Productive Content Creation: Top Down Or Bottom Up?

Productivity has become more important as small businesses need to write more content online.

Many business owners find themselves drowning in content creation. We don’t just write: we have to come up with ideas on a regular basis.

Like anyone else, I’m always keeping an eye out for ways to be more productive. One suggestion that keeps coming up is, “Start with a big idea and break it up into pieces.”

For instance, I may have a concept of branding for storytelling mistakes. I’d start with an overview — maybe 7 common mistakes. Then you’d see an article on each of the mistakes. So far we’re up to 8 articles.

We could go even further, with a couple of stories to illustrate each mistake. 22 articles!

And so on.

That’s an excellent approach and many people use it successfully. If it’s new to you, definitely give it a try!

My problem is, I find myself staring at the blank page, trying to come up with ideas. Writing up the ideas feels like filling an order…a chore.

So over time, I’ve evolved the bottom-up strategy. I write articles on specific topics that seem interesting and timely. I particularly like writing articles that are generated by a question from a subscriber or a point…