How I Am Consistently Putting Out Daily Content

I’m happy to share that I have successfully been publishing daily (weekday) content since Jan 1. 🎉  Until now, I really struggled to produce content on any sort of regular schedule.

So what changed?

The format and my mindset, for starters. I’m just as busy with clients and family as I was before — nothing new there. In the past, I found myself procrastinating on my content creation — not because I was short on ideas, but because I was overwhelmed by the thought of doing it. I think it’s because producing a longer post that is “really good” feels big and hard. And anything less than “really good” is not good enough. So I’d put it off until I felt I had the time and headspace for it. And that time and headspace would never come.

The way to tackle something big is breaking it up into smaller bits, and that is essentially what I’ve done. The other important step is simply to START. The only way to build momentum is to get moving in the first place. The format I chose is a short, daily (weekday) email newsletter called Fresh Squeezed: Essential ideas about branding, marketing, and growing a small business. It is designed to help exceptional people like YOU bring your visions to life.

I am loving this format — delivering bite-sized value daily that can be digested quickly. Occasionally, I’m also inspired to write a longer piece that I link to from the short Fresh Squeezed one. Sometimes the longer ones organically grow from the shorter ones.

Rather than procrastinating content creation as I have in the past, I find I am now energized and motivated to put these out. I’ve been getting great feedback, too, which really helps keep me going.

I’m also finding it’s not hard to do daily content but it does take some organization, discipline, and commitment.

I’m sharing my entire process here, soup to nuts. I hope this can serve as inspiration, motivation, or guidance to you so that you can find a format and process that works for you.

My Process

I set out to create useful content every weekday that solves real problems, helps people do the work they’re already doing better, or inspires them to take action. In order to do this, one needs to have a lot of ideas and be able to keep track of them!

Coming up with ideas

I have developed a habit of keeping inspired by reading/listening/watching good things. When I come across something I want to read/watch/listen to, I save it to Pocket so it’s there when I am ready to give it my attention. I’ve upgraded to premium to have unlimited highlights and lifetime archiving. I tag and favorite things but am lazy about that and rely mostly on search.

When I first got started planning for these dailies, I wanted to get ahead of things to not be under the gun each weekday morning. I audited everything I had ever created, saved, shared, bookmarked, etc. to date. As a result, I had over 300 potential email ideas for Fresh Squeezed.

The list is always growing as I continue reading, watching, listening to all sorts of varied things.

Keeping track of ideas

There is nothing worse than losing track of your ideas or finding a cryptic, vague note-to-self that is so unclear that the inspiration is gone.

In May 2021, I published a post about my Ideabox system consisting of a combo of Evernote, Google Sheets, and Zapier. It worked great for me until it didn’t.

The problem I ran into was I had saved so many ideas, it became cumbersome to work within the Google sheet to find things and move them around. Even more difficult was figuring out where to draft content and keep it all linked together and organized. I was getting really frustrated and it was destroying my momentum and motivation.

So I found a better tool/system! Enter Notion.so…

In the video below, I walk you through what I’ve set up, how I am using it, and down below under Resources is a link for you to import my template into your own Notion account to use.

I’m leaving the original Ideabox System post live for anyone who would prefer to use those tools.

I had never used Notion before this, so trust me, you can do it. It’s easy and no coding knowledge or special skills are required!

Setting up your Ideabox in Notion.io

First, go to Notion.so and sign up for a free account. There are other plans available, but this is all you need to get started (I upgraded to the Team plan).

While you’re there, take the tour and get familiar with the platform.

Below my video you’ll find the link to my template which you can import into your own account to use.

Let’s go through this step by step and I’ll show you how I’m using this…

Resources:

• Get my Template — Just click the link, then click “Duplicate” in the top right-hand corner to import into your account. And that’s it, you now have your own copy of the Ideabox.
• Notion tutorials and documentation
• Notion for iOS and Android
• Notion desktop for Mac & Windows

Batch Content Creation

I schedule and batch my content creation, usually once per week and I try to be at least a week ahead of my publishing schedule.

Because my notes are fairly detailed in Notion and because my Fresh Squeezed emails and posts are short, this generally doesn’t take more than a couple of hours. Sometimes, though, I write a much longer post (1500-3000 words) and will link to it from the short email/post. For these, I schedule separate time blocks.

Since I keep so many ideas in my Ideabox and am at least a week ahead of schedule, I can easily reschedule work on a lengthy post that I’m unable to finish for any particular week and just run with something else instead. I try to remove all stress from my process!

In Notion, I review my ideas and decide which content I will work on, and fill in the date for each of the 5 weekly pieces. Then I move on to the actual writing and publishing.

Writing content

Sometimes I write in Google docs, sometimes directly in Notion, and other times I use the Jasper.ai writing assistant. The important thing is to write. Whatever causes you the least friction in getting it done is what you should use.

The thing I like about writing in Jasper.ai is that I have created and saved some recipes — think content frameworks — that I find very helpful to structure my thoughts and write faster.

Since the format of Fresh Squeezed is short and to the point, I edit myself ruthlessly.

Publishing and scheduling

I draft and schedule the emails and the posts a week at a time in case I want to adjust what goes when so it doesn’t have a painful ripple effect to sort out.

Once I’ve written the content, I format and schedule it first in ActiveCampaign. Then on my website.

And finally, I mark it as scheduled in Notion. This is an important step so that I can keep track of what ideas have already been used. I can filter out the ones marked “scheduled” when needed, and I can also see them as an archive of everything I’ve completed.

Benefits of producing daily content

There are many benefits of producing daily content, but I’m going to highlight just a few.

Building and sustaining Momentum – Whether is writing or running a marathon, momentum is magic. And when you start to see success (results), it’s like rocket fuel for your projects. I’m literally energized by doing this and it has led to progress in other areas.

Building Authority – I think this is one of the biggest benefits. Share what you know. When you share with clarity and conviction, people will listen. And if they like what you say and value your opinion, they’ll want to follow you and perhaps buy from you down the road. Others may want to collaborate with you.

Building Trust – If you’re consistent with your publishing, people learn they can depend on you for valuable information because you’re not just here today and gone tomorrow.

The most important thing about publishing content is that you do it!

One of the things that I like most about my approach is that it doesn’t require a whole lot of time to get something out into the world.  I include detailed notes in Notion so that sometimes all I need to do is go in, edit, schedule dates, and then create and schedule posts in WordPress and ActiveCampaign. All this takes me less than a few hours each week. Pretty cool isn’t it?

So what are you waiting for? Hit publish today!