How to never run out of post ideas
How to never run out of post ideas
I get it. The thought of writing content for social media on a “good day” makes you think of everything else you could possibly be doing to grow your business.
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So you save it for your down time away from the office or time apart from seeing clients/patients.
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BUT something inevitably seems to come up instead right?
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“Oh, I should respond to that email from a few days ago.”
“Maybe I should clean up around the house today.”
“Hmm, I’ve been wanting to try out that new GF / DF / grain free brownies recipe..maybe today’s the day?”
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Anything sounds better than sitting down to create content if you struggle to come up with ideas about what to write about. In fact, even these thoughts may be rolling around through your head:
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Oh but that topic has already been covered
I’ve already mentioned gut health last week … I should probably figure out something else to write about.
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Maybe you’ve even been proactive and created a social media strategy complete with exact prompts for posts to write about on certain days.
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But whenever you sit down to write about it, you feel uninspired by the prompt.
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I get it — you’re not alone! This happens to almost everyone I talk to … and even myself!
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So instead of getting frustrated every day, I sit down to create content for both myself and my clients I pull out something called The Map of Influence that I created for that particular client. The Map of Influence is a system I’ve created to help bypass the frustration so that you never run out of post ideas again
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The Map Of Influence is built off the idea of narrowing your focus rather than expanding your topics. Counterintuitive, I know, but it works!
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When you impose limitations on yourself, your creativity often increases! Just think of a time when it was the last day before a grocery run and pickings were slim in the fridge to create a meal — but you accepted the challenge to create something with what little you had — I bet if you’re anything like me, some of my most amazing, creative meals come from when I have very few ingredients to choose from.
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Well, the idea is similar to having a bare fridge and needing to make dinner ASAP.
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You take stock of what you have and then let the creativity begin!
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And the bonus part of this framework, any post that you create will be “on-brand.”
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(PRO tip — this idea also works for blog post ideas)
The Map of Influence
Step 1: Choose 1-2 broad (yet, narrow) subjects that you want to be known for
Example: gut health
Step 2: Choose 4-5 subcategories for each core value subject
Microbiome, Gut/hormone connection, Leaky gut, IBS / IBD, Pathogens of gut imbalances
Step 3: Create a google doc/excel sheet and/or other files that you have easy access to.
Create a space for each of those 1-2 core categories + 4-5 subcategories. Similar to the way I’ve listed it above.
Step 4: Now brainstorm 10-20 post ideas for each subcategory
After reading that you’re probably like, whoa, wait a second. There’s no way I’m going to be able to do that. I can barely come up with ONE POST IDEA and now you’re telling me to do… mentally calculates the math of 50-200 post ideas in one setting?!?! No way Jose.
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Before you click away and think I’m crazy for asking you to do that, I promise that yes it is possible, and no it’s not as hard as it looks ;) Plus I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it easier than it sounds.
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I have a secret hack I use so that even if I have a “brainstorm block” I can easily surpass 20 post ideas.
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For example, I did this exercise for the “Microbiome” subcategory and came up with 31 different post ideas just about the microbiome in 15 minutes.
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If you want to learn this hack AND learn about the entire Map of Influence process (+ see all 31 microbiome post ideas!), it’s a bonus in The Social Academy Membership.