How To Swap Your Blank Screen For A Content Bank Overflowing With Ideas

Ev Chapman
June 19, 2023

Even after 10+ years as a content marketer, I still hate that moment at the start of the week when I’m staring down the barrel of a blank screen, wondering what to post.

So I swapped a blank screen for a 🏦 Content Bank full of ideas.

I spend my week filling up my content bank with ideas so instead of walking into a planning session feeling bankrupt & broke. I just open up my content bank & make withdrawals.

It’s lots of little easy moves, so I don’t have to make one big, hard move.

And we’re all content creators. We all know how to write an idea down when we have it. But can you do that on tap, every single day, without running out?

That takes more than just waiting for inspiration to strike. That takes intentionally putting yourself in the flow of ideas.

So here are three different ways I expose myself to that constant flow of ideas so I can fill up my bank.

Spark Writing ⚡️

As creators it can feel like we’re under constant pressure to create ‘content’ & so we rarely write unless it is to produce something. This is the WORST way to have free-flowing ideas.

My Spark Writing habit each morning allows me to write & explore ideas without the pressure of needing it to be anything.

I sit down, I pull out a note, I explore & write about it.

And here’s the funny thing about this method: The more I explore my ideas enthusiastically WITHOUT the pressure of content. The more ideas for content flow.

And so I add any ideas that come up during those sessions to the bank.

Remix Writing 🔄

👉 Spark writing is a bottom-up approach — where ideas & content bubble up.

👉 Remix writing is a top-down approach. Where you take one long-form piece of content and break it down into short-form content ideas.

Neither is right or wrong. We need both if we want to keep our content bank full.

So once a week I take my newsletter content & mine it for ideas.

This isn’t random ‘repurposing.’ I’m intentional & specific about what I need to extract. Specifically, I want to extract:

👉 6x Tweets

👉 3x Long Form Tweet Ideas

👉 3x Short-Form Video Ideas

These 12 pieces of content alone give me all the content I need for the upcoming week.

This combined with the content that has bubbled up from spark writing means my content bank is OVERFLOWING by this point.

But then I take it one step further….

Signal Gathering 📡

As digital writers we have the unfair advantage of receiving almost instant feedback from our audience on the content that resonates the most.

Your best tweets deserve more airtime.

So I use a concept I came up with called the Endless Tweet Generator method to turn my best tweets into more content.

***It’s so simple, it’s stupid. But it works:***👉 Take your top 5 performing tweets from the previous week and create 3x new variations.

💥 And BOOM you just added 15+ more ideas to the content bank!

You don’t need to start from scratch each week staring at a blank screen when you sit down to plan your content.

Focus on some key activities where content can bubble up from, fill your bank and create a flow of ideas that builds over time.

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