The key to a strong digital presence isn’t one-off bursts of activity. It’s consistency. And consistency isn’t just about knowing how often you need to do something; it’s just as much about making it easy to sustain, so you actually get it done.

That’s what this guide is designed to help with. If you have the time and discipline, developing your own version of this can help you establish a meaningful and lasting digital presence – for yourself, or for your own clients.

This isn’t just theory: It’s a framework honed over a decade of working with clients to help them share their stories and expertise in a structured, easily-repeatable way.

Clarify Your Big Ideas Before You Create

A strong digital presence starts with clarity. Before creating content, take a structured approach to identifying your core ideas, areas of expertise, and the key questions or challenges in your industry. This ensures that everything you share aligns with your strengths and resonates with the people you want to reach.

Defining your audience is essential. Who are they? What problems do they face? What insights can you provide that will help them? Without clarity on your message, even the best content will struggle to make an impact. A well-planned discovery process ensures that everything you create is intentional, relevant, and aligned with your goals.

At Lexicontent, we use structured questionnaires and deep-dive conversations to uncover a client’s best stories, insights, and thought leadership angles. This helps us surface ideas that may seem obvious to an expert but are eye-opening or perspective-shifting for their ideal audience.

Build Authority by Owning a Few Key Themes

A strong digital presence is built around a few core ideas that define your expertise. Instead of treating content as a series of one-off posts, focus on developing recurring themes that reinforce your authority over time. The most effective way to build a brand is to become known for specific perspectives, insights, or problem-solving approaches within your industry, especially those tied to the work you actually do.

When you focus on a few core themes rather than chasing random topics, your content naturally starts working together as a system. Each post reinforces the last, helping your audience connect the dots and recognize you as a trusted source on the subjects that matter most.

Rather than struggling to come up with something new every week, build a body of content that explores a few important ideas from multiple angles and in multiple formats:

• Tell stories about how these ideas apply in real-world situations.
• Answer frequently asked questions that come up in your work.
• Challenge misconceptions that prevent people from making good decisions.
• Break down complex topics into clear, actionable insights.

By doing this, you demonstrate a deep understanding of the problems you work on, not just in theory but in practice.

Make Content Creation a Frictionless Habit

A complicated content creation process often leads to inconsistency. If approvals take too long, if scheduling requires multiple steps, or if content creation feels like a burden, it becomes difficult to maintain.

Reducing friction makes a significant difference. Some ways to do this:

• Record short voice notes when inspiration strikes.
• Set up quick 15-minute interviews to capture insights in real time.
• Streamline approvals to avoid bottlenecks (such as reviewing via email, Slack, or WhatsApp instead of long meetings).

Our clients have twice-monthly calls where we show up with pre-planned questions to efficiently extract their insights. Those get transcribed and turned into content, which is reviewed via quick messages.

By avoiding long meetings and complicated workflows, it is much easier for the client to stay engaged. This is essential for producing content that is authentic to their own voice and ideas.

Use Feedback to Sharpen Your Strategy

Creating content is an ongoing process. The best digital presence develops through continuous refinement, based on real audience engagement and feedback.

Once you start publishing, pay attention to what resonates.

• Which posts generate the most interaction?
• What are people commenting on or sharing?
• What questions do they ask?

Even if you are only getting 10 or 20 interactions on a post, that is still 100 percent more than 10. Even if you are only getting one or two messages from potential customers because of a post, that is a stronger signal than likes and comments.

Pay attention to the feedback you get. Ask customers what made them reach out. Try doing more of what seems to be working well, and see if it sticks.

Refinement is not about chasing viral content. It is about understanding your audience and creating content that serves them in a meaningful way. A small but engaged audience is far more valuable than a large audience that is not paying attention. Consistently improving your content deepens trust and strengthens your connection with your readers.

At Lexicontent, we pay close attention to both the numbers and the human interactions, looking beyond vanity metrics to see which topics and formats actually drive meaningful engagement. By refining our approach based on how the data lines up with larger goals, we ensure that content continues to improve over time.

Expand Reach by Repurposing Strategically

Your audience is not limited to a single platform. Some people engage primarily on LinkedIn, while others prefer newsletters, X, Threads, or Substack. If you have the bandwidth to do it without stretching yourself too thin, repurposing content across platforms can help extend your reach and maximize your impact.

A post that works well on LinkedIn may need to be adapted for different formats:

• X (Twitter): Condensed into a five-tweet thread or rewritten as a short, high-impact post.
• Newsletter: Expanded into a deeper dive with added context and examples.
• Podcast or Video: Turned into a discussion topic or short explainer clip.

The key is not to simply copy and paste but to make sure the content feels natural for the platform where you are sharing it. Some posts can be cross-posted as is, but others might need minor tweaks to fit the format and audience expectations.

Repurposing in this way ensures that valuable ideas don't disappear into the archives and start collecting dust for all of eternity after just a single post. Adapting content for different platforms allows you to maximize its lifespan and effectiveness.

At Lexicontent, we regularly rewrite and adapt content for short-form platforms and longer-form sites. This approach helps our clients reach a broader audience while getting more value out of the work that went into identifying and building content around the ideas in the first place.

Build Your Own Presence

A strong digital presence is not built overnight, but with a structured, repeatable process, it becomes far easier to maintain. Start small, identify your core ideas, develop a simple workflow, start putting out content, and refine as you go. The easier you make it, the more you can show up – and the more you show up, the more your presence will grow.

A trigger list is like a content strategy treasure map. It's a detailed list that helps you dig up all sorts of information hidden just out of sight within your company. This list is designed to prompt you to “remember” all of the valuable content that might be out there, waiting to be repurposed, reimagined, or simply put to better (or even just slightly different) use.

By working through the items on this list, you can spot overlooked opportunities, dust off forgotten resources, and gain fresh perspectives on what you already have. Essentially, it’s a tool to help you systematically audit your content, making sure nothing valuable slips through the cracks.

How To Use a Trigger List

To get the most out of your trigger list, think of it as a tool for unearthing hidden gems within a business. Set aside focused time to explore each item, and let your mind wander as you consider how these points might apply to documents, files, or content that’s been sitting around, maybe even forgotten for years.

As you review, take notes on any materials that come to mind, especially those that haven’t been touched in a while. This process is less about speed and more about digging deep to uncover valuable resources that can be given new life.

Using The Trigger List as a Team

Getting the team involved can help bring new perspectives to this treasure hunt. Share the trigger list and encourage everyone to spend some time sifting through old files, documents, and content that might have been overlooked or forgotten.

