I want to remind you that the Early Bird Pricing for the Content Creation Camp will end on Sunday night so go Join Now!

The post #ContentCreationChallenge Day 5 — Repurposing and Reusing Your Content appeared first on Anchen le Roux.

Day 4 of the Content Creation Challenge and today we are going to create our amazing images!

The periscope didn’t work out but I’ve created a video for you.
I will also put a video demo in the facebook group showing you how to create your images in bulk.

The final step in creating content that is exciting and magnetic is the creation of beautiful images.

Either as stand-alone posts for Pinterest or Instagram, quotes for Facebook or complimentary to your blog posts.

Graphics that are consistent with your company’s established image increase your audience engagement by creating familiarity.

You need to decide on your branding colors and stick to it
Your images needs to be consistent with your branding across all platforms. The more attention you receive for this particular brand the more people will be drawn to you. Stay with your style of images and use consistent fonts. So that is another thing that you need to decide on which fonts to use. If possible buy a font that you love and use it across all platforms.

Always be sure to add your website address or logo to images and keep the placement uniform for all images.

This important to brand your images and so that they can be traced back to their source when posted on different platforms.

As Humans, we connect emotionally to images even more than video, audio or text. People make decisions and take action quicker when prompted by images, rather than having to read a lot of text.

You can get good quality stock photos online. There are a lot of different free and lower prized sites. For instance Dollarphoto club and Creative Market. Or alternatively if possible use your own photos.

I will also place a link in facebook to a list of all the best resources for inspiration, fonts and images.

Remember Pic Monkey and Canva are helpful sites to help you create great branded images, quote posts and images for blog posts through simple editing techniques.

I’ve placed a link to a great free training in the email and I really encourage you to have a look at that. It’s called Clever with Canva from an amazing lady called Nicholette von Reiche

Basically everything I’ve done and created for the challenge was encourage by this free training.

Like most things when it comes to content creation I encourage you to create images in bulk. It makes things a lot easier. – I’ve added a video to the facebook group to demo how I did it for the challenge and for theme days in my facebook group.

If you don’t have the time to create your own branded image you can go to a site like Fiverr and have someone edit the image for you. Alternatively have a look at graphic design contest sites like 99 design

Remember that images are really important to set the mood of your content.

You want to build engagement and encourage the sharing of your content by having great graphics.

If you’ve been enjoying the challenge so far I want to invite you to have a look at the content creation camp. It starts the 1st of April and if you go there now you can still get the early bird pricing. I can assure you that it will be way more valuable than the price charged.

This camp is very different from most trainings out there and it’s more of a workshop where you will be guided to plan out create and then schedule your content all for 12 weeks.

You can go to the thecontentcreationcamp.com to have a look at that. This will be the 4th time I’ll be running this camp but the added bonus this time around is that I’m going to give extra attention to not only creating the content for your social media platforms but also having a solid social media marketing plan in tact with having you profiles set up perfectly and having a plan to grow your audience and followers.

Tomorrow will be the last day of the challenge and we’ll talk all about re-purposing and re using out content for different platforms. I will also have something fun for you as a sort of bonus to the challenge but I will tell you all about that tomorrow.

The Content Creation Camp is starting April 1! Sign up now to get early bird pricing!

The post #ContentCreationChallenge Day 4 — Creating Beautiful Images appeared first on Anchen le Roux.

So the next thing we need to do is decide what types of posts we are going to write. I’ve included a link to a resource from the Digital Marketers lab with 212 different blog posts or ideas.

So have a look at that but it is my recommendation to choose a few that you will work with and maybe create your own templates around them. I will talk more about templates later on.

Here are my favorite types of posts to write:

• List Posts
• How To Posts or Steps posts
• FAQ or SAQ
• Ultimate Guide Post
• Review Post
• Product or other types of Tips
• Interview
• Series

Next you are going to revisit your why’s and goals for each post. Every time you sit down to write a blog post, you should be
asking yourself,
“Why am I writing this blog post?”

