099: Content Creation: 15 Quick Writing Hacks for Blog Posts and More

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show, Episode, 99 content creation, 15 quick writing, hacks for blog posts and more.

Robert Plank 0:14 Welcome back to the Robert Plank show. Talk about internet marketing, online business and entrepreneurship on the show, and then my cover of membership sites, webinars and today, content creation, man, we are in Episode 99 of today's podcast, and I just looked at my my history, my little list of blog posts. And not to be all, you know, historical, or let's talk about me, or anything, but I started this podcast four years ago. Okay, it took me three years to get to Episode 50, and then it took me only one year to get from Episode 50 to now, almost number 100 Now, why is that? Well, a big reason was that I committed. I told myself around this time last year, as we're recording this, that I was going to actually take this podcasting thing seriously and make it a point to record and put out one podcast episode per week, and to do that on the weekend, to publish a episode every Friday or Saturday, usually every single week, so that I could keep that consistency up. That way I could keep the podcast traffic up. I looked at the graph of my podcast and looked at the downloads, and I got a bunch of downloads when I first put the podcast out. I've got another big boost, maybe a year or two in, and then it was a slow, slow decline, and that is one of the reasons why I wanted to fix the problem before it became a problem. Now, I honestly think that if you listening, yes, you I'm talking directly to you. If you don't have a podcast yet, you should get one. You can make get one for free, iTunes and the Google Play Store and Stitcher, they will all take you for free. And you can create as many podcast shows as you want, or just one, you can create as many episodes as you want. So if you want to, you could put out something every day, multiple times a day. Or if you just want to keep it simple, just something once a month, once a year, even, heck, even a quick five minute audio recording gets you published, gets you becoming a podcast author. So go right down to podcast crusher.com to claim the exact system to get your own podcast set up. It's a little commercial break in there for you. But I thought that that was worth mentioning, that there definitely is something to committing to consistently putting out new content about your niche and your brand, and you can cover black, sorry, cover different topics, such as what's going wrong in your industry or with your niche, or what I like to do a lot of times, is give away tons and tons of information in order to educate someone to get them to the point where they are now ready to buy one of our courses like we have a course called income machine, which tells you how to get your blog set up, your WordPress site, your sales letter, your membership site, often page, autoresponder sequence, all kinds of cool stuff there. Right? We have backup creator. So if I have a WordPress Backup plugin, wouldn't it be in my best interest to teach as much stuff for free, about setting up WordPress, about blogging, about getting internet traffic, about getting conversions, because I want to flood your head with a bunch of cool ideas, with a bunch of actionable items. So you can go and grab our backup plugin, our paper template, landing page plugin, our member genius membership plugin, and those are all included inside of income machine. More recently, we put out a service called website remote, which is a way to manage all of your WordPress sites in one place. So wouldn't it be in my best interest to put out and, you know, promote podcast episodes about my favorite WordPress plugins, about my favorite WordPress themes and time saving tricks and things like that. Well, yes, it wouldn't be, because my ultimate goal is for you to buy the piece of software, the system and the course and all the little tidbits I'm perfectly okay with giving away for free, and that should be your attitude as well. If you have a martial arts course, it's fine give away all little tidbits, the little you know, bits and pieces, because everyone else already is right. Everyone else already has articles and YouTube videos and even podcast episodes out there. If you're talking about dating, if you're talking about weight loss, talking about any of these different niches, you need to put out as many little helpful tidbits as possible. So it just gets to the point where having 100 podcast episodes is not a big deal for you. Anthony Robbins says you are rewarded in public for the things you practice in private. You are rewarded in public for the things you practice in private. The catch phrase of this week is the content piggy bank. So at the moment, my content piggy bank ran dry, but I would say on a typical week, I'm usually not too far ahead, but probably about two to three podcast episodes ahead when I blogged consistently. So when I'm on, usually when I talk about blogging, I'm talking about putting out written text posts, as opposed to the podcast episodes I'm talking out right now, and I put them on my blog. So as far as just regular blogging, I used to be six to 12 months ahead of what was currently coming out. So you don't have to get that crazy, like I said, usually I'm about two or three podcast episodes ahead. So my question is, what would it take for you to record just one quick video per day, just one quick video per day the other day? I mean literally, like two and a half three days ago, I happened on I was just clicking around checking out videos. I happened on someone's video, and I think it was about two and a half hours long on YouTube, on how to do everything with WordPress, right? How to get it installed, how to upload stuff, how to set it up. And I have a video like that, but it's only 10 minutes. I didn't think it was possible to, you know, do it talk about that for a whole two and a half hours. But what I found really interesting, well, two things. So first of all, two and a half hour YouTube video about how to install WordPress, tons and tons of views and comments, actually, 4.3 million views. So that's the first cool thing. Is that this thing that you just think, oh, there's tons of videos already about WordPress. There's tons of competition, and tons of people came before him. This person's video, I don't have it pulled up right now. I don't even remember how I got there, but this person's video was only two years old, so he was far, far out ranking videos showing WordPress installation that were 456, years old. Why? Because if you're showing a video on how to install WordPress from the version of six years ago, then it's out of date. You might as well be showing somebody had to run Windows 95 nobody uses those screens anymore. So I found that interesting that the video is only two years old. Had 4.3 million views, and he had an affiliate link to, I believe, HostGator to for everyone following along to click and sign up for web hosting under him. So how cool is that? Now, I believe that Hostgator only pays you one single time, so maybe if he'd, uh, promoted like Bluehost or something, then he could get, you know, all these repeat commissions and things like that. But how cool is that 4.3 million views on this free YouTube video? And if you figure, well, if only you know 2% or only 5% click through to that host skater link and buy then, man, that is a lot of commission, even if it's only a small percentage of those 4 million people who viewed that. So all the point is that all these little skills that you might think are simple, that everyone knows go on youtube.com, right now and search for some of these things that you previously thought it wasn't worth making a video about. So if I search, install WordPress, I get 200,000 views for a video, 300,000 views for a video.