Ask them to note any items that could be repurposed or reimagined, or even just ones that are dense with information that can lead to new ideas.

Once everyone has had a chance to do some digging, you may even want to bring the team together for a brainstorming session to discuss what they’ve found and why it stood out to them, inviting others to share their ideas on each discovery as well.

This collaborative approach not only sparks new ideas but also prevents hidden potential from going unnoticed by looking at what you find from multiple perspectives.

What if I Don’t Have All of These Things?

It’s not a problem if you don’t have every item on the list. It’s meant to be exhaustive, covering all sorts of potential content sources that could exist within a business.

The idea is to give you a wide range of possibilities, so it’s perfectly normal if some don’t apply to your situation. Just focus on the areas that you think might exist within your business and use those as a starting point.

Leave no stone unturned, and take nothing for granted. Even just a handful of these triggers can lead to a treasure trove of material that can end up becoming a significant part of your future content strategy.

Download The Trigger List

No opt-in for this one. Just grab it and get to gathering.

Trying to crank out fresh, high-quality content every week can feel like sprinting up a never-ending hill. The internet never sleeps, and the demand for more and more can quickly lead to burnout.

But here’s the thing: you don’t always need to start from scratch. Content upcycling is a smarter, more sustainable way to keep the creativity flowing without exhausting yourself. It’s all about taking the content you’ve already created and finding new ways to make it shine.

Let me walk you through an alternative I swear by. It’s repeatable, manageable, and actually fun once you get the hang of it.

Note: The very thing you're reading is me practicing what I preach! This post is itself based on a presentation I gave a while back. I didn't even have to write about this from scratch – I'd already done the vast majority of the work, and just had to repurpose my slides and talk to make it work in this format.

Step 1: Take Inventory

The first step in any upcycling process is figuring out what you have. This means doing a full content audit. Don’t overthink it. Start by gathering everything you’ve created so far, including blog posts, videos, podcasts, social media posts, presentations, case studies, newsletters, and even random ideas jotted down in a notebook. Once you’ve collected everything, start sorting it into categories. You can organize by topic, format, theme, or even the kind of audience it was made for.

A simple spreadsheet works wonders here. Create columns for the title, format, primary audience, and where it was published. Tag each piece with keywords like "SEO tips" or "design process" to make it easy to filter and find later. The idea is to build a complete picture of your content so that nothing slips through the cracks.

Quick Hits:

• Make a master list of all your content assets (use a spreadsheet or tool like Notion).
• Tag each item with relevant keywords for easy filtering.
• Sort content by type (e.g., video, text, image) and audience.

Step 2: Transcribe Your Goldmines

Do you ever feel like your best ideas are stuck in a podcast episode or webinar that nobody remembers anymore? You’re not alone. Audio and video content are often packed with value, but they can be hard to revisit, let alone repurpose. The solution is simple: transcribe everything.

Start with your most popular or evergreen pieces, such as podcasts that people still reference or that webinar you know had great engagement. Use transcription tools like Otter.ai or Descript to turn spoken words into text. It won’t be perfect, so take some time to clean up the transcript and make it readable. Once you’ve done this, you can start slicing and dicing it into new formats.

For example, a podcast could be turned into a blog post, a series of tweets, or even an Instagram caption. If you hosted a webinar, you could pull key moments into a quote roundup or create a step-by-step guide based on the content.

Quick Hits:

• Try out transcription tools like Otter.ai or Descript for processing audio and video into more easily-usable forms.
• Edit transcriptions for clarity and readability.
• Identify quotes, sections, or takeaways you can repurpose into new formats.

Step 3: Build a Digital Library

Have you ever spent 20 minutes searching for that one blog post or article you wrote but couldn’t find? Let’s fix that. A searchable content database is your secret weapon for upcycling success. Think of it as your personal library, organized, tagged, and ready to be mined for ideas.

Use tools like Notion, Airtable, or Google Drive to store all your content. Make sure to tag or organize each piece by keywords and categories so you can quickly find what you’re looking for. Include notes about where and how the content has already been used, along with ideas for future repurposing.

There's no one best way of doing this, but I recommend using tools that let you tag instead of sorting into folders whenever possible to maximize your ability to find the same piece of content across many different topics when relevant.

For example, if you’ve got a podcast episode on leadership, tag it with "leadership," "career growth," and "team dynamics." That way, when brainstorming content for LinkedIn about workplace culture, you’ll know exactly where to look.

Quick Hits:

• Set up a database in Notion, Airtable, or Google Drive.
• Add tags and keywords to every piece of content for easier searches.
• Make notes on where each item has been used and for what purpose.

Step 4: Repurpose with Purpose

Here’s where the magic happens. Upcycling isn’t about copying and pasting; it’s about taking what you’ve created and reshaping it into something relevant and valuable that can reach different people in their own preferred ways.

The key is to think about your audience and the platforms you’re targeting. For example, that long-form blog post you wrote last year could be broken into a series of shorter posts for LinkedIn or a thread on X. A detailed webinar could be turned into an infographic, a step-by-step Instagram carousel, or even a series of TikToks.

Think about how different formats serve different purposes. Instagram stories are perfect for quick, bite-sized takeaways. LinkedIn posts can dive deeper. Pinterest loves visual content that leads them to something they might decide to buy, try, or see in person based on their response to what they see. Tailoring your content to fit each platform means it will land better with that segment of your audience.

Quick Hits:

• Identify one well-performing piece of content to start with.
• Choose 2 to 3 new formats or platforms to repurpose it for.
• Tailor the tone, length, and visuals to suit each platform.

Step 5: Do Things in the Right Order

Look at what's already working. Instead of creating more from scratch, focus on the pieces that have already proven their value.

Begin by analyzing your analytics to identify the content that resonates most with your audience. Which blog posts consistently drive traffic? Which videos are shared the most? Pinpoint the high-performing pieces that deliver measurable results. These are already telling you something. These are your ideal starting point for upcycling content.

Once you’ve identified your top-performing content, think strategically about how you could reimagine and reshape it. A popular blog post or white paper could be transformed into a podcast episode, a YouTube video essay, or a multi-part thread on X. By taking advantage of the raw material from what’s already working, you can create a flow of content that amplifies your best ideas in many different ways, for many different types of readers, listeners, or viewers.

