[00:00:00] Michelle J Raymond: Imagine this, you had grand plans to get everybody in your team to start posting content on LinkedIn. And they did, they got started and everything was going great until somebody said, I can't think of what to post. And then the next person said, I've got nothing to post. And then slowly, but surely all of a sudden that great work comes undone. Or there were people in the business that just never got started. This is so common that I want to dedicate today's episode to easy places that you can find LinkedIn content inspiration.

[00:00:37] Michelle J Raymond: G'Day everyone. It's Michelle J Raymond. And I think this is a really important conversation that we're having today. And it's all about what to do when you get stuck for ideas. When you stare at the screen and can't come up with anything to post and it was okay for the first day, but then day one turned into day two and day three and day four. And now all of a sudden you look back and it's been a few weeks since you posted, or maybe members of your team haven't posted for a while. And you know you should, you know you want to, but your mind is just going blank. And people say, Michelle posting content's easy. If you can write English, if you can write a sentence, you can write content. And I just wish that it was as simple as that. And we all know that it's not.

[00:01:44] Michelle J Raymond: Today we're going to talk about my five favorite places that I like to look for content inspiration when I'm drawing a blank.

[00:01:58] Michelle J Raymond: This is going to be practical solutions because I appreciate more than most that sometimes it is fears that stop people. It is procrastination. It is perfection. You know, we wrote about this in The LinkedIn Branding Book. If you haven't grabbed a copy yet, grab a copy because the Brand Squared System that we wrote in that is all about starting with mindset. So we're going to park that for today's episode. As I said, this is going to be completely practical, five places that you can look. Starting with how I got started posting content on LinkedIn around 10 years, the places where I used to look for content to the places that I look and draw inspiration from today as a creator, all the way down the track. And yes, I am also prone to getting bouts of, I cannot think of anything to post, even though on other days, my brain is just exploding with ideas.

[00:02:53] Michelle J Raymond: I'd love to hear from you. Are you going through one of those droughts where you can't create content, where you've got no ideas in your brain? You think think that there's nothing you could possibly post about. If that sounds like you, let me know in the comments or drop me a message over on LinkedIn and let me know what's been going on for you.

[00:03:12] Michelle J Raymond: Before we go to the five places that you can get content inspiration from, here's a quick word from our sponsors.

[00:03:18] Michelle J Raymond: Listeners, if you haven't checked out Metricool yet, I absolutely encourage you to do that. It is something that within my own business, we've been able to scale the amount of content that we're getting done every week. And it's also a great place to store content ideas.

[00:04:54] Michelle J Raymond: Now let's talk about the five places and the very first type of content that I created was all about the products that I used to sell. So rewind the clock back when I first started selling on LinkedIn, almost 10 years ago, I was selling raw materials and ingredients that go into beauty products. I've shared about that before. Yup. Those things that you can't pronounce on the back of your shampoo bottle, those kind of products is what I was selling. And I was using LinkedIn just as a way to connect me and those products to my clients out there in a different way, instead of going and knocking on their doors.

[00:05:30] Michelle J Raymond: So think about what are your products and services. Maybe it's been a while since you actually told people what you do, which is often the case, because we don't want to get salesy. We don't want to be spammy, all these kinds of things. And so we stopped talking about the things that we love doing.

[00:05:48] Michelle J Raymond: Remember that the services that we offer, the products that we have, they are designed to solve problems out in the world, and that is why our customers buy from us. So to not talk about them is absolutely crazy. So no matter how many products you've got, I want you to think about a quick way, talk about the product maybe you can talk about a client win. Look in your testimonials. They're often a great way to talk about the product if some of you feel uncomfortable about being full on salesy and just want to do it softly, then testimonials are an absolutely great way to do this.

[00:06:23] Michelle J Raymond: Let's move on to number two. The second place that is easy to find content inspiration is your customer frequently asked questions. They are the questions that come up time after time that you could create a post that would educate people in your audience to answer these types of questions.

[00:06:48] Michelle J Raymond: Now, if you're not directly getting them yourself, maybe there's somebody in your customer service team or a colleague that you can get together and brainstorm some of these ideas. Creating content around that often solves some questions in the minds of your customers that are potentially considering your products and services.

[00:07:07] Michelle J Raymond: So the main advantage of frequently asked questions and posting content around that is it gives your customers an opportunity to learn. So share generously with your knowledge. Don't keep everything to yourself.