Robert Plank 7:57 I just found the four point 3,000,001 actually, it's only a year old, so that's kind of interesting. But even if you say how to register a.com name, and I search that 24,000 views, 38,000 views, 26,000 views, so 1000s and 1000s of views on literally the simplest of subjects, right? Probably like how to choose a laptop, how to tie a tie, the top five iPhone apps, whatever that can be, just a simple video that you make and put in your content piggy bank, and we're going to talk about today. As far as content, it could include written stuff. But for me, usually content can be it's either mainly a podcast episode, a spoken audio program, like you're listening to here, and if it's not, then it's either a YouTube video or GoToWebinar, or nowadays, a Facebook Live Stream. Those are all almost identical. Those are screen capture videos where you're showing my screen. I might show my web camera in a little corner recently, especially on a Facebook live stream, but it's mostly what you see on my desktop. And actually, the other thing I've been playing around lately, I'll just throw in a little resource here. I've been using a tool called X Mirage, and I believe it's $16 I don't have an affiliate link or anything like that, but x Mirage basically allows any iPhone or iPad that is on the same Wi Fi network as your computer, and you can basically mirror the screen on your iPhone or iPad on your computer using a thing called Air Play. So kind of awkward, because I can't exactly show this to you, but you install a program on your computer called X Mirage, and then on your iPhone or iPad, I guess, you swipe up, and then there's like little icon for air drop and one for airplay. You tap that, choose your computer, boom, your iPhone or iPad now appears. On the screen. So this is kind of cool in a number of ways. I mean, yeah, you could show your your iPhone or iPad on a Facebook Live Stream, on a Go To Webinar. But what's really cool is, for YouTube purposes, you could actually show and review every app that you have installed. So think about this. If I think about ever if I search like Evernote iPad, right? I'm just curious what's gonna come up. One video that's only six minutes long has 30,000 views the official. I know it's not even the official, but there's a 25 minute video about Evernote, 230,000 views. And once again, even if people have come before you, what you can do is record the most recent version of that, right? And if I look for like, I don't know, Skype on iPhone, just out of curiosity, 146,000 for the two year ago version. So now I can kind of swoop in if I wanted to, and record that. Now it is a big bone. I think that Okay, first of all, it's important for you to just be pumping out content, just anyway, just quick videos, because it gets you an initial following, and it gets you better as you go along. But it's even better if it can somehow tie in to your existing business. So that means that if you have a real estate course, or you're putting one out, then guess what? Make real estate videos, right? If you have a webinar course, make webinar videos and so on. So I guess that'll be the resource of the week. I'm going to put that in the show notes for you at Robert plank.com/ 099, we're going to mention X Mirage to mirror an iPhone or iPad and record it on your computer screen. Three quotes for you. We got a three in one this week. If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way. That's Napoleon Hill. Next success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out. That's Robert Collier. Then don't wish it was easier. Wish you were better. So that's Jim Rohn. So speaking of become better, maybe think about that. This week. We think about that moving forward, do you sometimes take 30 minutes to say something that could be said in one minute? And if so, could you record a video and maybe do your best to cram in 1015, 20 minutes of explanation into maybe three to five minutes. So that way you get it all packed in there. It's super simple, and anyone can just watch it and get everything they need to know in a quick, condensed YouTube video about Skype on iPhone, Evernote on iPad, whatever it is that you're currently reviewing. So anyway, content creation, I want to give you some quick writing hacks, just because, honestly, that's all there is to it. I mean, when I think about when I if I need to crank out a blog post, crank out a podcast episode like this, crank out a book chapter, whatever, it's all just hack. It's it's all just every single time I don't feel like doing it. I'm not in the mood. And then I use one of these 15 little boosts to spring myself into action. And every time the boost the hack I use is different, but I do without realizing or not, I do use one of these 15 or so hacks. So we've split it up into three sections for you. One is just a system and routine so ways that you can change your daily routine for positive results. Next is basically about tools and mechanics you can use. And then the final section is all about mind hacks. Let's just jump right in, by the way, another quick little aside is that if you're up an upcoming podcaster, or you know, you want to have a podcast episode like this, and you're not sure that you'll have enough content. The easiest content for podcasting is just to make a list of some kind, right? And don't make it a point, to make a huge, long list, like, don't say here are my 100 favorite iPhone apps, maybe discuss like the top five or 10 or something. And it helps so much just to think in terms of lists, because then you can kind of rearrange things and go through in your list. If you want to have a short episode, just kind of rattle them off. If you want to have a longer episode, unpack all of them. And I prefer to unpack like the ones that I think are the most interesting. So let's do that. We're just gonna blow through these 15 mind hacks for quick content creation, anytime you want, for as long as you want, and then we will unpack the ones that I feel like. So first of all, have small goals. That's number one. So every time that I've been just really, just burned out, zoned out, whatever, it's usually because I pushed too long and I tried to just sit at the computer for eight hours and got nothing done. If you're not in a flow state, if you're not having fun, if you're not getting things accomplished, then please get off the computer until you do and and honestly, for me, sometimes it takes a few a few false starts. Might sit at a computer try to do some stuff for 10 minutes, not working fine.