Don’t forget to prioritize evergreen content, the stuff that will stay relevant over time. You probably have plenty of this stuff sitting around, even if it's buried in email replies or sales materials that wouldn't usually be visible to the public eye. These pieces are packed with material that is ready for repurposing, and looking at them through that lens is bound to give you a ton of ideas for how.

Quick Hits:

• Review your analytics to identify high-performing content.
• Highlight evergreen pieces that remain relevant over time.
• Brainstorm ways to repurpose a top-performing pieces in new formats.

Step 6: Keep Tabs on the Competition

Keeping an eye on others in your industry is one of the easiest ways to stay relevant. Follow thought leaders, competitors, and influencers in your field to see what they are talking about. Pay attention to what is working for them, such as trending topics, content formats, or specific ideas that get a lot of engagement.

Use this information as inspiration to create your own spin on similar topics. The goal is not to copy but to stay in the loop and bring a unique perspective to the conversation.

You should also pay close attention to what your competitors aren't saying – areas where you can offer a valuable perspective on something that isn't being addressed by others.

Quick Hits:

• Follow key competitors, thought leaders, and influencers in your industry.
• Take note of topics and formats that perform well for them.
• Look for gaps where your expertise can offer something new.

Step 7: Make It Easy to Consume

If your content has a ton of value, but it's not user-friendly, your audience isn't going to engage with it. Pay attention to what makes your content easy to read, watch, or listen to.

For written content, use short paragraphs, bullet points, subheadings, and visuals (including indicators like highlights, callouts, and bold text) to break things up.

If you are repurposing for social media, attention spans are short. Make your posts visually appealing, short, and formatted for quick skimming.

For videos, add captions so they are accessible even when viewers watch with the sound off. (You can also let YouTube auto-generate them, but double-check them for accuracy.)

Experiment with new formats when you can. Could your side of a coaching call you did with a client also be cropped and clipped up to make a handful of Instagram Stories? The easier it is for your audience to consume your ideas, the more likely they are to engage with you.

Quick Hits:

• Break up written content with bullet points, visuals, and subheadings.
• Add captions to videos for accessibility.
• Experiment with new formats like infographics, carousels, or short clips.

Step 8: Measure Everything. Do More of What Works.

The final step in the upcycling process is tracking how your content performs. Even if you've never done this before, start collecting the data now as mentioned above.

This takes a certain skillset, and if you don't have it, find someone who does. Once you're able to sustain publishing content regularly this is where the next big step up in value from creating and publishing content will come from.

Once you have data, you can use it to refine your approach and your priorities. If a repurposed blog post is doing well on LinkedIn, consider creating more posts in a similar format or style. If something is not performing, don’t be afraid to tweak it or try a different platform.

Take time to compare which platforms or formats consistently work best for you. Over time, this will help you understand your audience's preferences well enough to focus on areas that give them the most value where they are most responsive to it... and that have the most impact on your business as a result.

Quick Hits:

• Use analytics tools to track engagement across platforms.
• Keep a log of where and when you have shared upcycled content.
• Adjust your approach based on what the data tells you.

Why Upcycling Is a Game-Changer

Content upcycling is much more than a time-saver or a way of compensating for not having content creation staff on hand. It's an efficient appraoch to maximizing the upside of everything you're already creating day by day.

In a noisy world where more content is always needed to reach more of your audience, upcycling can be your new favorite party trick for keeping your content strategy going without burning yourself out.

Dust off that old presentation, revisit that podcast, dig up those long-winded emails and pitches, and start transforming them.

Everything old is new again.

The world feels like it's cracking open. Climate change, rising authoritarianism, broken systems in housing, mental health, and the economy—everything's up for grabs, and some of the grabbiest people on the planet are grabbing as much as they can for themselves. It is hard to even separate how we work from why we work when so much of life feels on the edge. Consulting, in this context, is not just a career choice; it is a way to reclaim agency, work on your terms, and lean into the chaos with purpose.

At its heart, consulting is about autonomy. It is the kind of freedom you cannot get working for someone else. In a typical job, your time, creativity, and moral compass all get tied up in someone else's priorities. Consulting flips that. You get to decide who you work with and what projects deserve your energy. That freedom to say yes to meaningful work and no to everything else is not just empowering; it is critical when the stakes feel this high. Autonomy is not a luxury anymore. It is survival.

But autonomy comes with strings attached: responsibility. It is one thing to chart your own course, and another to keep it aligned with your values. That is where consulting gets its teeth. When done well, it lets you bridge the gap between what matters to you and where you can make the most impact. Whether that is tackling renewable energy challenges, equitable housing, or mental health care, consulting forces you to stay honest. It is a constant practice of balancing integrity with pragmatism, which is a skill we all need more of these days.

That said, it is not all freedom and flowcharts. Consulting asks you to take on uncertainty like it is your full-time coworker. There is no hiding behind "that is above my pay grade" here. You own every decision, every risk, and every mistake. But the flip side? You also own the wins. Learning to streamline the chaos, figuring out contracts, client relationships, and boundaries, is the tradeoff for building something that actually aligns with your purpose.

At its best, consulting rewires how we think about work altogether. What if success was not about climbing the corporate ladder or chasing external metrics? What if it was about creating work that feels deeply aligned with who you are? For consultants, that shift from "what is expected" to "what is valuable" is everything. The work stops being a grind and starts becoming a practice in intentionality, a way of life where the outcomes matter as much as the process.

In a world where systems often feel immovable and individual agency feels like a mirage, consulting offers something deeply personal: choice. Every client you take, every project you invest in, is a small rebellion against the tide. It is your way of saying, "This is where I will make my stand."

Consulting is an approach to career-building that is built to change with the times. As crises evolve, we can pivot. We can respond to what is urgent and adapt to what is next. This flexibility is not just a perk; it is a lifeline in a world where the only constant is constant upheaval.

Ultimately, consulting is not just about control; it is about getting the value you want out of life by providing the value others are looking for in some aspect of their own. You can't fix everything, but you can choose to fix the most important things possible with your skills. In doing so, you take ownership of more than your time or income. You also get to take back control over your own integrity, purpose, and sense of self.

The world needs people who are willing to engage with the mess, bring their best to it, and approach it in a way that empowers them to walk away from people who have no integrity. Consulting offers that path, not as an escape from the world’s problems, but as a bold step toward meeting them head-on. It is not just a career. It is a philosophy of freedom, responsibility, and meaning in a world desperate for all three.

On wearing many hats, many of them dumb looking.

There’s this pressure most of us feel to figure out our “one thing.”

