098: Content Ideas: How to Never Run Out of Ideas for WordPress Blog Posts and iTunes Podcast Episodes Ever Again

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show episode 98 content, ideas how to never run out of ideas for WordPress, blog posts and iTunes podcast episodes ever again.

Robert Plank 0:18 Welcome back to the Robert Plank show. We talk about all kinds of subjects on this program, from WordPress and membership sites. And today, we're going to talk about content marketing. We're going to talk about how to get your message across. And I mean, I hate to say it, it's a little sad, but in order to get your message across many times, you're going to have to repeat it over and over and over again. You're going to have to make a Kindle book about whatever it is you have to say. You have need to make blog posts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, webinar pitches and more, but don't get bogged down. So there's, there's a saying. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's something like, don't wish it was easier. Wish you were better. Okay, so that is a quote by Jim Rohn. I just looked it up. And so the reason why we're talking today is because I've come across a lot of people who they think that that making one little podcast episode or one little video is a lot of so called work. And so I've heard over and over again, when someone, when someone first gets into say, webinars, right? And I think that the format for a webinar, out of all the ways I've tried the best structure, is that if you're doing a free one, if you're doing something for free to anyone who will listen, it's good to have exactly a one hour webinar where you teach some free stuff, sell something at the end, if someone's already bought from you, and you're teaching a class. The best structure out of all the ways I've tried is to have a four part, a four module class, or maybe once a week, you create a 60 to 90 minute video. And so, having said all that, when people get started with webinars, the thing I always hear is, oh my gosh, I had to talk for an hour, or I just talked for an hour. My throat hurts. There was another individual who had a podcast, and I think he ran it for like, four or five years, and after five years, he only recorded four episode, 40 episodes or so, right? And if you do the math on that, 40 episodes after four years, it's about, I don't know, an episode every four months. Every four months, this person has something to say, and and he got tired, and he thought that, for whatever reason, that 40 episodes of a podcast, even that's a decent, a decent chunk of content, 40 episodes of like, you know, 20 minutes each over four or five years is not a lot. So a lot of us need to up our game. And I'm not necessarily saying what you need to put out a YouTube video every day, but heck, if you did that, if you put out a video every day, like a quick five or 10 minute tutorial once a day for 30 days, man, that would be a good amount of traffic. That would be a good amount of YouTube subscribers, and that would give you something to work with and play with, right because now you'd have a way to move your content around. You'd have places to post it, like on Facebook, like on your blog, LinkedIn, your email subscribers to it. You could play around with retargeting ads, pre roll ads. Now you would have a sandbox to plan. So don't wish you was easier. Wish you were better, and we're gonna talk about different ways to pump out a lot of content faster, because we all need to up our game, and we shouldn't be spending all month just to make a simple five minute video. You should be putting out a lot of things by the time you're quote, unquote done, you should have hundreds and hundreds of ways people will find their way back to your site, hundreds of YouTube videos, hundreds of blog posts, hundreds of podcast episodes, not right away. I'm not saying you have to lock yourself in a room and do this for a couple of days or a couple of weeks, but this is what you should be building towards hundreds of things, not just a handful of things. So the quote of the day comes from Stephen Colbert, the comedian. It's a little bit of a long and that's okay, though. He says you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it, because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no, but saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. Yes is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to say yes, kind of a long one, but pretty profound, and this perfectly encapsulates an experience I had once in Thailand. I've been in Thailand twice, spoken there, sold some stuff there, which is pretty cool. And when, when we were, when the event was over, we were at dinner one time. And this real young guy, this 18 year old kid, I don't, don't even remember his name, wouldn't recognize his face. Yes, he came up to me and I was wearing a green shirt, and he goes, Hey, your shirt is green. I'm thinking, okay, that's nice. He goes, green is dumb. And I'm thinking, What are you talking about? Goes, you're dumb. And this, and this is this young guy. And didn't matter that he was young. He could have been any age, but this guy came up to me and just, he just started insulting me and start insulting my shirt. And I was just, I just walked away from because I was thinking, What the heck are you doing? And a lot of people, sadly, a lot of internet marketers, kind of have this attitude, right? The attitude that, well, if I'm super negative and a big downer, then people will think I have the answers. People will listen to me. People will scramble to win over my my my love, my affection, my admiration for them, and I don't, I don't think so. I think that that's that might work a couple times, but that's not a very good strategy. And many times you're doing this to yourself, you're going up to yourself and saying, green is dumb, and you're going up to yourself and saying, Well, there's no way that this podcasting thing will ever worked, because no one ever made money from podcasting. There's no way this membership sites will ever work. No one ever made money from membership sites. Well, that all depends on your mindset. That leads us to the thought of the day. That's kind of a question, too. The question is, is internet marketing a scam? If you go on, I'm just going to do a Google search right now. I'm going to search the term internet marketing scam, just under a million results, and you'll notice that, um, a lot of people use the same language, different mind, like, the same mindset, the same attitude, they're going to have a different kind of language. And so someone who's actually like a positive person will never use the term scam. Someone who's looking for excuses not to do things will use the term scam. So is internet marketing a scam? Well, the answer is yes. Internet marketing is a scam if you believe that it is going in. So this is this the classic, like, you know, fear of success, afraid to make it self sabotage, and then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Instead of going out there, taking a risk, going into the unknown, trying a few things, failing five times and the six times works, all that stuff, a lot of people don't want to go through that, that pain, that suffering. They don't want to fail 10 times and then the 11th time it works. They want attempt number one to be a guaranteed failure, because at least that way, they knew what the outcome was going in kind of a sick way of looking at it. But we've all been there at one point or another, some of us temporarily, some of us permanently. So is internet marketing a scam? Well, yes, if you believe that going in, if you want to have the fear of success, self sabotage, self fulfilling prophecy kind of stuff, then it is a scam. But if you actually want to make some money, or maybe you did make money, and it's falling away, and you want to climb your way back, or maybe you've been at this for years and haven't made money, and you want to finally make it well, if you want different results, you're going to have to take some different actions. And being in the the misery loves company, pity party kind of mentality is a guaranteed way to lose. I don't want you to lose. I want you to win. What I want you to do is crank out a bunch of cool stuff.