Robert Plank 15:03 I'll go and I'll go and float in the pool. I have a new pool right now. Or I sit at the computer, can't get through it, then I'll, like, walk around the block or something. So we're just talking about you sit at the sitting at the computer, and get just a quick spurt knocked out. I could go on and on about this, but I won't. But basically, our productivity system is called Four daily tasks, where every day, we complete a 10 minute task, then a 40 minute little productivity window, then a 40 minute productivity window, then a 40 minute productivity window. We're absolutely focused. None of this distracted hours. It's a complete, focused hour where we complete exactly four milestones that day in our online business that are usually computer related, that we complete, that we can prove we're done, that get us closer towards making money. So I'm not going to unpack all that stuff, but basically, you sit down, knock some stuff out, and then a hop back off the computer. Please don't keep playing around on Facebook afterwards. I've actually found it really helpful that if I do most of my playing around on Facebook, on the iPad, to be honest, why? Because I don't want to sit at the computer, play around on Facebook for two hours, get 10 minutes of, you know, productive stuff done in my business, and then two more hours at the on Facebook, and think, man, I was productive today. I spent five hours on the computer. Well, no, I didn't. I spent most of my time on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. That's no fun. So do most of that on a tablet or some other device away from your office, away from the computer. Just trust me. So a lot of successful authors, a lot of people that consistently crank out content, just do it in 10 minute spurts or 500 word days. And the key here is that it creates a sense of urgency. So that you avoid Parkinson's Law. You avoid that problem where if you have five hours to do something, then the actual amount of effort you have to put in expands the full five hours you want to have five hours to do something, and then it only expands to 10 minutes, so you only give yourself 10 minutes to think about it. And so that's kind of that might be in more of like mind attack territory, but that'll give you a little taste of how you really need to rewire or retrain your brain for consistent content creation, for consistent marketing. Create that sense of urgency, so to the computer and and get your thing done, and then hop off once you're once your writing's done, or whatever it is. And you know that if you've ever had to rush before something was due, or you had to go, you know, pick someone up, or go to dinner or go to the movies or go on a trip, that those final couple of hours, that final 20 minutes, you're more productive than you've been for the past week or so. So why wouldn't you want to duplicate that, to recreate that every single time you were at the computer, we do that by retraining your brain. And many times I'll even have windows open the night before. Sit at the computer, type, type, knock it out. It's done. I'm instantly off the computer. It's sent out. I don't even check email. I don't do anything else. Sit down. Get it done. Leave and to give you even bigger boost, open up a web browser, open up Google and search for the phrase countdown timer. Now this is pretty cool. Give yourself 10 minutes to write out that blog post, or as much as you can crank out in 10 minutes, set the timer, and then for the first couple of minutes, you'll be like, whatever. Okay. But then once the timer gets down to eight minutes, seven minutes, and you see the almost the panic of it counting down, that'll spring your butt into action. And this is the important part, once that timer hits zero, even if you're halfway through a sentence, hop off the computer immediately and preferably leave the house, leave the office, and you do this a few times, and your rent, and it might be a little bit painful, it might take you a couple of days to rewire once you do man, that now your brain is going to be used to you sitting at the computer now, you get into that flow state instantly. All right, we still got 14 more to go, so let's just plow through. Number two, update an editorial calendar so you know what you're writing each day. Actually made a plug in for this. I don't have the the web address for this off hand, but it helps to write down how many words you wrote every day. And you know what? We actually here, there is a place you can write this down. We have these day planners, and you can get one at four daily tasks.com. Forward, slash planner. And what you can do is, you know, you just write down your four tasks for the day and things you did, and there's room for you to just write how many words you wrote that day, if you're a writer. And I mean, if you if you want to hear if you're a YouTube or video creator, then the creation of that video is just one of your tasks for that day. So if you're just having stuff, having trouble about either getting a certain word count done every day, or getting your one quick five minute, 10 minute YouTube video done every day, then write down every day if you did or didn't do that thing. Now you can take this one step further. I'm not much of a calendar guy, but what you can do is write. Write down in a calendar how many words you wrote that day. And so what does