Every Monday morning, I face the same dilemma. What is relevant content to create this week? What should I create for my podcasts, for my blogs, for all the other things I have to do this week? I like to think of each day of the week as my theme days. Monday is marketing Monday. It’s the day I put together my content and content plan for the week. If we’re going to create great content, we have to think about being good consumers. Today I want to explore this concept: In order to be a FRESH content creator, you need to be a consumer first.
Complex Carbs
Let me explain. Before the COVID era, who knew that eating was so complex, right? Now, there’s been a big uptick in things like Grub Hub and Uber Eats, and they’re advertising like crazy. But here’s the thing, they can make the delivery charges add up to 25% or 50% more than what you would pay if you went to the restaurant. Instead, we tend to pick up the food ourselves. It does two things. Number one, it helps the restaurant earn more. But number two, the tips go to the wait staff. So if you decide to tip, at least it ends up in the restaurant’s hands.
Now the same thing has happened with groceries. Every time I went to the grocery store, I felt like I was taking my life into my hands. I remember the first time I went, I came back and basically de-sanitized everything, my gloves, my mask, the grocery bags, and the packages. It was like, “Oh my God, we’re going to die.” And then it got a little better as time went on, but you still wore a mask, it still was interacting with a bunch of people, and it didn’t feel safe.
Then my wife discovered Amazon Fresh. Guess what. We can get the same groceries delivered to our house in paper bags, and it only costs like an additional five to $10 to tip the people to do it. That, to me, seems like a good deal.
Taco Tuesday
Let’s talk tacos because today is Taco Tuesday. I don’t know about you, but I’ve gone to Taco Bell and you can get a decent taco for a dollar. Similar to that, when it comes to creating content, you can buy content inexpensively too, and it’s called PLR (private label rights) content. You can season it or adjust it as you see fit, and it makes it super easy. But it’s not your creativity, it’s not your content.
Another way to make your Taco Tuesday happen is to go to the grocery store and create your own tacos with fresh ingredients. But the problem here is it takes time, it takes prep. But when it’s all said and done, you end up with a much better value. Each taco costs less than a dollar apiece. And frankly, I think they taste better.
When most of us make a taco, it’s actually a combination of ingredients. You wouldn’t eat a taco one ingredient in the time. That means you’d put the flour tortilla down on one section of the plate, then the meat on another, then the lettuce on another, and then cheese and then salsa and you’d go from piece-to-piece-to-piece, right? No.
What you do is you take the shell, you put the meat in the shell, you put the lettuce on top because that adds the crunch and the texture. And then you put the cheese on which kind of softens the bite of the spices. And then maybe you put some salsa on to give it that final kick that you like. You can create tacos the way that you like to eat them.
Mixing Mindset
When it comes to creating our own content or let’s say you’re creating content for other people. What would you rather have? The Taco Bell that’s convenient and easy, or would you rather have the fresh? Yes, it definitely takes more time. But the way to embellish and create fresh content is to inject fresh ideas by being a consumer of other people’s content. One of the things to think about is where you can focus your time to listen or to learn from others about the topics that you’re talking about and inject that into your content.
Think about it. Most of the things that we produce and create are not 100% original. We’re taking other ideas and we’re synthesizing them, the way that you take all of those ingredients for your taco, and you synthesize it based on what you want to say, what you want to eat, or how you feel. Some people put more lettuce on, or more cheese, or more salsa. But the bottom line is it’s still the same ingredients whether you go to Taco Bell or whether you get it fresh, the difference is how you prepare it.
F.R.E.S.H.
Let’s look at another way that you can create fresh content. I was listening to Blinkist, exactly what I was talking about a minute ago, looking for ideas to talk about today. And up pops this book called Accidental Creative, it’s by Todd Henry. You can find it on Blinkist or just search it on Google. But he talks about ways that you can bolster your creativity by being fresh. And each one of those is a letter in an acronym.
- Focus – on your most critical work to reclaim your attention.
- Relationships – develop stimulating relationships that will lead to creative insights.
- Energy – efficiently manage your energy so that you’re always ready to engage.
- Stimuli – curate stimuli, like listening to this podcast. It helps you pursue creative possibilities.
- Hours – leverage your hours wisely and effectively to eliminate creativity drains.
What you’re doing is synthesizing all of those things into new ideas to be a fresh content creator. And that’s how I came across the idea of taking that fresh metaphor and adding in the tacos, the Grub Hub, and the delivery versus going to the grocery store. All of those things are synthesizing the way that we eat. Again, who knew that eating was such a complex task, right? But today it’s a little bit more complex.
Final Thoughts
Again, I look back at how I was able to be a consumer by listening to Blinkist, I was able to synthesize my own concepts and meld them together in a flavor that I hope that you will like. By taking the time out to listen to other people’s content, you can blend ingredients into a FRESH concept. By consuming other people’s content:
- I was able to be more productive.
- I learned something new and I was able to explore it and then share it with you.
- I channeled my inner creativity, thinking about how can I use the F.R.E.S.H acronym and bring together food and creativity.
- I blended all of those ingredients and put my own little spin. I built that taco the way that I wanted to share it or consume it.
- I deliver this content fresh to you.
So in order to be a fresh content creator, consider being a content consumer first.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about being a fresh content creator. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?
Read more: Google Loves Freshness
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Brian Basilico.
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