Robert Plank 8:23 And that's what today is, is making it so that if you want to pump out 10 videos, 10 blog posts, 10 podcast episodes, whatever, we rely on a structure, a template, a formula, and then within that template we can then be creative. Okay, so this is what I like to do when I make my books, when I make my podcast episodes, when I make my blog post, whatever, there's always a structure. I'll give you one right now. Every time that I make a podcast, there's one of two avenues I take. So this episode, what I did was I listed out nine and sometimes I go up to 12 bullet points, and I'll just kind of unpack a list. It's really easy to unpack a list if you have 10 or so items that and you devote, you know, two minutes, three minutes to each item, that is easily a 30 minute blog or podcast episode, right? Because even if you spent two minutes on each item, and you kind of worked your way up, ramped up speed towards what you're going to unpack and then unpack each one, recap them, talk about what it all meant, easily, a 30 minute podcast episode. Now, it's not just about filling up space and time. It's about solving people's problems. Think about this. This was, this might be, this might seem simplistic to you, but this was huge when I first talked about it, or when I first learned about this, is that when someone ends up on your website, whether they go and they click and buy, leave a comment, read a blog post without without commenting, whatever, someone took some kind of path to get to your site. Think about that. They didn't just mad. Show up on your site. 1000 people didn't magically appear on your site. What happened? Something brought them to your site now, maybe you have them as an email subscriber, and you sent an email broadcast. They opened the email, they clicked, they ended up on your web page. Maybe an affiliate had their own email list. They mailed someone clicked ended up on your web page. Maybe they clicked over from a Facebook post. Maybe they searched something on Google and found something in the organic search results. Maybe they searched something on YouTube, found one of your videos, clicked over to your site. So there's lots of different ways people end up on your site, but think about that. There are paths that people take to your site, and usually the path that brought them to you is trying to solve a specific problem. So here's what I mean. Is if I go on YouTube and I search for the phrase how to tie a tie, okay, I think that video had like 4 million views. Okay, I stand corrected. One has 12 million views, and the top one has 13 million views, and the one that the original one that came out eight years ago, has 28 million views, just on how to tie a tie. And if I click on one of those randomly, I see that? Well, the person doesn't have a link back to their site, but they have 165,000 subscribers, and they have a bunch of videos about how to solve different math problems, and I click on some of those, and they link to their their Facebook page, they link to their other YouTube videos and stuff like that. And so if we think about that, there, there's somewhat of a supply and demand in place here, right? Because the supply is you and other video publishers, other YouTube, you know, Video Creators. And now the good there's good and bad news. The bad news is that tons of other people have come before you now. The good news is that there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. If someone else already made a YouTube video about how to tie a tie, how to solve a Rubik's Cube, whatever, well, then you can always make your own unique take on that. And even what I've noticed, even searching how to tie a tie, some of the old, established videos, like the ones from years ago, get a pretty decent ranking. But anything that you create that's newer, and, you know, gets to the point quicker, always has a chance of climbing in the rankings. And it doesn't even matter too much about the rankings. What matters is what it is that you're building, right? So if you can get a new YouTube subscriber, if they can click over to your fan page and like your page, if they can click over to your sales letter and buy click over to your opt in page and sign up and become an email subscriber, that is what it's all about. That is what it's all about, where people are looking around for a solution to their problem. Now, I don't know how you would monetize how to tie a tie. Maybe you'd have some kind of Kindle book, or an ebook about about like how to how to dress stylish, or something like that. Or maybe it could be some kind of a course on how to ace a job interview. So if someone is looking to how to tie a tie, maybe they've never worn a tie in their life, and they want to, you know, Ace a job interview, or maybe it could be, I don't know, like a wedding site. I don't know. But the point is that there are suppliers like you who provide these solutions and the demand, which are people who are searching around trying to find the answer. And the thing about people searching around trying to find the answer is that the biggest thing Google looks at right now is a thing called dwell time. So someone might search even on Google. So I did YouTube, let me search google how to tie a tie and when I go there. Well, there, first of all, Google is smart enough to have the instructions right there on the web page, right? Because Google wants, if possible, for people to not even click away from the search result page. But then the first two results are from ties.com the third result is a series of images. The fourth result is one of the YouTube videos I clicked on and so on. So what Google will do is they'll see, and by the way, there are 12 million results in how to tie a tie, someone will click on one of those, right? And if someone searches how to tie a tie, they click over on that page. If they immediately click back, Google makes a note of that, and that will ding the person in the rankings. But if someone clicks on a link and they don't ever come