this do? Well, this says little thing called Seinfeld productivity. And I guess the story is Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, when they were writing for the TV show Seinfeld, what they recorded in a calendar if they had finished any writing that day, if they got any writing in that day, and if they did, they'd write an X on Monday's slot for Monday, right? And if they wrote some on Tuesday, they'd put an X. So then four or five or six days in now you have a row or a chain of X's where now, every day, you've gotten something accomplished, you've got some writing done, you've moved forward in your business. So once you have that beautiful little, little sequence of 5x in a row, 10x in a row, it's awkward at first. It's hard to get started at first. But once you get 10x or 20x in a row, well now you don't want to have one blank day, right? You don't want to break the chain. So like everything else, this requires that you actually take it seriously. But think about that the sign from productivity calendar where you want to avoid the broken chain of events, just write down every day how many words you wrote, or if you knocked out that YouTube video, or whatever. Number three, use writer's block to perform more research. So the worst thing ever is that blank page, right? And I know that, at least for me, like, I write a lot of, like, non fiction stuff. I don't write fiction, but I'll write something. I'll put together a book about webinars, or about about internet marketing or about membership sites, and the blank page just sucks. Let's just face it, right? Blank Page sucks. The blank screen of a blog post sucks. So the, the way I like to think of this is, I like to research just a ton of just a ton of things related that, you know, maybe a lot of them won't even go into what it is I'm doing. And then I like to, you know, rearrange and reduce and categorize and group things together so that now it kind of then only the important things are left, right. I'm rearranging the diamonds in the rough. And I think I mentioned this in the previous episode, but I mentioned again Robert plank.com/mindset solver, mindset dash solver. So Robert plank.com/m i, n, d, S, E, T, dash, s, O, L, V, E, R, it's a blog post of just the most of the minds, issues, problems, self help problems people have, and just lists and lists of the solutions to them, like stop multitasking, plan For obstacles, change your bad habit, stuff like that. So

Robert Plank 22:44 I didn't know I wanted to have a blog post that just solved like not every problem you'd have, but maybe 50% or 80% of the problems you'd have as far as mindset, frustration, productivity, anger, depression, whatever. So I didn't even know where to begin with that. So what I did was I just made it a list post, and I just went and did some research and listed this. And this helps in pretty much any subject, right? Because, let's say you're even talking about, you want to make a blog post about different kinds of membership sites, right? And so what you could do is just do Google search different types of membership sites. Nothing new there. But I mean, as you did that search and you opened up a few things in a few tabs and just kind of read through the various lists that there were. What's really interesting is that in any kind of situation like this, you're going to notice the same patterns. You're going to notice that a lot of the lists, even though they might have been created separately and they might be like, you know, listed differently, all these different lists and things they they all have commonalities, right? And so you might be, might be having writer's block, but then you go and you just, you know, combine, not so much combined list, but just kind of scan all these different lists and look at them and see the similarities and the connections, and that's where you can you can just get past the writer's block, because it almost writes itself like, if I'm going through, I'm looking for types of membership sites that's all like evergreen side, a drip site, all inside online, course. So I mean, you could probably go through and different people have different, I guess, terms or ways of thinking about things. So you could probably go through this, the first couple of search results, and you could probably list out 10, or I would want to say 3040, 50 types of membership sites. And then you see that list, and you'd say, Okay, well, you know, maybe a couple of these can be combined. Maybe this one, they just made it up because they had to list a bunch. This one, I think, is kind of dumb. So then you could probably narrow these down to your favorite 10 or your favorite five, and then now the the blog post or the video, or whatever, all. Almost writes itself. So that's number three, use writer's block to perform more research. Number four is from the author, Elmore Leonard. Well, he's dead. It's not like he just wrote sent this in, but this is just from, again, doing some of that research. Wake up an hour earlier. Normally wake up at seven. Wake up at six. So my number one tool for this is an iPhone app called sleep cycle. And then the other thing about this is that you have to go to bed earlier. That's just mathematics. You can't stay up until two in the morning and then wake up three hours later, at five in the morning. You're gonna be dead tired all day, so go to bed early. Might take you a couple of days to get back on that cycle. Use the sleep cycle app to wake up without feeling groggy. And then I use this stuff called bulletproof coffee to just wake me up right away. So I wake up using the sleep cycle app. I have, like a thing called the happy light next to my bed. I can flick it on and it blasts some warm bright, I guess not warm, like heat, but like, warm color, like a bright color in my face to wake me up, and then I go in and, you know, pound some coffee after that. So that system and routine have small goals and a countdown timer. That's number