What’s your major going to be? What career do you want? What's your passion? What do you want to be when you grow up?

Our culture loves stories about specialists: the violin prodigy, the tech genius, the youngest chess grand master, the gold medal athlete who started training at age five.

Specialists and their stories are neatly packaged up to inspire people who have been sold the notion that we're all born with some innate purpose far "greater" (see also: "more profitable" or "more useful to someone") than ourselves.

If you find yours, then you, too, can have a life that looks like all of the other ones around you! You, too, can feel "normal." You can feel like you belong.

The shadow assumption lurking behind that line of logic is, of course: "Everyone else with a life that looks like that already found their one thing. Why can't you?"

Why can’t you?

I tried. I really did.

I tagged myself with socially-compatible metadata for "what I do," based on the things that excited me, and I expended an ungodly amount of effort to make them useful to the rest of the world in the most practical, pragmatic, and valuable ways possible.

(Aspiring) Architect. Designer. Copywriter. Storyteller. Advisor. Senior Communications Specialist. (Their job title pick, not mine, and against my objection.)

They all felt like hats I wore more than a description of the person wearing them. Poorly fitted hats. Not even cool hats.

More like beanies with the little propellers on top, because I knew I was dumbing myself down to fit neatly into unimaginative, ineffective, and sometimes terminally stupid ways of doing things.

Was this somehow my fault? Was I was scattered? Indecisive? Afraid of commitment? Why couldn’t I find my "one thing" and just do it the way everyone else seemed to?

The four-star generalist

It took decades for me to realize that even though I was a failure as a specialist, I was also succeeding wildly at being a generalist.

I've been told many times that a generalist is a jack of all trades and master of none. But I’d argue that a good generalist is a master of one particularly rare skill: context.

Generalists aren’t tied to any one puzzle piece or any one machine; they’re looking at the lines in between the puzzle pieces and the gears, and how they fit into each other, and how different arrangements affect the larger whole.

Generalists understand how the pieces, and their placements, and their movements affect that larger whole, even if they don't know as much as the specialists do about how the pieces themselves are made or how they individually work.

Generalists see patterns in everything and relationships between everything; or maybe the ability to see them is what makes someone a generalist to begin with. Engineering looks like art, science looks like a story, and business, more often than not, looks like a clown show at the county fair.

Specialization offers stability in "normal" circumstances (although there are far fewer of those than there used to be), while generalists develop resilience, adaptability, and foresight in the disorder and chaos that arises from the absence of such “normal” circumstances in their lives.

When hell breaks loose, generalists break it back.

And it’s a good thing generalists have those traits, because holy hell are they going to need them. It turns out disorder and chaos are part of the everyday state of things, and if you hadn’t noticed yet, that’s probably thanks to a generalist.

Unfortunately for the generalist’s social standing, when things run smoother than they could have, when a situation is calmly stabilized before it became unrecoverable, or when you find a way to dig the tunnel before they flatten themselves against the picture of it on the wall, Wile E. Coyote-style, few people notice, and even fewer people appreciate how bad it could've been.

Nothing about being a generalist is glamorous. It’s just necessary. Nobody sees a generalist's skill set or the resilience that comes with it until they need the benefit of both, and that's a real tight turnaround for such a diverse skill set so the people who already have it get stuck cleaning up the mess.

The specialist still gets the spotlight for the end result, while the generalist just keeps on plugging away at the process. It's the group project dynamic all over again -- or rather, it's what that lesson was really about all along. I get it now.

Specialists are the stars of the show, standing center stage under the bright lights. They shine because their contributions are tied to a singular, show-stopping moment: a dazzling solo, a breathtaking feat, a perfectly executed finale, and beautifully designed product. It's easy to celebrate what happens in the spotlight because the outcome is polished, dramatic, and undeniable. Their role is built for visibility and measured in ovations, awards, five stars, and thumbs up.

But that spotlight comes with a price. Specialists build their confidence on the stability of their role, the safety of excelling in one thing, and the reassurance that the world values their skills.

When things go wrong, it can shatter that sense of invincibility that comes with the spotlight. Specialists suddenly confronted with failure or fragility have to grapple with fear and shame at the revelation that their safe and stable thing might not be as safe or stable as they believed it was.

Generalists, by comparison, are the unappreciated crew behind the scenes. Their work is not tied to a single dazzling moment, but to the messy ongoing process of ensuring the show goes on. The generalist’s moment to truly shine rarely comes, but when it does, it's usually when something is going catastrophically wrong. It is in these moments that generalists reveal just how indispensable they are.

Vulnerability in specialization

Their rare high-visibility triumphs can put specialists in a place of discomfort, causing them to feel exposed by the generalist’s ability to pivot, adapt, and thrive in a situation that feels, to them, like a failure and a risk to their own stability.

While generalists might feel empathy for the fear and shame specialists experience in situations like that, because generalists have always lived with the uncertainty specialists are just now confronting, it may not even occur to them that it’s a new or rare experience for some people.

The specialists quietly go back to their work, reluctant to endure their vulnerability any longer than they have to, and believing that avoiding it has no downside for them.

The generalists, for the most part, have long given up on begging for respect they know they will never get from a culture of performative perfection that will pretend not to know what they're talking about.

The divide usually doesn't get discussed because, well, we don't know what we don't know.

I don't begrudge specialists for this situation. After all, generalists love a good show, hate when things go poorly for others, and despise the spotlight because we know we don’t belong there. I know the status quo is not due to malice, but a lack of awareness brought about by prioritizing profitable “events” over everything, including empathy and understanding.

What I do resent is that our society only knows how to treat one like it's deserving of a "normal" life, even as things get less normal an alarming rate. The need for generalists to step in and do their thing has never been higher, but the opportunities for us to help never come about due to widespread cultural ignorance.

I’m not sure how to wrap this up, and I’m fine with that: Generalists are used to messy work that’s never quite finished. There is no neatly packaged finished product here.

There is only the hope that a few people will recognize this divide the next time they see it, and try to do something positive in their own way with that awareness.

I used to think feeling unsure meant I was screwing up.

Every time doubt started to creep in, I got deathly afraid that it was the universe’s way of flashing a big red “Wrong Way” sign at me. (Not that I have any reason to think the universe would be that helpful, given the number of mistakes it’s let me make without any warning.)

But after years of pushing through that feeling, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think doubt and failure are directly correlated at all.

Doubt is just part of the process. “The Process.” WoooOOOooo. “Trust the process,” people say. But no one ever really says how. So let’s talk about that.