back to Google, or they come back to Google 20 minutes, 30 minutes later, Google sees that, whoa, that person just spent half an hour on the web page learning how to tie a tie. They must have received the information that they were looking for. So what's the point of everything I'm saying? The point is to create. Be helpful content and to solve actual problems, be a good resource for people, instead of just spouting a bunch of, you know, random tips and things you think about in terms of what problem brings people to my web page. Is it how to tie a tie? Is it the best membership plugin. Is it the difference between GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar? Well, if it is, then I should make a blog post and maybe even a podcast episode, maybe even a YouTube video showing the difference between GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting. Even if you don't know what those things mean, someone could be searching, what's the difference between a or b, which should I buy a or b? What's a review on A or B? Or they might be searching for the name of a product, like they might be saying, GoToMeeting scam. And then you can make up blog posts saying, well, is go to meeting a scam? No. And here's why, actually, let me search that GoToMeeting scam. And so the reason why I'm kind of going off in different directions. Okay, so the first result is, I am report card.com and guess what? When you click on that, the very first link on that page is a affiliate link to go to meeting. Kind of interesting, right? And there's a bunch of people can leave comments and stuff like that. And so the point of all this is put yourself in to the perspective of the of the searcher, right of the person who's looking for this particular problem, or, I should say, the solution to a problem.

Robert Plank 16:36 So one last quick example before we switch gears and talk about what I would like to call today the immovable laws of content creation. Let's say that you were selling a weight loss course 97 bucks weight loss course includes training, calculator tools, meal plan, exercise plan, stuff like that. Well, let's think about what phrases somebody would search when they are looking for an answer to their weight loss and sure, they might be looking for like Rapid Fat Loss, intermittent fasting, things like that. But they could also be looking for something that's very more long tail, if that was grammatically correct, about how to lose weight before a high school reunion, how to lose weight for a wedding. Let me search that one, how to lose weight for a wedding. And by the way, there are tools you can use to there's one tool called the Google Keyword Tool, which is built in the Google AdWords you can go and search for weight loss forum and just kind of scroll through. Don't click on to any of the threads, but scroll through and see what kinds of things people are talking about. So this whole point of this whole, you know, 17 minutes so far in this program, was to get yourself into the mind of that prospect. So I search for how to lose weight for a wedding. I get 1.8 million results, I get 20 tips that could help you lose weight for your wedding. The do's and don'ts of wedding weight loss. And it's like, Well, isn't that kind of the same? The same, you know, thought process, pine normal weight loss, 19 reasons you shouldn't try to lose weight before your wedding. And we can go through and I'm sure that in the advertisements and stuff like that we have, we have lots of resources and things like that. I go to the weight loss forum, and I'm doing this right here on the fly, site unseen. I'm looking for the sub topic that has the most posts. I'm seeing advanced weight loss, weight loss methods. Let me just click on a couple of things, and I'll just kind of search through and we see people saying, need help, losing 2530, pounds, protein, packed food, eating before bed. Best weight loss support, like emotional support, maintaining weight at same level, losing fat and not muscle. Water retention overwhelms, dealing with family people who are 300 plus pounds. If I scroll through there's, I guess, the five two fast diet, whatever that is, tips to lose weight safely, calorie control, 800 calories thrive, weight management, I'm assuming that's some other kind of weight loss program, Weight Watchers. So just in the past 30 seconds, I rattled off to you about 10 or 20 ideas for content creation and and if we think in terms of what I told you, that people, first of all, take a path to your site, number one, and number two, your job is to solve that problem that brought them to your site, and the way that Google and Facebook and places are just like slowly, slowly taking over the internet, you have to think of it in terms of serving first, right? Because you can't say, Well, I I'm going to spend 10 minutes or 20 minutes making a blog post. List. I mean, people better like it, and every single person who reads it had better sign it's my list. Well, the simple fact is they won't. Some people will, but you have to separate the problems you're trying to solve, right? One problem you're trying to solve is traffic to your site. Another problem you're trying to solve is the conversion of people who come to your site, converting them into buyers and into prospects. But that percentage, no matter what you do, is always going to be super, super low, especially if they're kind of wandering in from Google, right? And so back in the day, you can make a forced opt in page and get 30% or 50% people to sign up. But nowadays, if someone wanders into your site, if if 5% of people opt in, or 10% of them often, or if 1% opt in from a pop up once they click over from Facebook, even that is pretty good, and it's just a matter of you to get enough clicks coming to your site every single day that 1% or 5% is enough to build a big enough list to sustain your business, a big enough list so that you'll get them warmed up. You'll get them buying whatever affiliate offers, whatever things you have for