[00:07:19] Michelle J Raymond: And that's often what I find happens with businesses is that we automatically assume that everybody out there already knows everything about our business, that every question has been answered, that they know everything about our products and services.

[00:07:33] Michelle J Raymond: And the simple fact of the matter is they don't. You've just forgotten what it was like when you first started. Go back to day one. Remember when you walked into that business and you had no idea what was going on, what any of the names of the products were, what they did, what the features and benefits were.

[00:07:52] Michelle J Raymond: Maybe how long does it take to get those products? All of these kind of questions can be answered. This is another great way to create content. Why? Because they are frequently asked questions so you're always going to get a reminder from the people that you're speaking with about the topics that are important to them. So frequently asked questions is number two.

[00:08:19] Michelle J Raymond: Number three. The greatest place, the most obvious place for inspiration is when you're spending time scrolling your phone and reading articles that you find interesting, that are related back to your work and what you do, then why not share that with your audience? So grab the link. Go and post it in LinkedIn and then add your thoughts.

[00:08:41] Michelle J Raymond: Why did you find it interesting? Do you agree with it? Do you disagree? Is it a new trend that you've spotted? Is it something that you absolutely think is false and you have something that you want to share about it? There are so many different ways that we can use this kind of information.

[00:08:58] Michelle J Raymond: When I first started in the beauty industry, I would look for new products and trends that were going on globally and come back and share that with my local Australian audience. That is literally how I got started creating content. I don't want people to get hung up on, Oh, if we have links, this happens and LinkedIn doesn't like it.

[00:09:16] Michelle J Raymond: We are trying to get you back on track and find that creation inspiration. And creation should always be about who's your ideal audience and how can we put something out there that is in service of them, that brings them a step closer to buying our products or services.

[00:09:33] Michelle J Raymond: So scrolling your phone, you're already doing it anyway. So just keep an idea. You can bookmark it. You can email it to yourself like I do, so many different ways these days that we can share all of those links. So whatever your system is, make sure that you keep it somewhere so that you can use it when you're drawing on a blank. As you're listening to this podcast, you might be saying, Michelle, I've got stacks of ideas and that's great, but that may not always be the case. So store these somewhere for those rainy days, so to speak. So that is the third way.

[00:10:07] Michelle J Raymond: Possibly one of my favorite ways for new people when they're getting started, because you're not relying as heavily on the content creation on the writing piece. Remember not all of your employees ever signed up to be content creators as such. They haven't been trained in copywriting. They probably don't even like it that much. So by sharing somebody else's writing and just adding on a few sentences, that's their thoughts it can really be a game changer.

[00:10:35] Michelle J Raymond: Places for content inspiration number four, not every piece of content needs to be newly created. I think there's a misconception on LinkedIn that every piece of content that you put out there has to be another original created from scratch. And this can get quite overwhelming, especially for employees where this is something that they do on the side while they've got a proper full time job, and I'm sure some of you can relate to that.

[00:11:24] Michelle J Raymond: If you have been creating content, and this is just a dry spell where someone's like, I've run out of ideas, go back to what I call your Greatest Hits Library and find a post that really did well, or was something that that topic is always top of mind in your industry and bring it back and give that greatest hits another play. You could tweak the words. You could use it as it is. You could change up the image. There's so many easy ways that you can repurpose your content that you've already created. And I'm a huge fan of this again, it saves time, but also serves as inspiration. So there's a double win for me there.

[00:12:06] Michelle J Raymond: Now, when we're looking for the greatest hits, that could be a post, or it could also be one of the company blogs that's performed really well, that you could ask someone to take small chunks out of that, bite size clips, bite size pieces.

[00:12:19] Michelle J Raymond: Other cool places that you can repurpose your greatest hits can also come from the company page onto personal or personal onto company page. Don't forget you're working as a team. It's the power of two. This is something that I don't think businesses do enough. It's almost like we're trying to create all this content for the company page and then the employees are trying to do it all by themselves. And the moment that you all sit down together and brainstorm some ideas and borrow inspiration from each other.

[00:12:48] Michelle J Raymond: I know the team at Dreamdata do this all the time. If someone has a really great format or a kind of post that worked really well, then their colleagues take inspiration from that. And in some cases they will repost the post and by that, I mean, copy and paste it as their own down the track. Why don't they care? Because they're working as a team to try and achieve the same goal. And this is really, really important.

