Have you ever felt overwhelmed creating content, feeling the need to create this “diamond in the rough” post with unique words to inspire and go viral? Not to mention the stress to continually churn out content across all platforms – email, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, newsletters and more. Whew–it can be exhausting!
In this course, Jess Ekstrom, founder of Bright Pages and Headbands of Hope, helps break down creating content into a stress-free process for anyone to follow. She points out that the most sharable and valuable content comes right from everyday experiences. “Your content doesn’t have to be groundbreaking in order to be valuable, in fact, it’s better sometimes if it’s just relatable.”
Here’s Jess with 3 ways you can create content out of everyday life experiences:
MOMENT TO MEANING
Take the small moments in your everyday life and extract lessons from them to teach others. It’s not about matching other people’s experiences, it’s about matching the way that they feel about certain experiences.
For example, take a blog post about rock climbing. For the climb to happen, the climber must have trust in a partner to belay for them. Not everyone has rock climbed, but it becomes relatable when viewed as a story in building trust. That’s the meaning of the moment that can be applied to others’ lives. Trusting a business partner or a life partner. These are moments everyone can relate to.
Another example, I was in the drive-thru line at Starbucks. When I finally got to the counter, I found out the person in front of me paid for my coffee. I would never have the chance to thank them. The moment: someone in line paid for my coffee. The meaning: maybe acts of kindness don’t have to be recognized in order to be good – they can just be good.
What are some everyday moments in your life? How can you pull the meaning out of them, even the small ones?
THE SANDWICH METHOD
If you’ve been following me on any other platform, you know I love a good food analogy. When we have moment to meaning, we have all the ingredients needed for the content sandwich. How can we package and deliver these lessons and stories that we’re pulling out of our everyday life?
That first slice of bread is the lesson – this is the teaser to inform the audience about what they’re going to learn.
Stuffing that goes in the sandwich – this will be the story you learned from that you’re going to share.
Final piece of bread on top is reiterating that lesson – rephrased maybe as a one-liner or a hard-hitting takeaway. What do you want your audience to remember and learn?
Use these sandwiches for any created content, i.e., caption, email, blog. A teaser for attention, a story for connection, and a hard hitting point to hit home the lesson and make for an easily digestible sandwich.
SHOW UP
Everyday, hit the keyboard or notepad and create content. No matter what it is, just start writing. Sometimes, even when we think that we have nothing to say, we just put our fingers to the keyboard and just start going.
When writing, ‘Chasing the Brightside,’ I would often have nothing to say, feeling like I should give up. Breaking the seal of fear, I would ask myself, “What is the most honest thing I can say right now?” That’s when the words would start flowing. After finishing my first book, I created Bright Pages to give writers that initial spark to create content through daily prompts or prompt pathways.
The most important thing to start creating content from everyday life experiences is to keep showing up. Open that computer and start writing.
RECAP
Creating content out of everyday life experiences.
Extract the meaning from the moment. What are some of those moments in your life that you can pull the meaning out of and teach it to others?
Make it into a sandwich. That’s how we package it up, write it, and deliver it to our people. We have the lesson (bottom bread), we have the story (meat/veggies in the middle), and we hit them with the lesson again (top bread) – serving up a nice sandwich.
Keep showing up at the computer, or journal. Continue creating content.
People aren’t looking to get content from perfect people, they want to learn from people they can identify with. Some of the best performing posts or newsletters I have shared weren’t because I had some groundbreaking idea. It was because I shared something relatable.
When you’re creating content, you don’t have to change yourself; you just have to share yourself. If anything, create content for your newsletter and all of that because it’s good for your soul. Check-in with yourself and keep making sure that you’re extracting meaning out of moments of your life because content is about using your story to help people in their story.
I can’t wait to read what you write!
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