sale. And the simple, harsh truth is that you're gonna have many email subscribers who have no intention of buying from you, who never will buy. But, I mean, that's just the fact of life. You're gonna have that little bit, that little percentage of people who who listen to you. On the other hand, I know people who they go when they bought from me the very first time they've come to a web page. I know of some people who have signed up as a subscriber and then didn't buy for two or three years because all the content I created and all the problems I helped them solve eventually broke them down, and they realized that they had to trust me, because I solved all of their little problems. And it's okay in your content creation things like that, to solve little problems here and there, because what they're buying from you, once it actually comes time to buy they're buying from you a complete system, a start to finish kind of thing to get their their problem fixed fast with a step by step checklist and system and all these little free little videos and blog posts and things are just band aids on the problem, right? They buy your weight loss course to actually get serious in the next 30 or 60 or 90 days, and lose weight before the wedding, before the high school reunion for whatever it is. And when they go and find your YouTube videos, podcast episodes, blog posts and things they're just looking about, looking up fasting, looking up calorie counting, looking up protein stuff like that. So there's band aids on the problem, the little two minute to 10 minute solutions, and then the actual four hour solution, which is the thing that includes a meal plan, maybe some kind of software stuff like that. So now that we're on the same page about the reason you're making some content, which is to get traffic, to build a list, all that stuff, let's talk about content creation. A lot of people just misunderstand when I'm talking about content creation. I'm not talking about writing a blog post, necessarily. I'm not talking about writing out 100 page PDF report. I'm not talking about making a Kindle or PDF a Kindle or creates Facebook, but they can include those things, okay, so content creation doesn't have to mean writing, and even in my case, I do enjoy writing. I'm one of those weirdos. Writing is kind of fun for me, but many times things that you see I've written down are actually things that I spoken out. Had them transcribed, cleaned up the transcript. So content creation is just whatever gets the job done, whatever is helpful. And many times it's YouTube videos, podcast episodes, and sometimes it's written stuff, but it doesn't have to be written. It can be video or audio. Anyway, the immovable laws of content creation, number one, questions must be answered. Number two, provide a solution. Number 3w, w, h, w, number four, one, take content, number five, Mind Map. Number six, notes, number seven. Content, muscle. Number eight. Content, piggy bank. Number nine, demo or magic trick. Don't worry, we're going to unpack these. Number one, questions must be answered. The number one cure, in fact, I think it might be the only cure for writer's block is ask yourself a question. Here's what I mean. Now I rattled off a bunch of Ideas for Weight Loss stuff, and let me actually do another quick trick. Let me go on Google and let me type in the term weight loss in the search box and hit a space, and then don't hit enter, don't hit anything. Just see what it suggests to us. It suggests weight loss, diet weight loss tips, weight loss programs. And if I type in diet and do a space again, I get weight loss diet plan. Weight Loss Diet Plan. For women, weight loss, diet plan for men, weight loss, diet pills. Okay, so if I say diet plan for oh, there's vegetarian, Indian hypothyroidism, I kind of like the vegetarian, right? So perfect example, weight loss, diet plan for vegetarians. Now, if you had, if you opened up a Word document, what's the biggest problem with that? If you say, Okay, I've got to crank out an article or even a video about a weight loss diet plan for vegetarians, you open it up, blank page, blinking cursor just totally demotivating. And then what happens is, you go back and you think about back when you were in college, high school, elementary school, whatever you had to write an essay, and you go, I'm going to type weight loss diet plan for vegetarian. And then you still stuck right. Then you go, I'm going to go and look up the Webster's dictionary definition for weight loss diet plan still stuck. The answer is to transform the title of the thing you're about to create into a question. So instead of weight loss diet plan for vegetarian. The question becomes, what is the best weight loss diet plan for a vegetarian? Or, even better, I'm a vegetarian, what's the best weight loss diet plan for me? And now you've been asked a question by a made up character, but just because you read those words, because your whole entire life, you've been trained to answer questions unconsciously, whether you realize it or not, if you type down that exact phrase, I'm a vegetarian. What's the best weight loss diet plan for me, it's as if someone asks you the question. So now it must be answered if you're stuck answer a question that has been asked to you by one single imaginary person, and then that leads to the end. I mean, structuring any kind of content you create that's an answer to a question is simple but huge, because it solves a real problem, right? If there's a question being asked of you now, you're not just rattling off weight loss, tips, weight loss, facts and figures, you're solving a real problem, right? And it's clear when you've solved it, and if you're still stuck, what you can do then is to ask smaller questions within that initial question. So a weight loss meal plan for a vegetarian, honestly don't know, but if I click on one of these random links, I'm seeing that there's discussion about calories. There's a list of about maybe 10 or so breakfast options, a list of 10 lunch