one. Number two, update an editorial calendar so you know what you're writing each day. Number three, use writer's block to perform more research. Number four, wake up an hour earlier. Next section, tools and mechanics. Number five, Delegate transcription and speak it out instead of writing. So when I mentioned, for example, that I might use this x Mirage tool combined with Camtasia recorder to record videos of me playing around on a phone and an iPad. Well, you know, what's cool about that is that I can capture that. I can put it on a YouTube video. I can take that YouTube video and put it on my blog as a post. I can also get it transcribed and then capture still freeze frames of me playing around on my iPad from the video, and then sandwich them in to the transcript that came back. So someone comes to my website and they're looking for, I don't know how to how to install Skype for for iPhone or something. Well, instead of having to sit through some videos or whatever, they could go through the video, or they can click and open up a PDF document that has it all written out with screenshots. Now, that sounds pretty dang helpful, right there. So in megaproduct.com we show you not just how to get your transcripts made for $1 a minute, but also how to publish your own book to Amazon Kindle and create space so that way, once you play around with this enough you can put out a Kindle book again for free with your top 10 or your top 20 iPhone app. So you put out a quick Kindle book, maybe for someone who's not very computer literate, like an iPad for dummies. Basically, only don't call it for Dummies, because that's trademarked, but you know what I mean, like an iPad for for people who are not computer literate, and just walk them through the bare essentials of which apps to install, how to install an app, how to check their mail, how to connect to Wi Fi. That could be actually pretty popular. Actually, I might do that, but feel free to steal that idea and beat me to the punch number six, use Google image search to find relevant images. So this is kind of under the under the area of research. But what I like to do many times is kind of enhance my my blog posts with some like diagrams and things. And in the past, I'm scrolling through my blog but I can't find it. It must have been a few episodes ago, I did an episode on the podcast about creativity, actually, all I'll find it for you right now. We're looking for creativity. Episode 72 Robert Plank, Robert calm, slash 072, and what we did here was, so this is actually the perfect case study for what we're talking about. I wanted to talk about creativity, and I had a couple of bullet points of my own, but I really wanted to have some, like, researched stuff, right? I figured that people out there probably had some better ideas about it than me, so I looked around and a lot of stuff was just really hokey. A lot of stuff was, well, drink some juice. Well, eat an apple, listen to soothing music. And I was just like, everyone knows stuff like that. I want to know, like the psychologist, way to do it, but without having to become a psychology major, right? And so what I found was I basically found a bunch of different solutions. And there, there were about four different Well, yeah, there were about four different solutions. And I realized that there was even something about in order to become creative, you reframe, you mind map, you get insight, and then you get into that creative flow state. So that was like. I kept seeing that. That pattern there, that that reframe mind, map insights, create a flow. And I was like, Okay, well, that's interesting. And then I found that a lot of the articles I found were about, like, organizing your thoughts, and about how some some breakthroughs you make creatively, or, like, if you bend a rule versus breaking a rule, or you combine things. So the best example of creativity, or the best, I guess, like story or cliche, is Thomas Edison in the light bulb. Right? Thomas Edison said, I haven't failed inventing the light bulb. I just I found 10,000 ways it won't work, 10,000 chemicals and filaments and stuff like that that won't work for a light bulb. So it's just a matter of of just narrowing out the things that don't work and all the stuff is what did work. And I realized that this same little two by two box kept coming up where they talked about, well, that way, that method of creativity, that Thomas Edison just brute force method is called deliberate cognitive. And then if you suddenly get a flash of logic or a flash of inspiration, that's called spontaneous cognitive. And that's the story of Isaac Newton. The apple fell on his head, and suddenly he realized all gravity. So the point of all this is that, well, that that whole diagram, I realized, fit into the Insight slot of talking about creativity. Remember how we said that the steps for reframe Mind Map insight and creative flow? And then I realized a couple of other things, like, for example, the formula that appears for me everywhere is, why? What? How to what? If that's the formula I use for my books, for my sales letters, for all that stuff. And I realized that even creativity fit into that model, because the first step was identifying a problem they're trying to solve. You know, my solution could be better. Then we mind map things, so we take the possible solutions or the possible things out there, and then with how this is where you you change your thinking and switch to different types of creativity, and then creative flow, that's like the magic, the magic happy place where you just can't stop writing and stuff like that. So anyway, the point of all this is that that was where I researched. I was stuck. I researched a bunch of stuff, and just by rearranging the pieces, it came together very nicely. But then I also needed a couple of ways to illustrate what it is I was talking about, right? And I mean, if we talk about, for example, like even going through this little planner thing that I have in front of my my hands here, which you can get it for daily tasks.com/planner,

