⚙️ How to Create 30 Pieces of Content From 1 Idea

Leverage A Content Flywheel

Author

Gordon Simle
October 17, 2023

Onward Everyday

Welcome back!

Today, we’ll take a look at how to get more eyeballs on your business — by publishing a higher volume of posts across social platforms.

We’re going to turbocharge The Content Model.

Fast And Furious Brian Oconner GIF By The Fast Saga

@thefastsaga via GIPHY

As an entrepreneur running a business, content ideation and creation is difficult. Especially, when it’s a volume game. The more content you post, the more engagement it gets, and the more it’s shared, the more algorithms distribute your content to more people.

So how do you create content so efficiently that it creates more content?

The secret lies with Charlotte is to leverage a Content Flywheel.

What is A Content Flywheel?

James Watt invented the flywheel over 200 years ago for his steam engine, the invention that powered the Industrial Revolution. It’s a wheel that is energy-efficient.

By building a content flywheel, you create momentum that feeds itself, making the process of content creation efficient and scalable.

Before we create a flywheel, we must understand The Content Model.

The Content Model

Think of The Content Model as a pyramid. The foundation is one long-form piece of content.

The Content Model

Depending on your unique business and personal skillset, the type of long-form content may vary.

For some, it may be a recorded keynote speech, for others, a guide for customers on an industry topic (e.g. “How to Buy A Home in 2024”), a YouTube video, or a podcast interview.

The next section of our pyramid is where we take our long-form content and chop it into smaller pieces of content within the context of what and how people consume content on relevant social platforms.

Finally, schedule this content for publishing on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok.

PRO TIP: When you’re getting started, focus on ONE platform. This should be the one that the majority of your customers use most.

Steps to Creating A Content Flywheel

A thoughtful content strategy requires more than randomly posting content for the sake of posting something.

It requires an understanding of what problems your customers face each day and a focus on how your content can provide a solution.

How to Create A Content Flywheel

  1. Big Rock: First, choose a topic that is a common problem your customers have (what they hire you to solve!) or a trending topic in your industry.

  2. Research: Find out how your competitors are offering to solve those problems and identify gaps in their solutions. How can you solve the problem faster or with less disruption to the customer? Do they have negative reviews that offer insight? When you look at their products and services, what’s missing? How can you tell your brand story?

  3. Choose your long-form medium: What are you good at, what is natural, and you enjoy doing? Is it writing, video, audio, or public speaking? How are you communicating with your customers now?

  4. Determine where your customers are: Which social media platform do the majority of your customers spend their time? It’s likely many platforms, but choose one distribution method to start.

Now that you’ve done your homework, schedule time on your calendar each week for each of the following:

  • Ideation (research and topic generation)

  • Creating your long-form content

  • Repurposing long-form content into short-form content

This will be more time-intensive in the beginning, and as you create more content, you will begin to see momentum building as your content begins to fuel the creation of more content.

The Content Model & Flywheel in Action

This is Justin Welsh’s content model he calls, “The Hub & Spoke Model.”

Like the pyramid, Justin uses his newsletter as his long-form content and breaks each newsletter down into roughly 16 pieces of short-form content he schedules out over the course of 6 months.

But isn’t that only 6 pieces of short-form content in his model?

Yes and no.

Each short-form piece of content is posted on Twitter/X.

Content Count: 6

The day after each post, Justin posts a series of screenshots from his Twitter post as a Carousel on LinkedIn and includes a short comment in the post.

Content Count: 12

Justin also posts a pre-CTA (call-to-action) the day before and a post-CTA the day after his newsletter is published.

Content Count: 14

The calls-to-action work to “de-platform” his audience and drive them to his email list for his newsletter, where he can control the relationship and offer products and services over time. This ensures if a social network collapses overnight, his business doesn’t go with it.

6 months after his newsletter is published, he creates a summary of it and posts the summary to Twitter, references the full newsletter, and links to it.

He does the same on LinkedIn, remixing the content.

Content Count: 16 ✅

But isn’t this about creating 30 pieces of content?

You betcha.

Here’s what Justin isn’t doing.

Write Once + Record Once

The majority of great content in the world stems from something written. Whether it’s a full script or an outline, writing is the foundation.

What if your YouTube video script became a newsletter or vice-versa? 👀

What if the audio from your YouTube video became a Podcast episode? 🤔

Your one piece of long-form content became three. 😲

Apply the same content model to each long-form piece.

That creates 30 to 45 pieces of content from 1 long-form piece of content. 💥

Wait, there’s more

The content flywheel kicks in when you’ve been executing the content model for 3 to 6 months and you’ve been engaging with your audience in post comments and DMs (Direct Messages).

How your audience responds to your posts provides real-time feedback.

Your best-performing ideas can be re-posted over time and become evergreen content, reducing the amount of new content you need to create.

This feedback also gives you further insight into the real problems your potential customers face and which problems aren’t being solved.

These insights provide more content ideas as well as additional solutions your business can create through product and service offerings.

Responding to comments with value can provide seeds for new ideas as well. A well-received comment may become a new piece of short-form content that then inspires a new piece of long-form content.

The content flywheel has gained momentum.

So has the top of your sales funnel. 🤑

Takeaway

Creating content is not easy.

It requires an understanding of who your target audience is and how you can help them, as well as the implementation of a proven model and a system to be consistent.

Execute the plan and it will become easier.

My last newsletter issue was an expanded version of a LinkedIn post that resonated with people.

Long-form content becomes short-form. Short-form becomes long-form.

The content flywheel in full effect. ⚙️

ONWARD TOGETHER.

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