options and a list of 10 dinner options, and then a list of of snacks and treats, right? So you're stuck about what to write about for weight loss? Well, first of all, we're not just talking about weight loss. We've narrowed it down by using Google auto suggest, by just going to a Google search box typing, see what it suggests to us. And then we instead of just saying weight loss tips or weight loss meal plan for vegetarians, we ask, what is the best weight loss meal plan for vegetarians? Then below that, we ask some questions like, What are the 10 best breakfast options for a vegetarian? Now it's impossible not to answer if you know your stuff, what are the 10 best lunch options? What are the 10 best dinner options? What are the 10 best snack options? Questions must be answered if you're stuck, answer or ask and then answer a series of questions asked to you by one single imaginary person. Now this leads us to number two, keep this in mind that your if you're thinking about any kind of content, article, video, whatever, don't think of it as a chapter or an article. Think of it as a solution, right? So if you'd like to write and type fine, you're typing up a text solution to this problem right now, as I'm recording this audio podcast episode for you, I'm recording an audio solution to writer's block, and for people getting tired writing their content, or people who are just not able to do it on a consistent basis, and maybe even want to do it faster, maybe you can write but it takes you an hour to make a blog post. You want it to be done in 10 minutes? Well, the answer is, use these templates and these mind tricks. And the number one mind trick was, questions must be answered. But also the other, next mind trick is to think in terms of a solution fix a real problem that the marketplace is actually asking about, not just what's fun for you or what's kind of coming to you, but think in terms of what do you get asked over and over again, and if you can't think of anything there, do what I just did, live on the fly, and do a search for weight loss. Forum, drone flying. Forum, remote control car. Forum, I don't know what's the term for soubing up your car like. Car, car modification forum, and just kind of scroll through and in, in 30 seconds, you'll get 10 ideas for solutions for what you'll talk about. So, I mean, we can kind of combine and build on the things we're talking about. Here you go, when you search around for solutions, and then guess what? The title of that solution is, a question, and then the subtitles for those little sections, like each paragraph, say, so if you're going to type out a four or three paragraph answer, you have a title. It's a question. And then the three paragraphs themselves, or questions as well. Now here, then this next thing coming up is called w, w, h, w. It's taught in all the all the grammar schools and a couple of professors, over time, have tried to take credit for this template, this formula, but no one really knows. It's one of those things where no one knows who invented this. So it's basically public domain. It's called, why? What? How to what if this is the basis for any of my start to finish pieces of content, especially things like sales, letters, webinars, membership, course, curriculum and stuff. But it still applies for articles and for videos. Why? What? How to what, if you start off explaining the why, why is it significant? What the overview, the high level steps of what you're about to do, the how to, or the meat of what you're explaining, and then the what if, or the next steps, or the possibilities once they step through and complete those steps. WW, HW, why? What? How to, what if. Number four, one, take content. So you should, I mean, maybe you've noticed that, um, if you, if you have like, a favorite author, right? Like, maybe, of like, I don't know, like Stephen King or Isaac Asimov, or whoever, your favorite author, you can kind of read their stuff. And you would almost be able to, like, identify what author if you've read one of their things, right, one of their books. And in the same way, if a friend is emailing me, posting on Facebook, posting on a blog post, and it's just written text. I can almost hear their voice, and I've heard of a couple people tell me this, that when they read emails from me, email broadcast from me. By the way, you can join my list by going to Robert plank.com and opting on the sidebar, they hear my voice. So if you read a lot of a person's writing, they have a certain voice, they have a certain way of talking, to the point where, when you read their words, you hear their voice saying those words kind of weird. So that's what you should be doing. Don't worry about revising a bunch being academic, write or talk in a video the way you would in everyday conversation, no fancy talk, the way you would have said it the first time. This takes the pressure off view of revising and revising and making the most beautiful, poetic prose. No, you're solving someone's problem. Talk in normal, everyday fourth greater active what's it called? Active sentences? Type of language just talk in the shortest, most just, just the easiest way it is for you to talk right? Don't use fancy words when less words and smaller words will do so one take content. That means, have you noticed here and there, even in today's podcast episode, all kind of like grasp or stumble for the right word to use, or kind of flub a word a little bit, because this is not scripted. I have my list of my nine laws of content creation in front of me, but this is not scripted. I'm just using my notes and things as a guide, but then I'm just saying what I want to say off top of my head. Because if you know your stuff in no matter what niche you're talking about, Amazon, affiliate marketing, whatever, if you know your stuff even slightly, and you're explaining it to someone face to face, you're not you don't have to consult a bunch of notes. You just explain something to somebody face to face, and it gets better as as