In my experience - and please, reply to this and tell me if yours is different - doubt is just the friction that comes from doing something new, pushing myself in a direction that doesn’t have a clear path made yet. Every big thing I’ve ever worked on has been full of moments where I doubted myself. Most of the small things, too.

Apparently most if not all people who are successful at anything feel this way too. They still keep going. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have any idea who they are.

There’s a pervasive belief that if you’re doubting yourself, it’s because you’re doing something wrong, as if you need to feel confident every step of the way or the thing you’re working on is ultimately doomed. But it turns out, you can have doubts while you’re doing the work and it doesn’t disqualify you from doing the work right.

Thinking back over my very haphazardly self-made career as a writer, I’ve doubted myself almost every step of the way while doing work I am genuinely proud of now. In other words, in everything I’ve ever done that got me to where I am now, doubt didn’t get the final say… I did.

Doing the work is the only proof you need that you’re trusting the process.

Turns out, trusting the process isn’t an abstract notion. Or at least it doesn’t have to be. It’s not about blind faith, or unshakable confidence, or feeling “zen” about every step you take. Trusting the process just means doing the work, even when you’re unsure, even when it feels like nothing is going to happen… even when nothing has happened for an uncomfortable amount of time.

I’ve wondered many, many times if the hours spent writing, planning, thinking, are worth the extreme discomfort that often comes with them. It’s easy for me to start questioning if I’m moving in the right direction or not when I haven’t finished the work, don’t know how it’s going to turn out, and can’t see the end result yet. But the real trust in the process, for me, is in doing. When I need proof that I trust the process, I look at the work I’m putting in. That’s the proof. Trust is built on action, not on talking myself into believing everything’s going to work out no matter what I do.

Some stuff won’t work out. Some stuff will. But I trust myself to examine what I did. I trust myself to figure out what parts did or didn’t work out and why, and to remember those things next time. I trust myself to look for the reason why a thing I made is good enough for now, and I trust myself to appreciate a thing not just for what I accomplished by making it, but also for the role it played in making me better.

With every thing I make, I learn enough to adjust, tweak, control some new aspect of that thing, and things more broadly. That means “the process” isn’t about just getting better, it’s about getting different, diverse, experienced, in-depth, curious. It’s about learning to approach things in ways you couldn’t have imagined before you approached it the first way. Finishing something, even if it’s messy, gives you the perspective to say, "I can do this differently next time." And honestly? That’s the only thing you can truly control.

After all of the years of self-doubt, and overwork, and burnout where I've still managed to get plenty done, it's my own process that has finally taught me that "the process” people talk about trusting so much is not a philosophy I failed to wrap my head around. Nor is it something I need to have unshakable confidence in. Nor is it something I really need to pay attention to at all.

It’s just me, making things, and noticing what parts of it I might be able to do in other ways, as I go or after the fact. It’s just me, tinkering. I’m good at tinkering. I can trust myself to do that. I bet you can too. So why don’tcha?

I’ve spent the last few years in rooms full of people who, on paper, seemed to know a lot more than me and have their whole road ahead all worked out. People with credentials and accolades, people who were seen as brilliant, people who governments all over the world wanted to meet with and get advice from and maybe eventually buy something from.

I frequently felt like I didn’t belong, and that any moment someone who didn’t believe in the things I believe in would go out of their way to let me know they felt the same way. That familiar voice in my head kept whispering that soon, they’d figure out I didn’t know enough to deserve to be there… even though I got there by acquiring the skill set to learn on the job even about the most technical things, and I was honest about what I did and didn’t know every step of the way.

But something unexpected happened. The more time I spent in those rooms, the more I started to see cracks not in myself, but in others. People I once thought were brilliant were often cornered by circumstances born of their own egotistical and presumptuous thinking. The more I learned, the more I understood I was surrounded by people who were confident to the point of blindness, never questioning themselves, and making the most basic mistakes because they simply assumed they had nothing important left to learn and the world would simply realize what they were working on was important, and reward them for it.

That’s when my whole perspective on imposter syndrome began to shift. I started to see that maybe my self-doubt, the thing I’d always seen as a weakness, was actually the thing that was keeping me sharp. It was keeping me grounded in a way those “brilliant” people never seemed to be. It was protecting me from becoming a version of myself that I couldn’t respect, and maybe couldn’t forgive either.

I used to think doubt meant I wasn’t good enough at something I hadn’t figured out yet… that I hadn’t earned my place at the table because I hadn’t put in enough work. But lately I’ve been grappling with the realization that the people who never doubted themselves were the ones I instinctively became more concerned about, and cautious around.

I used to think of imposter syndrome as something to shrug off, or shed, or beat into submission with sheer confidence and positive results… but lately, I’ve come to believe imposter syndrome isn’t something to be beaten at all. It’s something to be reframed. It has been a guide for me. It has kept me acutely, sometimes painfully, aware of what’s at stake. It has made sure I’m thinking about how my work impacts the people around me. It has been my ally in the battle for my own soul, and I am grateful for its service.

In the past, when I’ve walked into a room and felt out of place, as a college dropout, a guy who’s new to business, someone who’s still figuring out how to do things “right” after 5 or 10 or 15 years… I really envied the confidence of the people around me. But now, sometimes I see the hairline cracks forming that less honest, less concerned, less humble people haven’t yet noticed themselves. Their confidence blinds them to their own weaknesses. They make catastrophic mistakes because they don’t stop to question themselves… a skill that my so-called “imposter syndrome” has taught me to excel at.

It’s not that I’m smarter than them or that they’re any less capable than I am. Many of the people I learned these lessons from are brilliant in their own ways. But so many of them never really paused to reflect or to seek expert advice about the things they weren’t experienced in, and it shows.

So, doubting myself isn’t the liability I once thought it was. In fact, it’s the very thing that has kept me conscious of my need for honesty, humility, curiosity, and continued learning.

I no longer feel the need to “beat” imposter syndrome. I’ve started to get curious about it instead, whenever it crops up. Most of the time, it’s got nothing to do with a lack of ability. It’s fear. Fear of causing harm. Fear of taking unfairly. Fear of leaving people worse off than they would have been had I never shown up.

It’s taken me nearly fifteen years to realize that fear comes from a place of caring deeply about how I affect other people. If I didn’t care about others, I wouldn’t feel that doubt. So instead of running from it, I’m going to lean into it. Let it remind me that I’m deeply, deeply invested in getting it right and making some small slice of life better for someone no matter what I am doing. This is proof that I care, and after years of fighting with this part of me, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s not a powerful enemy, but a powerful ally.

