We do get some great ideas and eventually we get to them. Long ago Chuck sent a great idea to Mat and sadly it has just taken us awhile to get to it.

Hopefully this episode and write up answer Chuck’s question (if a year or two late!).

Start With Outlines

It sounds simple but so many just jump to trying to write everything with no clear direction or goal. When you go on a trip do you likely think about these things:

• Goal of the Trip
• Trip Budget
• Who is all going on the trip
• Possible Destinations
• Mode of Travel (flying, driving, boat, walking)
• How Long is the Trip?

Seems simple and thought out right? So why not do the same with content?

• What is main topic?
• Who is this for?
• What is the goal of the content?
• How long is the content going to be or need to be? Does it even matter?
• What are the sub topics?
• What questions should be answered?
• What assets and material is already created that can be leveraged?
• What assets and other content can we link too?

Reuse Internal Assets

Mat gives the example of how he approached writing Podcasting Beginners Guide: How and Why You Should Start Podcasting with an outline and past assets.

• Reuse presentations
• Use internal documents
• Use sales or marketing collateral
• Reuse video and audio content if you have any

The goal is to NOT reinvent the wheel every single time if you don’t have too.

Use the Internet. Find Questions People Ask.

Do your research to understand what questions people have that relate to your topic. Do your due diligence to really understand what people want to know about the topic you are going to write about.

• Answer the Public
• SEMRush
• Quora
• Yahoo Answers (have fun as this site can get interesting)
• Search Bing/Google for keywords and see what People Also Ask or related searches appear.
• Look at your site search data if covering a service/product page.
• Look at other pieces of content and topics you have covered for sub topics, questions and places to link too.
• Talk to your sales and customer service teams. What questions do people ask them?

Keyword Research

Now take all of this and dig into keyword research. Here are some past episodes that dig into Keyword Research.

• Unique Ways to Do Keyword Research
• Competitive Research Beyond Just Keywords
• Keyword Tools for Trends and Shopping

Content Formatting

When you start writing think about what formatting might be needed. Is this a content heavy piece? Is this mostly visual with just short bits that support or is this something people are going to scan so you need bullet points.

Content’s Purpose

We can cover this but really Orbit Media’s Website Content Template is super detailed and great. If you have never looked at it do check it out.

Think about social sharing, what users want, what the goal of the content is, who you are targeting, and just really think through WHY you are creating this content.

Full Transcription

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00 ] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt scintilla and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us on another one of these businesses of digital podcast episodes. And we got Dave over there and how you doing my friend?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:19 ] I am going good, sir.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:21 ] So, um, I’m almost, uh, it’s almost embarrassing.

I don’t know if embarrassing is the right word or, or funny. Or whatever word you want to use, but, uh, the topic today was something that, uh, you know, it was a idea given to us, uh, given to me specifically by Chuck Reynolds, over a wait for it year and a half ago.

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:43 ] Probably maybe longer. Maybe not quite

Matt Siltala: [00:00:46 ] as long.

Yeah. Let’s just go with a year

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:49 ] and a half. Let’s just say a year and a half. Cause it’s probably like two and a half. I don’t know.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:53 ] Uh, it was interesting because he was tweeting about something and, uh, He had just mentioned to me, he said, [00:01:00 ] um, question, do you have an accent blog, post, or a document on how to explain content writers, how to rewrite for organic search, like basic keyword research and basic, you know, how to write with groupings and stuff like that.

And, and so I liked how you kind of took that and, and converted it into a one Oh one guide to writing blog posts, Dave. And so I think that’s really what this went for a while. Yeah. We haven’t sat in on this one for a while, but as we do, I think it’s a good one. And what’s funny is, you know, we have a lot of people asking us all the time about this kind of stuff.

And so I think it’s very relevant. I think it’s good to,

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:40 ] well, I just did a training and I shared Matt with Matt. You know, I shared him one of the ducks I’ve done and it’s, it walks writers through a CEO one-on-one and then it goes into. Like the ideation, the validation, and then, you know, actually writing

Matt Siltala: [00:01:57 ] it.

Yeah. And so [00:02:00 ] I, you know, I’ll, I’ll just kind of kick things off and then you can jump in where, where you feel Dave or cut me off. But like, I think you had a good idea to talk about, you know, recently you and I did a how to guide it. It was basically this how to guide on a. Uh, SEMrush on how to, uh, you know, podcast or how to get a, how to start a podcast, basically like a guide to starting a podcast.

And, uh, cause that’s something, obviously we’re asked all the time. And so SEMrush reached out to us and asked if we would put something together. And, um, well, I, you know, they originally just talked to me and I was like, you know, I want to get Dave involved in this. And I think the both of us can put something pretty good together.

And so I started off. And I think this is where every good blog posts, article, whatever you want to call it. Uh, you know, I th I think this is where everybody should start off, but I basically just, I created a, a, a, a document, a Google doc, and I just started with an outline [00:03:00 ] and I started saying, okay, here are the major points that I think people should, um, you know, be, be paying attention.

And what was interesting. I jumped into those. Those points first. And then I kind of let where the, where the bullet points led me to start thinking about things like the title and the headline and things like that, that I wanted to use, uh, for that specific, uh, uh, post. But, um, it was really good to get in there and, and, uh, just start outlining everything and then just start putting in all of the content within those major bullet points.

Cause I remember many years ago, um, when I actually thought that I might have time to, to write a book. I met with a guy that’s published several. And one of the things that he told me, um, how he, you know, the best place, you know, if you’re having a hard time writing a book, starting a book or whatever was, he said, just start with an outline.

And so that’s what I did with this. And that’s how I’ve been. That’s kind of the approach that I’ve taken Dave, uh, with all this for, for, for many years now. W [00:04:00 ] w w again, whether it’s a blog post, um, content on the site, whatever it might be, I just kind of start with that outline. And then fill in from there and go from there.

And so, uh, and then obviously, you know, you, you, you, you add in the things like, okay, well, I w I want, you know, images here. I want, uh, you know, am I going to link to something, their video here or whatnot, but, and also

Dave Rohrer: [00:04:21 ] you use, you used collateral. We’d already created, so you’d already, or I created, um, a deck that we’d present.

I presented somewhere. And then you had taken that deck and reused it and added to it and done a bunch of stuff and expanded and changed stuff. And then we had presented, um, an hour long session together on like all sorts of stuff around podcasting. So we’d already created one deck and three iterations.

And then you use that. Okay. I think, cause you had already started the outline. You were like, what other collateral is there? And so if you’re writing a blog post, you know, or even a service page or any type of [00:05:00 ] content, you start with your art outline, but then look internally, you know, at what collateral, what stuff’s already been written, what has been produced?

Is there sales material? Is there, you know, FAQ, is there support stuff? Is there internal memos, internal anything? Um, or even like for us, it was just, you know, uh, uh, Three t