this goes on. We'll talk about the content muscle in a little bit, but one take content, either write or talk in video the way you would in everyday conversation, no fancy talk, and who cares about editing or advising? Who cares about the ums, the way that you would have said it the first time is the most clear way for someone to understand it all right. Now, number five, mind map. So for this, I use Google Drive and an add on called Mind Meister to make a thing called a mind map. So mind map is kind of like, like a thought bubble, kind of brainstorming thing you might have used in school, where you can have a bubble in the middle, and then you have little branches coming out that have smaller bubbles. And those themselves can have bubbles. And it becomes an easy way to, just like, brain dump a bunch of stuff, and then you can drag it all around and put bubbles inside other. Bubbles and categorize things and then rearrange the order in which the bubbles appear, and that makes it easy for us. For example, there is a there's a blog post on my site and looks like it's my internet. Oh, I typed my blog wrong. There is a post on my site that you can go to right now. That's at Robert plank.com/mind,

Robert Plank 35:25 set, dash solver. So this is a a blog post where we talk about 252 ways to solve anything, to solve negativity, stress, overwhelm. I think it's a really good resource. Now, how did I How did I organize and make sense of 252 different tips and resources and things like that? I use the mind map so I over a period of a couple of years, whenever I had a real problem with myself, time management, productivity, focus, perfectionism, bad habits, whatever. I would go and I would search for the solution to that problem, right? I would search for ways to conquer perfectionism, increase productivity, whatever. And I would find a really good list, a really good resource, and I would add it to the mind map. And then it became just like a huge dump of stuff. And then one afternoon, at least, literally, took me in about an hour, maybe, maybe two hours, because I was I was multitasking, which I shouldn't have done, but I kind of rearranged this huge map to figure out three things, the categories so like, what fits together, what kind of can get clumped in the same little thing, the hierarchy. So how do I say, well, what's the top level category? What's the the lower level category? And in this case, in this mindset solver blog post, we had one part that was like the eliminating the bad right, like overcome negativity and eliminate bad habits. Part Two was then how to, how to then be better, right? How to be positive, get out of a rut and make a change. And then the third section was, then, just how to get motivated. So it's like you got rid of the bad stuff out of the good stuff. Now here's how to keep that, that gravy train rolling. And then the final kind of little area were just questions, journaling prompts, things like, if you had an hour left to live, what would you do or describe yourself in exactly 10 words? Or what would you do with a million dollars? Questions like that. And the only way that I was able to really figure out those for those two things so far, the categories, which are what gets lumped together, and then the hierarchy. So how do we, how do we take it one level further and just kind of like categorize the categories? I guess the only way I was able to do that was just to dump it all in a mind map and drag things around until they made sense, and then finally, the sequence of what you're explaining. So this by dragging things around, I realized, Okay, well, I should probably explain how to fight negativity, before talking about stress, before talking about a bad mood, over and over again. I just kind of like just by playing around with it, I was able to just figure out the most logical step by step sequence that I never would have thought of just by doing it off the top of my head. And it would have taken me weeks if I had written it all down a little note card. So it kind of like your virtual note card. You can really easily rearrange things right there in the mind map, using Google Drive and Mind Meister, nothing to buy, nothing to install. Those are free tools that are working any web browser, phone, Chromebook, whatever number six notes. So as I said, don't script things. Don't script a webinar. Don't script a video. I'm not scripting this right now here, and you should not either when you run your own podcast at podcast crusher.com so have a bullet points in front of you to keep yourself on track, to make sure that you don't leave things out and that you unpack things in the correct order. Okay, so we're talking about the nine laws of content creation. We're on number six. And sometimes I can kind of go back and recap the the ones we already talked about. I can jump forward and reference, for example, the content muscle ones coming up. But so far we talked about how number one questions must be answered. Number two, fix a real problem with this solution. Number 3w, w, h, w, that's why. What? How to what if number four, one, take content, number five, mind maps and number six notes. So now we can kind of reiterate things to make sure that they absolutely set in concrete in your mind. I have nine things I told you then the nine of them ahead of time. I've unpacked them one at a time. I've wreaked. Capped them along the way. I'm going to recap them for sure at the end. And so having these notes in front of you just make sure of those things stay on track. Don't miss things unpack in the correct order, but please don't script anything, especially the videos and the spoken audio things you create, because the whole point of speaking out in audio is to get it right the first time you say it, and not and not trick yourself, and not do any of that stuff for you right. Half a set and say that stupid. I'll back it up. Not write a third of a sentence. Say that stupid, back it up. You just say it, get it out there. You can always clean up the text later, but usually you don't have to. And number seven, the content muscle. This is one of my favorite ones, because the more you put out blog posts, podcasts, webinars and videos, the easier they become. I guarantee if I went a week or two without putting out any content, remember, content doesn't doesn't mean written stuff. If I went a week or two without putting out any kind of Podcast, episode, video, webinar, whatever, it would be tough for me to get back in the groove. On the other hand, if you just put out a simple, quick five minute YouTube video once a day after a month, you would be super, super good at it. And my thing with, uh, kind of last little tangent is any if I if I have just a short piece of content, especially live action. But if I just kind of don't have much of a plan, I do my mess. I think of three talking points. Okay, three talking points. So if I'm talking about, I