Robert Plank 32:43 maybe. Yeah, so I'm looking and one thing is, uh, there's a diagram in here about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? And so Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs says that the most basic need is physiological, right? Shelter, then there's safety, then there's love and belonging, then there's a steam then there's self actualization. So I could try to draw that out, or I could hire an artist to do it, or I could just do a Google Image Search, grab an image, put on my blog, and then give a link back, give a URL back to the original blog post, to the other person's blog posts where I originally grabbed that image. So you can use Google image search to find relevant images or diagrams to explain what it is that you're explaining, but just make sure to to link back and to give credit from to where it is that you grab the information that you're reporting on. So use Google image search to find relevant images, and if you want to use them in your final, you know, blog post, book chapter, whatever, that's cool. But even just, even just see what comes up, even if you aren't going to use it. I mean, let me try. Let me do install WordPress in a Google image search, and I just see all these different screenshots of places in the you know, in the WordPress installation process, I'm seeing a screenshot where someone shows what web host to get. I'm seeing a bunch of stuff on how to install WordPress locally. I'm seeing some screenshots on how to install themes. So I'm already I'm seeing, like, older versions of WordPress, newer versions of WordPress. So I'm getting all kinds of ideas just by searching the thing I was stuck on in a Google image search number seven, along the lines of grabbing stuff, grab a YouTube video. So YouTube videos are meant to be and they are allowed to be embedded. It's just a fancy word of saying placed on your website. So if you're stuck for content, if you're stuck for the next 12 months worth of videos about let's see playing playing piano. I'm just gonna go to YouTube, I'm gonna search play piano, and then I get 5.3 million results. But I see this one thing called P. Piano genius, learn to play piano instantly. So I and it has 3.9 million views. I see one that says the basics of playing piano 14 point 9 million views. So what I can do, or what you could do, is you could grab the what's called the share link or the embed code. Place it on your WordPress blog, and that is allowed. That is what YouTube wants. That is what people who are submitting their content to YouTube want. They want their stuff to be passed around, shared around. Now, they don't want it to be downloaded and you to add your own watermark. None of that stuff, just place it on YouTube. On place the YouTube video on your web page as is. Now, if you want to make it your own, here's what you can do, one of two things. You could grab three different people's videos that somehow kind of work together. For example, I could grab a like a begin. You can grab like a beginner play piano video like maybe one that explains like music theory and notes. You can grab a video that shows like how to place your fingers, and then a video on how to play a really simple song. There you go. That makes for a really cool blog post, and you didn't have to write any of the content. I could grab a video on how to grab a domain name, a.com name. Another video on how to get web hosting, and then another video on how to install WordPress. Now I have a whole course this whole system without me having to do anything else. So that's one way of you where you just grab different YouTube videos. Now the other possibility for you is to place a YouTube video on your blog and then explain, either like, summarize it, or maybe explain why you agree with it, or why you disagree with it, or whatever else. And then there you go. Now you've kind of made it your own number eight break down pages into paragraphs and then into talking points, and then into how much time it'll take for you to finish that so called Writing Project. So make a product. I mentioned that that's our course on not only how to get a book published, but how to speak out a book in an hour. Now, how the heck do you speak out a book in an hour? Let me break out my pen and explain it to you. So basically, what we like to do in make a product, I'll just, I'll just give you, like the the overview here, what we like to do in our mega product course is we say you you want to have a book about WordPress, you want to have a book about playing piano. And what we have you do is you figure out 1010, topics, and we show you how to do that by spying on your competition a little bit. Narrow it down to seven, and then break each of those seven down into Guess what. Why? What? How to and then what if, so we say in basically our book chapter that we're about to speak out, we say, why is it important for you to learn musical notes? What are the musical notes? How do you understand the musical notes? And now, what if you understand that part of it? Now you can move on to I feel so bad. I was in band for so many years. The thing in music notation where you talk about, like, the duration of the notes you're playing, right? So then you can go from just notes to how to full on read music and stuff like that. So the point of all that is that any kind of information you deliver should be in that sequence. First, why is it important? What do you have to show me? Then the How to steps, and then, what if I do this? What are the possibilities? This way you capture the attention of all four types of brains, all four types of people, and it just makes it a it makes it really easy to follow, really understand, but also entertaining chapter of a book, which then transitions to the next one. The point of this is that you have your your 10 topics narrowed down to seven and then broken