized. And then when I need to produce, like, a podcast episode or a video, I can go into my Evernote and I can easily find all of the stuff that I've written down because it's organized into keynote topics and subtopics. Does that make sense to you? And then that also makes it really easy when you start collaborating with other influencers, with other coaches. Maybe someone wants you to appear on their YouTube channel or their Facebook Live or their podcast or guest blog for them, and people will ask you, what are your keynote topics? And you can say, oh, I. Okay, so my keynote topics are Anxiety for Pets and Natural Remedies for Pets. Okay, so maybe those are your two keynote topics make sense to you once you've done that. That was step three. Then step four is. Is create content that sets up your ascension model. Now, this is crucial. I see so many people producing content that is just content for the sake of content. So, for example, in network marketing, I see a lot of network marketers, so people who sell products in network marketing, and people who are coaches of a specific niche in their network marketing universe. I see them just posting content that's like, this product is good for this use, it's this many dollars. This product is good for this use, it's this many dollars, and it's content that one, isn't very interesting or inspiring or original, but two, it doesn't have any direction. If you need a brush up on what the term Ascension model means, go listen to episode 11 here on my podcast where I talked about how to become the expert in. In your field, in your niche. And that entire episode is really about Ascension models. So for a short review, Ascension model simply means that you have a stack of offers at the bottom of your Ascension model. It's like a pyramid. At the bottom you've got free offers or low ticket offers. At the top of your model, you have higher ticket offers and everything in between. And each offer sets up the next offer. And that way your customers always have somewhere to go. They have some way to get more access to more value with you in your brand, and then consequently, it brings in more revenue to your brand. That's exciting, right? So when you're producing content on whatever platform, you want to ask yourself, how is this setting up something in my Ascension model, So I might have a great idea. Maybe I come across something that's about setting up fulfillment by Amazon businesses. In fact, I see a lot of ads for that on my social media. Someone really thinks that I need to start an Amazon business and I might study up on that and I might think, wow, this is really cool. You can make a lot of money by marketing on Amazon. Now, at first glance, that sounds like something that would be in my realm of. In the realm of my brand, right? Because it's marketing and I do a lot of digital entrepreneurship involves tons of marketing. But if you look at my Ascension model, nothing that I sell is even remotely related to marketing on Amazon. So I might come across some really cool information that I'm even really interested in. Maybe I even read a bunch of stuff and have some good know how about marketing on Amazon. But I'm not gonna produce any content about that because that doesn't set up anything that I sell later on. And so it's not very relevant for me.

Okay.

But I would produce content about how to produce content, like a content machine. Because like this episode, for example, obviously, because this sets up other things in my Ascension model, because I have workshops about creating digital courses. I have a course about creating marketing machines that sell your physical and digital products on autopilot. And so this conversation that we're having right now, it's totally related to that thing that I sell, those things that I sell because you want to produce content that's gonna get people watching you, get eyeballs on you, get people liking you, following you, interacting with you, and then you're gonna wanna sell them your Stuff, Right? So do you see how that works? So step four is create content that sets up your Ascension model. Now obviously you need to know what your Ascension model is in order to do that. So again, if you're not familiar with what your Ascension model is or you need some help refining it, go back and watch my episode or listen to my episode 11, which will help you. And there's a free download in that episode too. If you want a shortcut to that. It's donavanrising.com plan and that's where you can get my workbook on Ascension models. Really, really helpful. Okay, Step number five is the easiest and hardest one. Okay, so this is stop doubting your value and focus on what you know matters and why it's satisfying to share with others. So I say it's easy and it's hard because when you have confidence, confidence feels easy, right? When you're lacking confidence, it feels really hard. And one of the places where I see people really just get tangled up when it comes to content production is they get just so stuck in their heads. They are constantly questioning whether or not they have anything of value to offer people. They're questioning whether or not their ideas are relevant, whether people would actually listen or follow, or like, maybe you publish some stuff that you think is really cool and people don't really pay attention to it and you think, geez, do I really have what it takes? You gotta take your focus off of those self defeating questions. You need to stop asking questions like why isn't anybody following me? Why aren't people engaging with me? Am I really worth their attention? Stop asking self defeating questions and instead put your focus on why. The things that you know, why the things that you're an expert about, why those things matter and put your focus on why it feels satisfying to share those things with others. You know, as I've rebranded, when a lot of you know that my first coaching brand was specifically dedicated toward one network marketing company. And I built up a big reputation in that company and sold a digital course, a couple digital courses for people in that company. And then eventually it was just, it was inspiring for me to pivot out of that niche and to focus on where I am now, which is Law of Attraction based entrepreneurship. And a lot of my old audience didn't want to follow me into this new space. A lot of people in that old audience just wanted to focus on business coaching for that specific kind of network marketing business. And I wasn't wanting to stay there with them. And so for a little while I asked myself a lot of those self defeating questions, geez, why isn't anyone liking my stuff? Like how come people aren't following me as much with my new content that I'm producing? But then I realized that I was asking those self defeating questions and, and I realized that energy was inevitably seeping into the kind of content that I was producing. And so in fact, I have my very first podcast episode that I recorded. I re recorded it because after I did it the first time, I realized that I had been very hyper aware of how I thought people would respond to it, how much I thought people would accept my message. And I thought that's not an energy I want in any content that I produce. So I rerecorded it just from a heart space, just from wanting to produce something that was satisfying to produce. And so I really put my focus on why it felt so satisfying to me to record that episode. And then what turned out the result was so phenomenal. I mean, the feedback from that episode, the reviews that people left, it was so fun to have people DMing me and saying how much they were inspired by that episode. And so that was really, really valuable for me to realize where I was asking those self defeating questions and understand that that was an opportunity for me to pivot and just focus on why I think my message is important, why it really matters, and to remember that the people who resonate with your message, if you're genuine about it, if you're authentic, the right people will find you. It might take a little bit of time to stick with your message. Not from a bullheaded, not from a, like, I'm not going to listen to feedback from my audience. Not from that. Okay, I don't mean that. I mean if people are telling you that they want something else from you, sometimes it's good to gather feedback and to listen to feedback from your audience. That's always wise. But your message is your message. And when you're really tuned into why that's important, when you're really tuned into how that's authentic to you and why you're here, to show up, to spread that around the world. Well, I mean, that's when you send, you're sending a clear broadcast, a clear signal that other people can tune into.

Okay?

And so those are the five steps that I use to continually churn out content. And I produce a lot of content and I have no shortage of stuff that I can produce right now. In fact, I think that I have like maybe 80 podcast episodes in queue right now because I have so many ideas that I've organized over time. So just in review, Step one, learn what your flow feels like. Step two, write everything down. Organize it into lists, into topics.

Okay.

And talk about what you write down so that you really can process those ideas. Step three, identify your keynote topics and subtopics. Step four, create content that sets up your ascension model, that sets up the things that you're going to sell later. And step five, stop doubting your value and instead focus on why what you know matters and why it's satisfying to share that with others. My friend. I hope that this framework is really useful for you. If you found something valuable in this podcast episode, do me a little favor. Hop on over to Apple Podcasts. Just leave us a quick review. Share what you learned. If you found anything valuable in this episode, we rely heavily on shares and reviews to spread the word and to keep this podcast thriving.

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And then also, if you haven't done so, hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss another episode and I will see you on the next episode.