Robert Plank 41:29 don't know, for example, I just did a interview yesterday about membership sites, and someone asked me, well, what are the steps to making a membership site? And I said, just off the top of my head, set up WordPress, set up your front end and set up your back end. So I thought in my head, I kept in my head the whole time the letters W, F, B, W is for WordPress. F is for front end, B is for back end. And if someone took out their camera right and pointed a camera in my face, and I couldn't write anything down or consult any kind of notes. And they, if they asked me, What should I? What should I need to know about making a membership site? Then I would put in my head, I would think real quickly about three words to keep me on track. And I would think wFB, and I would answer to set up a membership site. You need WordPress. Need a front end sales letter and a back end content delivery system, and then I would talk for about 30 seconds about each one and then recap. And that just makes it way better than you just rambling without any kind of a structure. So the content muscle helps you with things like that. Helps you with those three minute videos. If you have to record a 30 or 60 minute podcast episode, you get better at it, not only as you go along and increase your skill, but you get better at it the more often you do it, and you get a little worse. You get a little rusty at a practice if you take too long of a break between making content, and there's no reason for you to take a break because, as we said, You're solving people's problems. So demonstrate how to do something cool, for example, in my case, in WordPress. Show how, for example, how to record a video on an iPhone right. Show a shortcut, show a piece of software. Show something helpful, even if it's for fun, even if it's for you in the future to consult with. So this is something else I do. I will show how to use a piece of software. So at the moment, I'm I'm kind of messing around with a what's called explainer video software. And once I and I'm pretty good at it now, and soon I'm going to make a video showing how to use it. Now, why would I do that? Well, I could do it because someone might also be looking for usage on that particular piece of software. But you know what? In six months, in a year, I might have not used the software in a while, and I might need to watch my own video from my own past self to see how it's done. So number seven, actually, out of all these, that's my favorite, the content muscle. The more you put out and the more frequent, the easier it becomes, until it almost becomes unconscious. Number eight, content piggy bank, instead of living paycheck to paycheck when it comes to podcast episodes, blog posts and things like that. Record more stuff than you need and schedule it out. A big problem I see people having, and it's always been a problem. Back to the beginning of the internet. Somebody makes a new website, launches a new podcast, creates a blog, and they post every day, sometimes, 234, times a day, every day, every day, every day, for 30 days. And on day 31 it's dead. Day 60 there's been nothing posted. Day 365, they haven't posted in almost a year. So when you make something new, you. You're super excited, right? And it's really tempting to just keep putting out stuff, putting out stuff, putting out stuff, thinking that you're always going to be that excited. You might not always be that excited. So it helps to every now and then, even if you want to post every day, that's great, more power to you, especially with a podcast that's a really easy and great way to rank by putting out lots of helpful content consistently, but every now and then, put one of those posts off to the side and schedule it for a month or two from now, that way, in a month, even if you don't feel like creating anything new, at least that new piece of content will publish itself. So content piggy bank, at least have a couple of podcast episodes, blog posts, in the piggy bank, in the kitty. That way you're not scrambling for new content every single week. And number nine, the final one, is your demo or magic trick. So I can't say this enough that content creation doesn't have to mean writing. And if it, if you can show something in video, that's way, way better, especially because you can show it in video, you can kind of, you know, do it along with them. And if you really want to get it transcribed, that's great too, because you can put that into a blog post and take some still screen grabs out of the video and put them right in there. So now you have a very helpful guide, right? Maybe you were you wanted to write down how to install a WordPress blog so you could do that, or you could think of your three or so talking points you could click and use a tool such as Camtasia, recorder and record your screen. Record you setting up WordPress. Now you have a video that someone can follow along with. I'll go to YouTube right now, and I'll search for the term set up WordPress. And we get 200,000 results, but, but the number one result has 200,000 views. The number two result has 4.3 million