The people who feel like imposters are often the ones who care the most about being real. They’re the ones who are deeply invested in doing things right, and doing right by others. So when I feel like I don’t belong, I remind myself that it’s not because I’m out of place. It’s because I care deeply about how I affect the world around me, and that’s a good thing. In a world where many people are content to coast through, let life happen to them, and let themselves happen to life… an “imposter syndrome” that helps me care more deeply and strive to do better is something I’m going to be proud of from now on.

Are you making content for yourself or your clients? Are you having a hard time deciding which tools are best for you, your clients, and your budgets? Finding good tools that are also affordable has only gotten harder as "the market" has become more saturated. To help with that, I've put together this curated list of tools I've used over the years and still like for one reason or another, inspired by a similar list compiled by the /r/selfhosted community on Reddit.

At some point, I'd like to elaborate on why each item made my list, but for now I think it's more useful to get this into the hands of people who might benefit from being aware of just how many options there are at their disposal for each of the categories below.

Not sure where you should start based on where you are in your business? Shoot me a message and, in the spirit of the old internet where people actually helped each other, I'll do my best to point you in the direction that's best for you!

Contents

• Analytics Tools
• Content Management Systems (CMS)
• SEO Tools
• Content Writing and Creation Tools
• Graphic Design Tools
• Video Creation Tools
• Social Media Management Tools
• Educational Resources
• Blogs and Newsletters
• Books
• Communities

Analytics Tools

1. Google Analytics - Track and report website traffic.
2. Hotjar - Visualize how users interact with your site.
3. Tableau Public - Free version of Tableau for advanced analytics and visualization.
4. Mixpanel - User analytics for mobile and web.
5. Heap - Automatically captures every user action.
6. Matomo - Open-source web analytics platform.
7. Simple Analytics - Privacy-friendly analytics tool.
8. Clicky - Real-time web analytics.
9. Fathom - Simple, privacy-focused website analytics.
10. GoAccess - Open-source web log analyzer and viewer.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

1. WordPress - Highly customizable platform with numerous plugins.
2. Joomla - User-friendly CMS with powerful extensions.
3. Drupal - Great for complex, advanced, and versatile sites.
4. Ghost - Minimalist CMS designed for simplicity and speed.
5. Hugo - Fast and flexible static site generator.
6. Jekyll - Simple, blog-aware static site generator.

SEO Tools

1. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools - Free SEO tools for website analysis.
2. Ubersuggest - Free keyword research tool.
3. SEMrush - Comprehensive toolkit for digital marketers.
4. Yoast SEO - Plugin to optimize your WordPress SEO.
5. Moz - SEO software for smarter marketing.
6. Screaming Frog - SEO spider for advanced SEO audits.
7. Google Search Console - Free tool to monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results.
8. SERPstat - Growth hacking tool for SEO, PPC, and content marketing.
9. AnswerThePublic - Free visual keyword research and content ideas tool.
10. Keyword Tool - Free keyword research tool.

Content Writing and Creation Tools

1. Grammarly - Enhance your writing quality.
2. Hemingway Editor - Make your writing bold and clear.
3. Scrivener - A powerful tool for long writing projects.
4. Evernote - Organize your work and declutter your life.
5. Notion - All-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.
6. Cliché Finder - Find and replace clichés in your writing.
7. ProWritingAid - Grammar checker and style editor.
8. WriteFreely - Open-source platform for creating and sharing writing.
9. Typora - A minimalist Markdown editor.

Graphic Design Tools

1. Canva - User-friendly graphic design tool with templates.
2. GIMP - Open-source image editor.
3. Inkscape - Free and open-source vector graphics editor.
4. Krita - Open-source painting and sketching tool.
5. Vectr - Free graphics editor.
6. Piktochart - Create infographics, presentations, and prints.
7. Snappa - Create online graphics in a snap.
8. Gravit Designer - Free vector design app.
9. Lunacy - Free graphic design software for UI/UX.
10. SVG-Edit - Open-source SVG editor.

Video Creation Tools

1. OpenShot - Open-source video editor.
2. Shotcut - Open-source, cross-platform video editor.
3. DaVinci Resolve - Color correction and non-linear video editing.
4. Kdenlive - Open-source video editor.
5. Avidemux - Free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering, and encoding tasks.
6. Blender - Open-source 3D creation suite.
7. Lightworks - Professional video editing software with a free version.
8. HitFilm Express - Free video editing and VFX software.
9. OBS Studio - Open-source software for video recording and live streaming (EposVox Tutorials).
10. VLC Media Player - Free and open-source multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files.

Social Media Management Tools

1. Hootsuite - Manage all your social media in one place.
2. Buffer - Simplify your social media posting.
3. TweetDeck - Manage and monitor Twitter timelines.
4. Later - Plan and schedule your Instagram posts.
5. SocialBee - Social media management tools to help you save time.
6. MeetEdgar - Schedule and automate your social media posts.
7. SocialOomph - Productivity tool for social media management.
8. Zoho Social - Social media management platform for growing businesses.

Educational Resources

1. HubSpot Academy - Free online training for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service professionals.
2. Copyblogger - Content marketing and copywriting courses.
3. Content Marketing Institute - Offers training programs, online events, and a variety of resources.
4. MarketMuse - AI content research and optimization platform.

Blogs and Newsletters

1. Contently’s Strategist - Insights on content strategy, storytelling, and brand health.
2. Neil Patel’s Blog - Digital marketing and content hacks.
3. The Moz Blog - SEO and marketing blogs by industry experts.
4. Animalz Blog - High-quality content marketing insights.
5. The Copyhackers Blog - All about copywriting and conversion rate optimization.
6. Content Marketing Institute Blog - The latest in content marketing and strategy.
7. HubSpot Blog - Marketing, sales, agency, and customer success content.
8. Orbit Media Studios Blog - Content marketing, SEO, web design, and analytics.
9. MarketingProfs Blog - Marketing advice and insights.
10. Convince & Convert Blog - Digital marketing advice and insights.

Books

1. "The Marketing Agency Blueprint" by Paul Roetzer - The handbook for building hybrid, performance-driven agencies. The handbook for building hybrid, performance-driven agencies. If I could only recommend one "business" book to creative business owners of all shapes and sizes, this is the one.
2. "Killing Marketing" by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose
3. "Content Strategy at Work" by Margot Bloomstein - Real-world stories and activities for building a successful content strategy.