• What do you want your readers to take away from it?
• What do you want them to do once they’ve read it?
• What is your overall goal—to teach, to entertain,
to sell?

With this in mind you can decide on your message or your big idea for this post and then create your attention grabbing headline. You headline need to let your reader know through an explicit or implied promise what they will gain from reading your post.
Use numbers in your headline where appropriate.

From there you are going to create your outline You can investigate your topics further and create your outline from that or you can use one of my or your own templates to help you create content fast.

You don’t need to use all of the techniques. These are just a few different ideas to help you start with something. You can download templates for free or you can create your own by looking at your favorite blog posts and how it is structured.

Using templates can help with writers block and just get you going.

I have 3 templates that I’ve created. The FAQ Template, The Tips Template and the Steps Template. I also gave you 2 other ways of outlining your posts either the 10×3 Where you have 10 topics with 3 ideas under each one or WWHW Where you ask the questions to prompt the answers.

Another way is to write quickly!
Write a headline. You can change it later.
Write everything. Start writing down all the ideas that come to you, in no particular order with complete disregard for grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Use a word bank if you need to.
Write as it comes to you.

You can Set a timer for 5 minutes or 10 minutes and write as much as you can in that time.
You then go back and structure your ideas.

Creating Quality Blog posts- These are some pointers to write quality readable posts:

A first paragraph or intro that pulls the reader in – with a promise. In many cases the first paragraph will be used with a Read more in email or social media posts so think of adding some sort of cliffhanger

Visually appealing text Including:
• Short sentences and paragrahps
• The use of bullet points
• The use of subheadings
• Break it up with images if appropriate

Your posts should contain quality links and links to previous post but not too much. – don’t overdo it

End with a strong close

Tell a story, take a stand, educate or inspire or entertain in some form.

Reread or edit your posts

Edit out the unessential. You might have heard of the 60 seconds copy writing challenge and the idea behind is to write copy that will fit in or on a radio commercial. So iow the perfect pitch
Now you don’t have to do that for blog posts but keep the idea in mind – remove fluff Get to the point quickly And make sure that you stay on track – keep within the theme of your post

Although you need to mix up your adjectives and remove cases of the word really and I think and I believe etc. Keep the language simple and use language that everyone will understand when it comes to blogging there is no need to impress by using technical jargon

The Content Creation Camp is starting April 1! Sign up now to get early bird pricing!

The post #ContentCreationChallenge Day 3 — Creating Quality Content appeared first on Anchen le Roux.

You also save a lot of time creating content in bulk, we have all heard how much time we lose switching from task to task and unfortunately with something like posting and social media there are a lot of little different task that you need to do.

• These include the planning phase,
• Creating images
• Writing the post
• Posting or scheduling your post
• Then finally sharing these post on Social Media

You can understand that if you do some of these task in bulk, let’s say plan ahead for 12 weeks create images in bulk writing your post and then of course scheduling it in bulk it will save a lot of time!

If you plan it right you can get consistent income from your SM traffic to your opt-in pages and/or specific sales pages. Just use a combination of value adding and promotional posts aimed at the specific product you are promoting.
Another benefit of planning and scheduling ahead of time is that it opens up your calendar for life interaction and engagement with your audience. You can answer questions and engage on a personal level without having to worry about getting new content out.

There are three calendars or planners that you need in business. Your marketing calendar, Editorial Planner or Calendar and you Social Media Planner.

You marketing calendar guides your income generating activities, your editorial calendar drives your content and your social media planner has more to do with your overall social media strategy like getting quality followers etc. I will do all 3 planners in detail on the Content Creation Camp but for our content creation it’s important to first have our Marketing calendar in place and then from there move backwards to see when should call to Action posts be posted and when should we post value adding posts etc.

