Your never-ending supply of content ideas

👉 for emails, blog posts, Linkedin, Twitter...

One of the biggest challenges with email marketing, blogging, posting on Linkedin or any content-based strategy is coming up with good ideas for that content that will be both interesting and useful for your readers and take them closer to being ready to buy.

But in practice, it's not all that difficult as long as you follow one simple rule.

Here's an example:

Today I had a bit of a DIY disaster.

I've been slowly repairing and replacing our decking, board by board, for the last year or so. It's a bit of a "painting the Forth Bridge" type challenge, but I've been making steady progress.

Today, however, I removed some of the boards that needed replacing to discover that the joists underneath had completely rotted through. They're load-bearing so they'll have to be replaced. And it's the kind of job I can't do myself.

They say email marketers never have disasters - they have stories they can tell in emails. And this is no different.

I could turn this into a "look before you leap" lesson about properly planning a job so you don't get halfway through and find you need to change tack.

Or maybe it could become a lesson about how actually it doesn't matter. I took action and got the benefits of that action for a year or so even if I have to get it redone now.

Or any one of a number of spins I could put on it.

But the important thing is that the minute it struck me that my DIY disaster could become the foundation of an email, I wrote it down.

I don't know about you but these days if I don't write something down it's gone from my brain in about 24 hours.

But even if you can remember things for longer, it's much better if you capture these little ideas as you go along. Then whenever you need inspiration for an email or post, you just turn to your "database" and pick something appropriate.

Personally, I use a tool called Craft to capture and work on ideas. I know many people swear by Notion (which I tried, but hated).

The tool isn't important though. It could be paper. It could be Word or any note-taking app. What's important is that you follow the simple rule of always writing down interesting stuff you see or that happens to you. 

It really does make writing emails and other content much easier.