Communities

1. Reddit’s r/content_marketing - Discussions about content marketing and strategy.
2. Content Marketing World - The largest content marketing event in the world.
3. Indie Hackers - Community of developers and entrepreneurs sharing insights.
4. Women in Content Strategy - Facebook group supporting women in content strategy. I'm not there for obvious reasons but I hear good things.

The Content Buddy System is a concept we've been championing for a few years now to get people outside of their own heads enough to see the value in what they already know.

The core idea is simple. It can be really challenging to get an outsider's perspective on your skills, expertise, experiences, work, or business to really understand what you know that's useful to others, and why exactly it's useful to them. It's extremely likely that your friends, coworkers, and colleagues all feel the same way about their own work, too.

The "Content Buddy System" approach to solving that problem is to get together with another curious person who can benefit from having access to your brain, then let them ask as many questions as they can think of.

Don't take notes during the conversation. Instead, take out your phone, set it to "Do Not Disturb" so the phone won't ring and cut off your recording, open a voice recording app like Evernote or the one built into the iPhone, and hit record.

Focus on the conversation, and let your phone capture every word you say. If you capture now so you can reference it later, then you can focus 100% of your attention on pouring value into the conversation instead of worrying that you'll forget something. That means more time to give value to your content buddy, which translates to even more value for yourself when it comes time to turn that conversation into content.

Capturing the conversational plain English language you use to talk about your work is the secret weapon here. As you explain your work, they'll ask questions about things that might not have occurred to you if you were writing something entirely on your own.

Or, they might ask you to clarify details they don't understand, and that you didn't realize you weren't describing very well. That will provide you with a lot of live, useful feedback about how you describe your work and what is or isn't clear to someone who's new to your world.

Let the conversation go on as long as possible, and try not to adhere to a rigid list of questions or an agenda. Letting the conversation meander in whatever direction your Content Buddy finds helpful will lead you down side paths and rabbit holes where you'll rediscover a lot of details, experiences, and expertise that you've completely forgotten about because of how ingrained they are into your everyday work after years of doing it the way you do.

You're filled with details like this that you take for granted, but that other people might find helpful, useful, or fascinating. A conversation like that can teach you so much about the value of what you have already done and what you already know.

Once that conversation is over, grab a few sheets of paper, listen to the conversation on your own, and break down all the points of conversation and all of the nitty-gritty details into content ideas and buckets: blog posts, case studies, process pages, newsletter campaigns, audio lessons, and whatever other kinds of content you could make, based on what came out in that recorded conversation.

It's really hard to start writing from a completely blank page and have to pull something out of thin air. With all of this discussion to use as your own reference material, and all of the notes you'll have written out by topic or detail you'll have a really solid starting point for some specific pieces of content you can create for your website, your Facebook page, your newsletter, or even just to refine your own sales pitch.

If you don't have a large network of people you can reach out to geographically, you can find a lot of the same kinds of conversations in a really good Facebook group. Find a really high-quality one that's packed with people in your field, one where there are a lot of friendly and helpful experienced members, but also a steady flow of new members who are early on in their careers and have a lot of good questions.

Seek out those questions, answer them in as much detail as you possibly can, field follow-up questions, and even elaborate on the other answers based on your own experiences, what important points you think are missing from the conversation so far, and why you think they matter. Every time you give an answer to a question, capture your answer in a note-taking app on your computer or phone so you can use that as a jumping-off point for creating some kind of content later.

Or, invite those people you've connected with privately to ask for a Private Q&A call with you anytime they have questions, Record those calls with a tool like zoom, And use that recording as a reference to the same way you would with your voice recording app when you meet up with someone in the "real world."

When you seek out those questions, and you start to see some of the same ones over and over again, you'll develop a lot more self-awareness around how valuable your knowledge is, and how valuable it can be to become the person who's not afraid to spend a little time giving really great answers in extreme detail. 

The Content Buddy System is a good proof of concept to show that your own content doesn't have to be difficult to create, in order to be valuable to the people who consume it. You just need to learn to stop taking what you know for granted, and find ways to make it easy for it to flow out of you without doubting its value. Just because you learned how to do something a year or five years ago doesn't mean the information isn't still valuable to someone else.

Every question another person could conceivably ask you about your craft is an incredible opportunity to turn something you already know into something you can share.

Another article came out this week about how robots are going to write everything in the future. I'm not going to link to it because, as usual, it's a bunch of sensationalized and selfishly-motivated PR nonsense that doesn't try to tell the whole story.

The problem with almost all of the conversations in the copywriting world about artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and voice (smart speakers, voice-based assistant input) technologies is that when it comes up, we're stuck debating the companies behind the sensationalized articles and why they are wrong, not talking about the broader context of what is changing in the industry itself because of these technologies.

Writers are vastly underestimating what AI will become capable of, how it will be incorporated into every tap, touch, and glance of many interactions, and then shrugging it all off and saying “oh, there’s no way it’s ever going to do anything as well as I do.”

I think that kind of willful ignorance, blindness, self-assurance, or whatever you want to call it is a professional liability.

While I do actually believe humanity can eventually create artificial intelligence that writes as well as I do, plenty of writers are going to be put out of business way before that by failing to adapt to the work they are focused on now drying up. Not all of it will go away, but the ponds will get smaller even while the number of fish continues to increase.

I’ve had a lot of one on one conversations over the last year with people working on AI, AR, VR, and voice technologies to figure out the contexts that are most likely to become more or less important or otherwise change significantly over the next several years.

I seek out these conversations for perspective, because it's irresponsible to miss new opportunities and get blindsided by declines in what I've been doing for years at the same time.

The bottom line for me is this: I'm responsible for my job, and if any part of my business could potentially go away, or radically change for better or worse, then I need to take a deeper look at it than people who are just making press releases to grab attention for their start up.

Some very radical changes are coming, not just in whether or not we have to do the writing (which these discussions and articles disproportionately focus on), but where the greatest value in a human being doing the writing will be.

Some things just won’t be as important as they are today and that means we are not going to make the same kind of money off of those things, while new things will pop up and become more significant and we will have to adapt our offerings to get the most value out of that.

The mobile web, and the entire smart phone app ecosystem, did not exist in 2006. The web as we know it did not exist in 1995.

I think a lot of people, writers and otherwise, are falling for the old "those who don't learn from history" bit more than they realize, and missing opportunities to be prepared for new things as a result.

