MBA1190 Q&A Wednesday: How do you come up with all your content ideas?

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Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Business Answers you're looking for every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at omar@100mba.net Today's question is from Perry and Perry asks how do you come up with all your content ideas over 1100 episodes? Wow. Well thanks Perry. Great question and yes we do have a lot of topics here on the podcast. We also write blog posts on the Hundred Dollar MBA and as well as our other sites like Webinar Ninja. And I do have a technique. I can share it with you on how I come up with all my content ideas. There is a method to the madness so I'll be sharing that in today's episode. I'll show you how to do it, how to organize things, how to make sure those ideas are easy to access, and how to avoid that pressure of feeling. Man, I gotta come up with an idea for today's blog post or today's podcast episode or today's video. That's going to be long gone when you use this technique. All right, let's jump into it. Let's get down to business. So Perry asks on today's Q and A Wednesday, how do I come up with all our ideas for our content for the show? Well, the first thing I have to say is that when I come up with the topics for the podcast, they're not done at the same time. I record. I actually come up with our topic ideas in advance. I try to fill out our show sheet or schedule our content schedule at least a month in advance. Sometimes, you know, I'm a little bit behind, but if I can get a month in advance, that's great. And what this allows me to do is allows me to create ideas that build upon each other, allows me to build a curriculum, basically that makes sense. So basically, I spend the time to brainstorm ideas at one time. So the ideas, the topics are actually decided all at the same time. So the Next, you know, 30 episodes are decided at the same time. This I find to be so much easier than every time I have to record, I think of a topic, I write it down and then I record. This puts so much pressure on you. Like, hey, I can't start recording until I come up with a topic. When you have the thinking and the decision making done separately, you just execute, I outline, and then I record. So one of the things you could do is come up with some themes, some major themes for the niche you're in. If you're in health and fitness. And maybe, you know, this theme is weight loss, and maybe the next theme is weight gain. Maybe the next theme is how to get shape for the summer. Maybe the next theme is how to recover from injury. And within those themes, you can have sub content or sub subjects, meaning that recovering from injury could be different kinds of injuries. It could be, you know, recovering from sore back, recovering from a tough workout. It could be injury prevention. So you can create separate topics within that actual topic and that actual theme. Now, I borrowed this idea from my teaching days. I used to be a full time educator at the high school and university level. I was a teacher and I had to build curricul. I had to, you know, do all this stuff for different levels of students and different classes. And this is how you build curriculum. You come up with themes, and within the themes you have, like, you know, subtopics. So if you can come up with like even five themes for your business, for your niche, and then within those five, you have five topics. That's 25 pieces of content right there. Boom. For most people, that's good for at least six months of blogging. Now what I use is Google Sheets. I love Google Sheets because you can share your sheets with other people on your team or with other people that are gonna be working with you. And also there's a Google Sheets app on your phone, so you can easily access your Google Sheets app to jot down ideas that come to your head at any random time. So I always open up my Google Sheet when I get some inspiration. I might be out and about on a weekend and I see something interesting that, you know, caught my eye and I'm like, hey, I wanna do an episode on, on horrible sales copy, on signage. Because I see a sign that's just atrocious. I take a picture of it and then I jot some notes down on my sheet. Later on, when I'm back at work, I will organize these ideas, but I just have, you know, a brain dump. I just put this information into my sheet. Another great place to come up with inspiration for topics is social media. Follow the people that are in the same niche as you. They'll be asking questions, they'll be discussing topics, topics that you can write about that you can create content for. I love to run open Q and A webinars, and through that open Q and A, I get tons of questions that can create great topic ideas from those questions. Quora is a great place to find topics in your niche. If you're in fashion, say, for example, you have a fashion blog, you're going to see tons of threads on, like, you know, when's the last chance you can wear white pants in the summer? Something like that. There's some rule out there. I'm not sure about it. But the point is, Quora is a great place to find questions and answers and topics that you can write about. But the biggest killer idea of all, the one that I highly recommend you do, is you speak to somebody who you would consider your ideal audience member. Somebody who would be like your best customer, the one that you were looking to chase. Find that person, they could be an existing customer and say, hey, can I get on the phone? Can I get on a video call? I want to have a quick chat, 15 minutes. And what you're going to do is on that call, you're going to tell this person, you're going to say, hey, if I had a magic wand. And that magic wand can solve five of your biggest problems. What would those five problems be? They're going to say I have this problem and this problem. My company and this problem and this problem. I'll give you an example. If I was calling one of my ideal clients for our webinar software, Webinar Ninja, they may say things like, I have a problem with closing sales, getting new leads, qualified leads. I have a problem with managing my team in the sales department. I have a problem with following up with leads that don't buy. I have a problem with tracking how well our webinars are doing. These are five big problems that they have that they want solved. And what you can do is create content. Blog posts, videos, podcast episodes, whatever. Create content explaining how to solve these problems, either with your product or just in general. How to actually attack this problem. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for answers to these problems. You can do it. Just ask them what their problems are. And I love how to phrase that and actually got a credit. Tony Zhu, who's The founder of DoorDash, who came up with this phrasing. If I had a magic wand that can cure, that can solve your biggest problem, your biggest five problems, what would they be? I love that wording because it makes them think big. And that's a great way to create great content that people want, that people will flock to, that people will share. So ask the people you're serving and that's a great way for you to come up with content ideas.

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In today's Q&A Wednesday, Perry asks, how do we come up with all our content ideas for the podcast? Well, we have that system I just explained. Come up with themes within the themes. Have topics, subtopics in there. Dedicate time on your calendar to actually sit down and come up with these topics and then plug them into your calendar. Plug them into a content calendar and I use Google Sheets for that. Simply I have a Google Sheet that has the date, the topic, you know, the episode number. If we have any sponsors, that's what we do. I have some notes and then I always love Google Sheets because, hey, it's easy to access on my phone. So if I have any kind of inspiration when I'm out and about for topic ideas, I can pop them in there. And then finally, ask your avatar. Ask your ideal customer or your best customer. If you had a magic wand that can solve the five biggest problems you have, what would they be? What would be those five problems? Content ideas galore. Well, there you have it. Thanks for listening to today's episode. And thanks Barry, for asking today's Q and A Wednesday's question. If you're listening right now and you have a question in your head about your business, ask away. Email me at omar00mba.net and I would love to answer your question right here on Q and A Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When it comes to ideas, content ideas, the more specific the better. The more I'm getting to the root of the problem, the more I'm really getting targeted and niche, the better. Because it means I'm talking directly to somebody with that specific to resonate with people. But I want to speak in generalities. Like if I write a blog post, say how to start a business that's too general, how to come up with the name of your new business that's very specific. Try to stay specific as possible because it allow you to stay focused and allows you to resonate with people directly. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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