Are you planning to launch a program, product or book or maybe participating in a Giveaway event or Joint Venture launch? Work back from whenever that launch would be and decide when you would start your marketing Add that to your calendar Next up is holidays and special occasions mark that on your calendar and also work around that.

Your core message should be an integration between what your ideal client would like to hear about and what you like to talk about pertaining your business services.

Brainstorm topics around your core message Brainstorm the topics your readers really care about that your competition is ignoring. This make you stand out from your competitors.

The first step is to start making a list of your most important themes. That ties in with your core message and what’s coming up in you marketing calendar. One way to get topics that most people know about but sometimes forget to do – is to go to Amazon book and have a look in the look inside section. Remember you have your buyers on Amazon.

The next thing that you need to think about the categories This is mainly used for social media content although different types of blog posts also fall into these categories. I speak about them in my book and if you’ve been following me for a while you would’ve gotten the inforgraphic. Otherwise I’ve send it out in the email so go have a look.

The Categories are Education, Entertainment, Inspiration, Engagement and Promotional. And you should have a balanced spread with promotional content being less than 20% Go read about the different examples of posts on the infographic within your mail. Decide for each of the categories what you can write given your themes.

Next up you need to decide on the platforms – so ultimately you want an Integrated approach to reach the widest audience possible. With this you have one or two main platforms and you then share your content out to as many platforms as possible but you are only starting out. don’t try and do it all.

Choose 1 focus and 2 supporting platforms. Focus on platforms where your ideal client’s spend most of their time. If your audience are on Pinterest or Instagram you can really see a significant raise in traffic once you decide to focus on those platforms as well

The next step would be to decide on the amount of posts and again I would suggest that you build it up over time. It is really important to be consistent so rather aim for something that you can manage and build on it as you go along. You might start off with 2 posts a month in the beginning and work your way to once a week and later twice a week. Again I’ve created an infographic with the ideal amount of times

So have a look at that but remember that is the ultimate (or even max) consistency is still more important.

So now that you have all this planned out it is time to fill in your calendar. I’ve created 2 versions of calendars for you depending on the way you work.

Let me know if you’re interested in a video explaining better how to use these calendars!

If you haven’t yet – join us now for this challenge!

The post #ContentCreationChallenge Day 2 — Planning your editorial schedule with solid strategy and action appeared first on Anchen le Roux.

Start with your why…. Specifically why you are writing blog posts and social media in general.
It is important to decide what your overall aim for your content are or will be Are you trying to establish credibility or authority on a subject? Is your sole goal to attract leads or traffic to your website or to make a sale? Every piece of content should have an end goal.
Make sure that the content you create conveys that message. Posts you write will be very different if you try and teach people than it would be when you’re trying to sell.

Why is this important for Content Creation success?
Having your why in mind will help you with your strategy and keep you on target, it will also make content creation easier as you will have an idea of the message you want to bring to them.

The second thing you need to think about is your SMART Goals. These are the exact numbers you want. Remember to make your goals specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and timely. A good why is to use the following formula:
By [Day of the month, year] my [Marketing Type] will reach [Number of goal] every [Timeframe] that will [Impact on growth]

I then asked you to think about your goals for this challenge specifically. What do you want to get done by the end of the week…?

Then for every piece of content you sit down to write you should be
asking yourself, “Why am I writing this blog post?”
“What do you want your readers to take away from it?”
“What do you want them to do once they’ve read it?”
“What is your overall goal—to teach, to entertain,
to sell?” Even though we haven’t even planned our topics yet it will help us understand what messages we want to bring and what themes to investigate.

When setting your goals the other important thing we need to think about is our ideal client avatar. Even though we think we’ve done this over and over again. The biggest mistake new business owners and bloggers make is to talk to the wrong people! Be very specific and decide exactly who your ideal client should be.

Is your ideal customer and your ideal blog reader the same person?
In all likelihood, your ideal blog reader is at a different stage of the game than your ideal customer.