[00:13:14] Michelle J Raymond: And we're about to get into the fifth place, probably my favorite place to look for content inspiration, because people content is everywhere.

[00:13:31] Michelle J Raymond: It is something that in our personal lives, we are so good at capturing these moments, but we think for some reason, when it comes to LinkedIn and it comes to our work and it comes to growing our business, that things need to happen differently.

[00:13:48] Michelle J Raymond: We forget that we're the same people outside of work as at work. And what is this magical place that we can look? It's called everyday life. It is called grab your phone and take photos of things that are happening around you.

[00:14:04] Michelle J Raymond: For you working day after day, maybe year after year in your business it feels monotonous and boring, and you might wonder why would anybody want to know what we're doing day to day? Well, there's so many great ways, behind the scenes photos. So taking photos of maybe your factory. Maybe it's your manufacturing process. Maybe it's your staff celebrating milestones. Maybe it is a new starter. There are so many different ways that you can create content around the every day that's going on in your office.

[00:14:36] Michelle J Raymond: So for me, taking photos of things around me and then writing a post, that's a story related back to that photo makes it so much easier. One of the greatest examples that I can share with you, if you are wondering how this might work is my speaker diary series. And if you haven't seen that over on LinkedIn, make sure you come across, reach out, connect with me and have a look and you'll see on my profile posts that when I went to Denmark, I shared all the behind scenes photos that had me in different stages of travel, adventuring out, at the conference. And so it felt like people were coming along on a journey with me, and that was such popular content. Like it outperforms any of my other everyday content. Why? Because it's not the usual for me. And it's not the usual for my audience.

[00:15:27] Michelle J Raymond: The behind the scenes photos generates curiosity. People want to know how do you bring everything to life? So a day in the life of someone in your business is interesting to other people. And got to remember quite often when you know, your customers are dealing with your business we don't often do things face to face, especially if you're, working across the country, across the globe. And often it's just like an email address or maybe a photo. So when you bring these people to life and people get a bit of insight into who is this person? Maybe all of a sudden they're like, Oh, is that what they look like? Is that what they sound like if they're on a video? And so it's really intriguing and interesting. And of course it's all around you all day, every day. The main thing here that I find is that most people cut off these ideas and they think that other people will find them boring.

[00:16:23] Michelle J Raymond: So this is your permission slip to remind yourself behind the scenes content is not boring. Repeat it after me behind the scenes content is not boring.

[00:16:34] Michelle J Raymond: My actionable tip today is all about content planning.

[00:17:04] Michelle J Raymond: It is something that this year I'm trying. Thankfully, I've got Lil in the background helping me, but content planning is where you can write your ideas down, store them somewhere and have an idea around what you're posting what days. I find that when I have this, it is far easier for me to write a post on a topic that's already planned than sitting in front of the screen and trying to come up with an idea, trying to come up with a post, trying to figure out what topic I should do, which sub topic, and then all of a sudden I start to go into the spiral. It all gets too hard.

[00:17:43] Michelle J Raymond: For those of you who are procrastinators like me and like to sit in front of a screen, try and come up with an idea. Get distracted and think, Oh, I'll just walk to the fridge and grab a snack. Those kinds of things are avoided when we've got our plan.

[00:17:57] Michelle J Raymond: And content planning is something that is really for the amount of time that you invest in writing down those notes at the beginning of the month. And you can reuse that every month. It might be just little prompts. I'm going to talk about this, or I'm going to talk about that. Your main topics, your core topics. Then when you sit down, okay, topic one, that is what I need to talk about today. It is going to be so much easier, so much faster and get you in the zone.

[00:18:28] Michelle J Raymond: If you find yourself going from, I'm stuck and can't write anything and by writing a plan and having a content prompt, gets you inspired to start writing and you're on a roll keep going, use a tool like Metricool to schedule your posts so that you can write when you're in the zone and post when your clients are most available. I find I always write best on the weekends. I don't know why, but it's just the way that it is. And I plan it out for my clients during the week.

[00:18:58] Michelle J Raymond: So planning your content and scheduling content can really be the antidote for being stuck for ideas. So if you haven't tried that yet, give it a go. And if it starts to work for you, I'd love to hear from you. Send me a message over on LinkedIn, drop me a comment in the notes, but it really is a game changer.

[00:19:17] So happy creating and until next week, cheers.