reviews, and this person has a an affiliate link for Hostgator. So I can only imagine, after 4.3 million views, if 10% if 1% of those viewers, click on that affiliate link, and if 10% of those people go and actually sign up for web hosting, that's awesome. That's huge. I just noticed that his YouTube video is a full two and a half hours. So one way you can beat this person is by making the five minute the 10 minute version video of that. And who's to say you can't do both, right? You can have the 10 minute version video on your YouTube channel and make a three hour version, but actually demonstrate something and maybe have a magic trick. So sometimes I've made YouTube videos about a certain keyboard shortcut. I've made YouTube videos about how to import articles into PowerPoint. I've made YouTube videos about how to one click, add something to your to your computer so you can, in one click, Convert a wave file to an mp three, if you know what that is, or one click, Convert a PNG file into a JPEG file and resize it all in one click. So little demos, little magic tricks, I think, will help you if you're looking to pump out maybe your next five or your next 10 pieces of content. Show a magic trick, and here's the formula, show what you're building towards, explain what you're about to show, show that thing and then show it again. So the big thing I've been seeing lately as far as demonstrations, for example, setting up a WordPress site, right? It would help if you just spend a second, and I'm looking at the this person with 4 million views on how to make WordPress I'm seeing that the very first thing to do in the video is he shows what a WordPress site looks like. He opens up this this site called Hostgator, and he shows what you're going to see when you click on his affiliate link and set up a HostGator hosting account. So number one, show what it is you're about to create that's so helpful, because otherwise I'd have to, like, scroll through and this way I say, Okay, now I know what the end goal is. Now I'll know if I got there. Then instead of just jumping right in, you say, let me just first say we're gonna do these steps that way, when you see the steps done, you'll understand how far along we are. Then the bulk of the video is actually going through and installing WordPress, doing whatever steps it takes to make WordPress. And then just go and recap and list the steps. And then you can show some of those screens over again, just to reinforce what you showed. That helps so much. And guess what? Yeah, remember how we talked about, why? What? How to what if this is that? This is w, w, h, w, it rears its ugly head everywhere. Why is this important? You show what we're making. What am I going to do? You explain what you're about to show how do I do it? This is where you show the steps. Then what if I do this? Now you just go back and recap and say it. Now, here are the next steps for you. So WWh, W appears in everything, and it especially appears in our make a product, book creation and publishing course where we show you how to structure things by using everything we talked about today, the research on forums and things like that, the mind mapping, WW, h, w, content creation and everything so that you can do it in a couple of ways. First, you speak out a book, and we show you how to do it in 56 minutes. You get seven chapters created in a 56 minute length of time. You can do it in eight minute chunks, or all at once. You go and get it transcribed, we show you that part. You end up with about a 9000 word manuscripts, or about 30 pages, which you can make longer if you added in things like pictures, but if you just kept it simple, 30 page book. We show you how to put it on Kindle, how to put it on create space, and then how to whip out videos and blog posts and things like that to further promote the book.

Robert Plank 51:26 But I think that the point out of everything we talked about today, about content ideas, by the way, the show notes are at Robert plank.com, forward, slash 098, what we talked about today, I think that a big thing that I took me a long while to get over. Maybe it won't take you as long, but it took me forever to kind of set my ego aside a little bit to follow a formula, and I could be as creative or as clever I want in the solution, right in the solution for a weight loss meal plan or on how to fix your anxiety or whatever. But these nine laws, questions must be answered fix a real problem, WWh, w1, take. Content, Mind Mapping, notes. Content, muscle. Content, piggy bank and the demo or magic trick, you use these, and then within your solution, you can be creative, but stick to these, these mindset tricks and these ways of structuring your content, because it takes the guesswork out. It makes you can just instantly, just without even hardly thinking, just whip out all these different posts and videos and things, and then you're more like a machine, and you're more helpful to everyone, and you can instantly get yourself kind of turned on that seems kind of like, not in a weird way, but you get yourself instantly excited to solve people's problems and knock out all this content, just by having a structure. And within that structure you can then be creative. But check us out at Robert plank.com Give us a five star rating and subscribe to our show at Robert plank.com iTunes, and join our make a product. Course, if you've ever been stuck or you just want to up your game with content creation, whether that content creation means YouTube videos, means blog post means having a digital Kindle book or a physical creates Facebook. It doesn't have to be complicated or time consuming. It can be fun if you have a mentor, a guide, who's done it before, and if I can show you the proven techniques that have worked for me over and over again. I'm Robert Plank. I'll see you inside the members area of make a product.com. Talk to you very soon. That's M, a, k, E, A, P, R, O, D, U, C, t.com. Make a product.com. Robert Plank, talk you soon and buy now. You