down into, why? What? How to what if? Well, we have you speak on each of those things for exactly two minutes. This gives you a chapter that you spoke out, that took you eight minutes to speak out. So you do this seven times. That gives you a 56 minutes manuscript, and that ends up being about 9000 or so words, or roughly 30 pages, which is long enough to have a Kindle and a Createspace book. So if I told you you have to write 30 pages about how to play piano, about how to play how to install WordPress, you're just thinking, that's that sucks. And what am I gonna do? I'm gonna write an intro page, and then I'm gonna write the history of piano, and then I'm gonna write what piano was not great. Three pages down, 27 pages to go. I really don't like that, that idea, that thinking. So instead of thinking of it in those terms, break it down the way I'm explaining it to you. You have your 10 topics narrow down to seven, break into WW, h, w, and then speak each of those little pieces out for two minutes. That gives you an eight minute spoken out chapter, a 56 minute total spoken out book. And then that gives you 9000 words or 30 pages. You're welcome the tools and mechanics there. Number five, Delegate transcription. Number six, Google Images. Search. Number seven, grab YouTube videos. And number eight, break down pages into paragraphs, the home stretch, the big section, mind hap hacks. Number nine, read a lot. The more you read, the better it is you're gonna write. Number 10, unplug distractions. Put away the iPhone and iPad, Facebook, Gmail, phone, all that stuff. Just get your things knocked out. Number 11 out of the 15, this one's my favorite. This is one of the the things I fall back on the most write your chapter and article titles as questions and your paragraphs as answers to questions, and then delete the questions later. For example, real quick. If I explain, if I have a chapter on how to install a WordPress plugin, I don't title it. How to install a WordPress plugin, I title it, how do I install a WordPress plugin? And then I could say, if I was, if I was out, letting my chapter for why, what? How to what if I could say, Why do I need to use WordPress plugins? Question mark. Then I could put a little space and say, What are WordPress plugins? Exactly next? How do I install a WordPress plugin? And now maybe you know as part of me explaining that I install a real WordPress plugin, like a SEO plugin or a caching plugin or a security plugin, and then we say, what if I've installed this first plugin? What now? And I can give them a list of maybe my other favorite, nine plugins to go and repeat the process and put those in. So now, those are questions on a page. Whether I'm writing the answer or I'm speaking out the answer. Questions must be answered. They must be answered specifically because someone asks you a specific thing, and then it is clear. Once you're done talking whether or not you have answered that question, it's very on or off, either you did answer it or you didn't. So then on top of this, I also like to use a tool I mentioned before called Camtasia Recorder. Record my screen, record myself doing this, and even if I'm really stuck, I'll open up Facebook Messenger or Skype, and I'll type out the question into Skype, and then I'll type out the first sentence answer to that in Skype or Facebook Messenger, and I'll type out the next sentence. And for some reason typing things in a chat box, because I guess we're used to just casually typing out tons and tons of stuff in chats to people that it doesn't feel like work anymore. Doesn't feel like we're just struggling to answer this stuff. We're just chatting with someone. We're just answering someone's question.

Robert Plank 42:29 Number 12, this is an easy one. Use a daily prompt. So on Robert plank.com/ 099, I'm gonna give you a link to a list of daily prompts. So let me see if I just google search daily prompt. Awesome. If you just search like, I guess daily writing prompts would probably be the best Google search. And you get tons and tons. You get 365, days of writing prompts, creative writing prompts, journaling prompts. Let me just click into one of these and give you an example of writing prompts here. So for example, one says, explore the room you're in as if you're seeing it for the first time. Pretend you know nothing. What do you see? Who is the person who lives there? Another one is, go to your favorite online news source. Pick an article with a headline that grabs you. Now write a short story based on the article. So if you're the kind of person where, if you can somehow, you know, work this into the blog post you need to get written, or if you just kind of want to be a person who writes more, or something like that, then maybe at the beginning of the day, you could knock out one of these writing prompts, and then that'll kind of get you in the in the writing mode, get that inertia going. And after finishing that, just boom, knock out whatever other writing you have to. Knock out number 13. Break up your monotonous routine. Go for a drive, walk, swim, run. I'm telling you so many times, whether it's programming, writing, I mean, pick whatever kind of frustrating task that's in front of me. Sometimes I'll be stuck for five hours straight. I can't get it, can't crack it, can't get it done. Take a walk around the block, and in five minutes I realized what it is I wanted to say or what it is I needed to do to solve whatever problem I was in some mornings I've, you know, one morning, I went out to the gym. I went for a quick swim at their swimming pool over there. I took my have my laptop in a trunk of my car. I took it over to a Panera Bread, got up, got a coffee, and just I'd never been to that Panera Bread before, maybe just once or twice, but I went in there and sat in there, didn't did the usual laptop at a coffee shop kind of thing, which I don't normally do. But one morning, I did it just because I wanted to get some writing taken