Systems that Prime Your Content for Inbound Marketing Success:

Content Marketing can be a challenge. If you allow it, it can become a massive time sink that steals your attention away from other important tasks. But with a few simple systems in place for planning, developing and creating your content, it doesn't have to.

1. Daily Journaling

Think of your content creation process like a mining operation. The first thing you have to do is find and uncover the raw material. Daily journaling is one of the most effective ways of doing this.

Carving out 15-30 minutes a day to simply write programs your mind to begin paying attention to possible topics to write about. Your daily journaling should be uncensored and open to anything. If you have nothing to write about, start by writing "I have nothing to write about... what am I going to write about today? What could I possibly write about?"

Alternatively, you can start by making a list of words related to the topics your content plan says you should write about. Then pick one of those words and write about things you recently read or learned that relates to that word. Or visit some site like Wikipedia’s "today in history" or Flickr for a random picture, and let that prompt your writing. Write as fast as possible, non-stop, for 15 or 30 minutes, in a stream-of-consciousness fashion.

Remember, the goal here is not to complete (or even begin) a finished piece. Hell, no one is even going to see it. You are just mining your subconscious for raw materials... the seeds of ideas that might lead to content.

2. Create your Sandbox

Believe it or not, it is actually easier to create when you have constraints than it is in a vacuum. When you set limits, you narrow the choices among tools your brain has to solve the problem. This gives those creative muscles more specific things to focus on, using this subset of tools.

In this case, the constraints should be (a) The topics you discovered from your Content Planning process and (b) the customer avatars you have built to help identify your target audience. These two should inform the voice that develops in putting your ideas out into the world in a way that helps ensure that the people you want to engage will find it.

3. Have a stable of writing formulae to draw upon.

There are numerous ways to approach delivering an idea to an audience. The one we all learned in grade school-- the five-point-essay-- is a classic: indroduce your point, provide three supporting arguments, and wrap it up with a conclusion. Or, to put it another way: "tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em." This is a classic format that is still effective.

Another classic is the journalist’s "pyramid," developed in a world where (a) most people might not make it past the headline and lead paragraph and (b) due to space constraints, it's likely that parts of your story will be cut.

The headline has to catch their attention. The lead paragraph must deliver all of the most important information quickly and directly: Who, What, Where , When, Why and How. The subsequent paragprahs deliver more detail and extraneous information for those who are interested.

Then there's what I call the "Hook, Line and Sinker" method. The Hook is your headline and opening paragraph: it lets the reader know exactly why they should read what's to follow. The "line" is a compelling thread of information that delivers on the promise made in the "hook." The sinker is a series of action steps that will allow the reader to take advantage of the information you just delivered. (NOTE: this should be an action that benefits the reader, not necessarily an action that benefits you.) This is a great format that sets your content up for audience engagement right from the start.

Or, if you want to go old school, Plato liked to write his ideas out in the form of dialogues between two characters. An intriguing benefit of this is that one of the characters can become an avatar for the reader, asking the questions and posing the arguments that the reader himself (or herself) might be posing as they encounter your ideas.

There are numerous forms your approach might take. These are just a few. But they help give you an instant structure that might make the fleshing out of your subject matter a little easier.

4. Pillar, Filler & Satellites

This is a content strategy that is designed to facilitate both SEO and Social content creation.

Basically, you start with a Blog... your site that is the central hub of your online presence. For your blog, 15-25% of your content is Pillar content: that is, long-form and information-dense. 75-85% is Filler: still relevant and useful, but shorter, snappier; lighter fare for your content consumer. It might relate to your most recent Pillar piece, tease the upcoming one, or be completely unrelated.

Satellite content is all of the social content that is pulled from the bulk of your Pillar and Filler content. Each Pillar should be able to produce multiple cards, infographics, quotes and memes. For Filler, you should still be able to distill two or three main points to create social posts.

This means your writing for Pillar content is pulling heavy duty, as it also ends up informing (if not simply creating) your social content. So one well written piece can product social content for days, maybe weeks.

5. Engagement

If Journaling is mining the raw material, the last three were refining it into something precious that is of direct value to others. Engagement with your audience becomes the next step which informs the future direction of your work. When something generates interaction with the audience, talk with them and see what it was that resonated with them. Then use that information to help you with the creation of future content.

With this strategy and these tools, you should be able to start creating a robust, healthy, effective content marketing program designed to build an audience that you can then convert into customers.