How to Turn an Idea into Two Weeks Worth of Content

We all know that panic strikes when we are running out of ideas for the next blog post. There is pressure to constantly find ideas that captivate your audience can be very intense. In extreme cases, one can even start feeling burnt out or run into a creative block.

One of the best ways to get around this situation is by turning one content idea into a four or five-part series. This can help you navigate the pressure of finding new content ideas every three days while also enabling you to create well-researched, and in-depth blog posts.

Why series are so great

Here’s why carving one content idea into a series can pay off in a big way.

Building anticipation and increasing traffic

Someone who reads the first part of the series will want to keep going till they finish the entire series. Similarly, someone who stumbles across the 4th or 5th article will probably start from the beginning and go through them all. In fact, people who are waiting for the next post in the series may even end up subscribing to your blog.

Eliminate stress and improve productivity

When you decide to write a series, you have to go through the ideation process just once. After that, you already know the overall idea and its breakdown into different posts. All you need to focus on is writing. With the stress of constantly coming up with new ideas out of the window, you’ll actually be able to focus solely on quality content creation.

Go in-depth

Have you ever had one of those content ideas that are really meaty and important, but there’s no way you could fit everything into one blog post? That’s exactly what a series is meant to achieve. You can finally go into details and share in-depth insights without overloading your readers with too much information at once.

More conversions and profits

Believe it or not, series are often far more amenable to your business goals than stand-alone posts. Whether it’s getting more subscribers, generating leads, building your brand, or creating online products that generate recurring revenue.

More ideas

With a series, you have more time to play around with ideas and concepts. Many of our best writing ideas come to us subconsciously when we’re not actively writing. With a series, your subconscious mind has enough time to formulate ideas and arguments, whether you’re gardening or in the shower. Chances are that the ideas will flow a lot more easily when you do sit down to write.

How do you know if an idea can be made into a series

If you’re not sure how to figure out which content ideas will make for great series, here are some tips.

You’ve written a post with a meaty list

Say you’ve done a post saying “Top 5 Content Marketing Formats in 2019”. You suddenly realize that each of these 5 formats merits a full post in itself. And suddenly you have your idea for your next 5-part series.

The idea is too substantial for one blog post

Many times, you don’t start off thinking of a content idea as suited to a series format. Maybe it’s intended to be just one post, but as you begin writing the outline you realize there’s too much substance to restrict the idea to one post. These kind of ideas are best outlined in a series. If there isn’t too much material, you can always stick to a short, three-part series.

Your readers have many related queries

This is another great organic way to develop a series. Many times, readers respond overwhelmingly to a post. In fact, they may come up with a number of questions on related topics that are not covered in the original post. It’s a great idea to take some of these questions to create a 4-part series.

Evergreen content

In general, it’s not a good idea to invest time and energy into writing a four-part series for passing trends. In most cases, in fact, articles based on the latest fads and trends simply don’t have enough material for a series. Evergreen content ideas that focus on substantial issues are ideal for creating a series.

The idea-to-series playbook

Let’s say you are planning to write a four-part series. The topic you’ve chosen is video marketing. Here’s a general playbook on how you should go about it.

Post 1- Establish authority

In the first post of the series, spend time on introducing the topic, your own background, and connecting the two. For instance, while talking about video marketing, you could start by introducing the concept and why it’s become so important to have a video marketing strategy today. You could then talk about your own experience with video marketing. It could be about your journey as a video marketer or even your experience with video marketing for your own product. Use interesting anecdotes and make sure to use an interesting CTA (Call to Action) that makes people want to know more.

Post 2- Prepare the background

In this post, you don’t delve into the details of creating video marketing but talk about the things you need to know in advance. For instance, you could talk about things that need to be in place before you get started with video marketing. This could include considerations like budget, a video marketing strategy, equipment, cast and crew, and so on.

Post 3- The details

This is the post where you actually break down video marketing into a step-by-step tutorial that users can follow. The best part about saving the details for the third post is that readers already know a fair bit about the topic by now and are well prepared for the information-centric content.

Post 4- Give advanced information and answer queries

This last post helps you give value-added information to your readers. A great way to design this post is by going through relevant questions you receive in the comments section in the previous posts. You can use these questions as a basis for designing your content in the last post.

Consistency is essential to becoming an effective content creator. Sometimes, the constant pressure of creativity can become extremely counter-productive. A simple hack like turning one content idea into an entire series can help you stay consistent while continuing to produce meaningful and relevant content.

Want to know all about our blog post writing services, contact us now.