care of. Number 14, combine the task you don't like to do with one you do like to do, so maybe write a quick blog post by the pool or write a quick blog post. And as you reward, you go out to the movies and and take a break for a while. And finally, number 15, set a fake meeting schedule on your calendar and use the time for yourself. Block out 40 minutes. Tomorrow, where you're just going to be recording your podcast or knocking out a blog post or something, and during that 40 minutes you don't have any other commitments. No one's you. Everyone around you knows not to distribute during that little block of time. You can use Google Calendar for that so that you don't have to tell them. It just shows up on their calendar, and there you go, set a fake meeting. So that way, you're taking your writing, you're taking your content creation, you're taking your online business seriously. So set small goals. Use an editorial calendar to avoid that broken chain of events. Use that writer's block to perform some research. Wake up an hour earlier, speak it out and delegate. Delegate transcription. Use Google image search, grab a YouTube video, break pages into paragraphs, into talking points, and then figure out how much time it'll take to knock out those little manageable chunks. Read a lot, unplug distractions, write your titles as questions. Use a daily writing prompt to get in writing mode. Break up your monotonous routine, combine a task you don't like to do with one you do like to do, and set a fake meeting schedule on your calendar and use the time for yourself. Let me rattle off some some little bonus content for you on ways to toughen up your writing. If you ever go back and you like edit stuff, like a transcript, especially, or something, and then you want us to be a better writer? Here's some quick things. Avoid saying ing too much, right? So if you're if you write a lot of stuff, and especially like tutorials, right? You might say, well, setting up WordPress, choosing a domain name, and you end up kind of almost in like wishy washy high school essay territory, right? By how, by using this ing too much. We don't want to have a thing that is we want to command a verb and action. So we say, set up WordPress, install WordPress, play piano. Do you understand the difference? Instead of saying, sending up WordPress, we say, set up WordPress. It's shorter, simpler, cruder, more direct language. Now, repetitions, this is, here's another thing where, especially in blog posts and things like that, isn't it, or even like making a web page, or like members area, sales, it, or whatever, isn't it tempting to say, well, like, for example, in in today's program, we talked about this thing called X Mirage, right? And I could say, well, click here to get x Mirage, and then click here to get Camtasia Studio. Stop, please stop saying click here in your writing, especially every two sentences, and since it kind of came up, don't use please every two sentences. I see people who, when they explain instructions and things, they say, well, please log into WordPress and please go to plugins and please click add new so do you see the problems here if these repetitive words? And I do it a lot too. I did it with words like and basically so especially when it comes to starting new sentences. But if you're one of these people that keeps using click here and please all the time, then please stop doing that. Words to stop using try or start, all right? Instead of saying try or start, how about do instead of saying, talking about a trick or a loophole or things like that. Talk about a secret instead of talking about working or learning. Instead of saying work or learn. See, there we go. There's me with the ing again. So instead of saying work or learn, use words like discover or uncover. So you can get a list of words like this by just Google searching power words. I think that's what will come up. There we go, 317 power words, 189 powerful words. So we go and we find one of these lists, and we have, we have lists such as Smash, panic fail, and there is deadly, amazing. So I would, I mean, we don't want to use like, you know, we're just to look smart, like the $10 words that everyone will have to look up. But think about that. Use them, these powerful, emotional words that don't put people to sleep. Like, I don't know about you, but if you tell me that I've got to learn something puts me to sleep, you tell me I will discover something, even though you said the same thing, discover is way more interesting than learning. Tone down these words like money back and refund and use words, especially in internet marketing or in software use, words like system, formula, roadmap, blueprint, machine, push button, secret weapon, magic bullet. Those are some of my favorite ones there. So anyway, lots of little things, and that's just, that's, I think that's what the name of the game is for me. Like when, when it comes to putting out content, blog posts, videos, podcasts, whatever. The more you do, the easier it gets there. I do believe there is a thing called a content muscle. The more you use it, the better you are. If you're at a practice, it's hard to get back. So why not put out a podcast episode every week, or a quick tutorial video every day, or a quick blog post every month? You owe it to yourself and your business. So. To keep staying strong with your content and to educate your buyers, or even just like remind them or give them helpful content that lead them back to buying, hopefully, your software, your book, or your course, where the whole system is laid out there, not just the bits and pieces. This has been the Robert Plank Show episode, 99 all about content creation. You can get all of our show notes at Robert plank.com/ 099, and you can rate and review us. Please give us a five star rating and review on iTunes at Robert plank.com forward slash iTunes, 99 episodes. Next one is the big 100 we'll see you next time on The Robert Plank show you.