Got writers block? Don’t worry.
Want to delegate to your team? But want them to create content and ideas as premium as yours? This process will fix that too.
It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to start a blog article, a post, a tweet, a book, or a video. You could even spark some chargeable service ideas, with this process.
For argument’s sake – it all counts as writers block, and it’s all conquerable.
If you and your team can’t think up ideas that get you excited, don’t resort to copying your peers. If you start by copying, you’ll always be in second place. Keep it targeted to your dream customers, in your words, through your experiences.
Impactful content is all about relatability. Content is the mother of digital relationships.
Let me put into context.
Diagnostax is popular with accountancy business owners who aren’t ‘tax people’.
Diagnostax could talk about the ins and outs underutilised tax reliefs ‘til the cows come home… but it’ll never speak as loud as saying “I got the equivalent of 100 new customers by utilising these tax reliefs“. It’s got to be relatable.
What you’ll need
A Dream Client Persona – want to know how to build one?
A wall
Post-it notes.
Minimum of 1 hr
The Process
OK, so now you’ve got a dream client persona and a wall.
Grab yourself the post-it notes. If you’re training your team… get yourself some more post it notes. And some back up post it notes. Because this can get out of hand.
Step 1 (5 minutes)
Write all the dream client’s Challenges on post it’s and stick them on the wall.
These are your most obvious sources for inspiration. If you have experience in overcoming a challenge that’s the same/like your dream client’s… talk about it.
Sometimes, challenges are too big to handle in one piece of content…
Step 2 (10 minutes)
That’s why Step 2 is all about breaking down the problems that create these challenges.
Example
Our customers are accountants. One of our dream customer’s challenges is ‘Attracting a higher bracket of client’. At Diagnostax, we know that tax advice is a great way of proving your worth to higher value clients, but tax advice and closing The Other Tax Gap isn’t the whole challenge.
There’s more things that can be considered. It’s great to explore the broader subject, rather than focusing on your solution.
Here’s a list of bitesize problems that I think add to the challenge of attracting higher value clients:
(in brackets, I’ve written a suggested idea to counter it)
Unfamiliar with the needs of a higher bracket of client (idea: list of needs all high value clients have)
Competing with larger firms’ marketing messaging (idea: promises from larger firms that I can match, or beat)
Getting noticed by a higher bracket of client (idea: attracting larger firms on a smaller budget)
Pitching to a board, rather than a business owner (idea: how to sell to a room)
…
I could go on and on and on.
All of these problems and challenges can be flipped into ideas, lessons and solutions. Write the challenges down and stick them on the wall.
Step 3, 4, & 5 (10 minutes… each!)
Write down problems that…
Go hand-in-hand with your dream client’s characteristics & experiences.
Hinder your dream client’s business’ approach, goals, dreams.
Create and enable your dream client’s challenges & fears.
…and stick them on the wall.
You should, by this point have a wall drowning in customer challenges. Each challenge is an obstacle in the way of your customers’ goals.
Step 6 (5 minutes)
Pick the right problems and challenges for you to talk about.
Pick the points the allow you to relate to something in your life. Work, private or social. Past, present or future.
That is the 6-step process.
How this process helped Diagnostax
Gwilym hosted a session with the whole team earlier this year. He’s had a lot of inspiration from being out there, interacting with the market and the customers, first-hand. But he wanted the team to carry the torch, so he could focus on the business more so.
Gwilym was getting too bogged down in content and ideas generation. People couldn’t ‘create’ independently of him without ‘product pushing’ 👎, and so he was locked into an essential duty: Content creation 🔒 .
So… he gave me and the team this alternative process to generate inspiration, which has made it easier for me to write articles, to speak customers, and to understand their broader situation.
It’s ok to want your team to take ownership of things, but you have to enable them by giving them a process and some reliable substance. Otherwise they’re going to feel lost and go back to familiar work. Or produce something off target.
Below is a video, where Gwil explains two examples of how team members connected the challenges to their lives, if you’re still feeling sceptic.