Creating content is easy.
Coming up with good ideas is where the challenge is at.
One reason why some people don’t create content is that they do not know what to say. They may be verbose in conversation, but when they see the blank page, they fail to come up with any ideas for content.
The issue is that there is no infrastructure to create good ideas routinely.
Without the proper guardrails, consistently developing ideas worthy of being made into content is challenging.
So, what are the guardrails that lead to endless ideas? Content buckets.
A content bucket is a meta-theme (i.e., overarching topic or category) that is expansive enough to generate smaller topics.
In the book, The Art and Business of Online Writing, Nicolas Cole describes three categories for your buckets:
- General audience (Ex. productivity)
- Niche audience (Ex. content marketing)
- Company/industry (Ex. working at a startup)
Having buckets for each of the three categories ensures your message reaches the right people more frequently.
Some content bucket examples could be:
- Personal development
- Marketing
- Writing
- Crypto
- Investing
Once you have a few (3-5) buckets, it’s time to go further and list topics under each bucket.
For marketing, that might look like this:
- Analysis of marketing positions in startups
- Lessons learned for marketing
- Marketing theory
The goal is that when I go to create content, I do little thinking because I know what I’m going to create content about. Sure, the buckets will evolve, but coming up with ideas can be challenging without them.
Do you currently have buckets for your content?
If not, why?
If yes, what do they look like for you?
If yes, what do they look like for you?