The person who is ready to buy is different from the person who needs to get to know you and your services better
So you need to create an Ideal Reader Profile

I invite you to share your answers with us! You can answer one or all of the questions. Use the ‪#‎ContentCreationChallenge‬ and also share the challenge with your friends or on other social media platforms. Letting people know that you are part of a challenge will peek their interest and comes Friday when you share your content you might already have people waiting for it!

If you haven’t yet – join us now for this challenge!

The post #ContentCreationChallenge Day 1 — Start with you goals appeared first on Anchen le Roux.

We all have our favorite tools that we use in our business. When it comes to planning, creating and scheduling Social Media or blog posts. I too have a few favorites. I don’t use all of them all the time, but depending on the type of posts I create, or the amount of posts I create in advanced or if I have something special that goes along with the post, I will use these tools in different ways.

Dollarphotclub

At Dollarphotoclub you can get good quality stock photos at a reasonable price. You pay $10 pm and then get 10 credits or 10 photos so it works out to $1 per photo. The quality of photos are great for blog and social media posts and they have a huge range to choose from. It’s very easy to get what you need by searching for your topic. I also like buying a series of photos if I’m doing something that needs more than one photo.

Canva

Makes it easy to create Blog post photos and images to use in social media. The pre-sized templates are easy to change.  I also use Cava to add text to photos like adding your headline and website address to a blog images. This ensure that your images will always stay connected to your site and post no matter where it ends up.  Images with headlines are more popular on Pinterest and better searched in Google Images.

PicMonkey is another great photo editing and imaging tool. You can create more advanced images and even work in different layers.

Fiverr

Although not strictly a tool. No Social media site list is complete without Fiverr. Here you can get an endless amount of content, images, infographics, transcripts or eBooks done that you can use in your posts or as an opt-in upgrade.  Having an upgrade to a pdf or infographic available in your posts is a great list building tool and really help you segment your list into different niches.

Co-Schedule

This tool probably need a post all by itself. This is by far my favorite tool to plan, create and schedule both blog and Social media posts.  It comes with a calendar view that makes it easy to plan out your editorial content. You can create you content all inside the tool and even share creation tasks with a team. You then schedule your blog posts and can decide if it should go out to your social media platforms as well. You can also schedule Social Media posts by itself and schedule it to go out every week, month etc.

Another legendary automated scheduling tool is Meet Edgar. My only problem with this tool is that it is a bit expensive to just play around with.  Here you create your social media posts into different categories or buckets. You then just decide when buckets should be posted and Meet Edgar randomly takes from the bucket. It’s a great way to re-use content and a way to always have content on hand.

ITTT

ITTT is an automation tool and you can use it for free to do all sorts of automations. When it comes to social media you can use it to automatically post blog post to social media platforms and also to post from one platform to another one.  You can setup any recipe you want to and customize as needed.

REvive old post plugin

This plugin resides on your blog site and does what the name says it takes all your old posts and bring them back to live by randomly sharing them to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. This solves both the problem of having old posts that never gets read even though they might be great content and also coming up with good quality content for social media on a daily basis.

Popup ally

I’ve included this plugin in this list as this is an excellent free plugin to be used with blog posts for opt-in upgrades to receive an infographic or pdf version of your post. You can have a beautifully designed opt-in box at the bottom of your post, encouraging the reader to opt-in for more information or a value added document

Pictochart

Is an online tool that can be used to create infographics and other graphics for social media. Infographics are very popular to be shared on social media platforms and people opt-in to get a nice infographic that summarize a post especially if it is a valuable post. There’s a free version but it’s a bit limited, it’s more valuable to get the paid one.

Hope you’ve found my Top 10 list valuable.  This is of course by now means exhaustive and I am sure you also have you favorites. So please share with us what tools you like to use!

The post Top 10 Tools and Sites for Blog and Social Media Posts appeared first on Anchen le Roux.