There are whole ecosystems around voice technology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence that do not exist now, and will not all develop at the same speed, but they are coming and they will change the importance rankings of many of the things we work within right now.

There will come a time when people need to look at their screens for far fewer things. There will come a time when people don't have to search on Google, they can just ask for something and information will be thrown up on the screen closest to them, cutting out a lot of the words in the middle of the search process.

People value their time more than anything, and when anything can be found quickly, delivered quickly, and returned quickly through voice and extremely streamlined and predictive visual experiences, the number of words they consume to get to the same end result today will decline very sharply as all of this unfolds.

If a client is paying 75% less for something in two years it's because they lost 75% of their attention through that channel. If that is the primary thing my business is built around, my business is in trouble and it's all of the shrugging off what was coming that got me there.

I think a lot of the first wave of collateral damage is going to be done in the contexts changing and people not paying attention to that because they're romantic about their work or blind to the opportunities.

The business of writing has changed a lot even if the fundamental craft has not, and I think that the end of the day, if I am going to be in the business of selling writing, I need to treat the business of it like it's a totally independent skill set from the craft of writing the words.

There's no real reason to be terrified of it unless you ignore it. There are so many new opportunities for people who are willing to dig to understand where all of them are, who is working on them, and what you can offer that they and their users, clients, and customers would benefit from.

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand about LinkedIn is that the same basic principles that apply to making friends in real life apply to getting respect and attention from the people with the power to decide whether or not they’re going to let you through their doors and give you a paycheck.

Here’s what that means at a practical level. The features that matter to you are not the job boards or the applications. For people who will be entering the job market, the killer feature of LinkedIn is the ability to type a few words into a search bar and get all-encompassing awareness of the name and company name of every significant individual human being operating in your field today.

All of this information is exposed to search. You very easily can find 300 CEOs in the aerospace engineering business, 300 CEOs in the toy business, 300 regional managers of banks in the part of the country you want to live in, 300 CEOs and managing directors of the top agencies doing creative work for big brands, the 300 top alpaca wool companies in South America, you name it. 

Enough of these people in every single industry are on LinkedIn that the people who aren’t are completely irrelevant to you within the context of what you’re doing. You can open LinkedIn, go to the search bar, type in the name of one company you want to work for, go to their company page, look at the job titles of everyone who works there, find the top people in the organization, and send connection requests to all of them for absolutely no reason.

You can do that to every one of the top 300 to 1000 people in your industry, and a good number of them will blindly accept your connection request, which makes it possible for you to send them a message.

Then, while you’re still living in the comfort of your college apartment or your college dorm, and you’re not in a panic because you haven’t found a job yet, you can go down the list of those connections and tell every one of them, in 3 sentences or less, that you will be entering their field in the next 12 months and that you would really appreciate any words of advice they could give you ahead of time about things you might not be fully aware of yet, if they have one or two minutes to spare.

If you play the numbers, if you connect with enough people, and if all you ask them to do is share their knowledge, a ridiculous number of them will reply and tell you everything they think you need to know. This is the most basic beginning of a relationship, the fundamental building block of everything that’s ever been built or created by humans on the planet Earth.

If you just alternate between asking all of those people a brief question once in a while, and just wishing them well and asking them how they are doing, then you will start to build real relationships with the people behind the other keyboard or smartphone.

You’ll remember their names and they’ll remember yours. You’ll remember which ones you really like talking to, and which ones you didn’t so much. They’ll remember that you not only valued their opinion and their input enough to ask for it proactively, but also that you’re committed to being good at your craft and growing personally, and that you’re not just a yes-person, a job-beggar, and an opportunist.

Now that you know how to connect with those people in the first place, here’s where I think it gets even more interesting. Here’s another opportunity 10 times even better than that, for the people who want to capitalize on it.

If you want to get really crafty and provide them with something more valuable and more memorable than just taking their time to ask questions, then once you have some rapport with them, you can ask if it’s alright for you to ask them five targeted questions for a LinkedIn article series you’re creating to provide a resource for your classmates.

Pick 3 to 5 questions that you think would be useful to you and your classmates — if you generally know the answers, getting different perspectives is the name of the game here—and just go down the list and ask everyone you have been having conversations with if they would be willing to contribute their perspective to the project.

To maximize the odds of getting replies from busy people, you can even use something like a Google Doc for each person, set to “anyone with the link can edit,” so that they can pull their phone and dump all of their thoughts into it while they are in an Uber, on a plane, or in line at the grocery store.

You could do this with dozens of your new contacts and most of them will reply and participate when they have the time, and the only real work you’ll have to do is editing and formatting to publish it on LinkedIn.

So many people out there have never been asked for their perspective or their opinion, have never been prompted to share what they know, that a really large number of them will jump at the chance if they have the time.

Every time you publish one of those articles, if you let the interview subject know about it, the odds are in your favor that they will share it with their network too. Something this basic can make a relatively low-profile person in any industry feel seen, heard, respected, and mildly famous.

Turning your personal LinkedIn page into a project that gives visibility to the people in your industry is probably the best strategic way to get visibility for yourself in an industry you haven’t started working in yet, and where you currently have zero authority, credibility, or connections of your own.

It’s a perfect and legitimate reason to start conversations with exactly the kinds of people you need to know, who you would only talk to you otherwise if you were asking them for something.

If you don’t want to do this because you’re worried about what people in your industry will think of you, and you’re convinced that they’re going to think you’re stupid or annoying, then you’re also missing out on opportunities for them to look at you like you’re an up-and-comer in your field, and to think that you’re a leader for taking some initiative.

A lot of people won’t accept your connection requests. A lot of people won’t reply to their messages. A lot of people won’t care. A lot of people will be too busy to care. That’s why you’re connecting with 300 or 500 or 1000 of them instead of 3 or 5 or 10.

If you connect with as many people in your field as you can, give them as much value and respect as you can, and you end up building meaningful relationships with 10% of them, you’ll have established yourself as one of the best-connected young people in your entire industry before you’ve even started.

At its core, this is an extremely basic marketing move. You are leveraging someone else’s expertise and knowledge, someone else’s network, someone else’s visibility, in a way that gives you an opportunity to create value for yourself, your peers, and your future contemporaries, all out of thin air, in exchange for visibility for yourself.

The dynamics at work here are all basic human psychology. People want to feel respected. People feel respected when they’re asked to weigh in on something based on the knowledge and experience they have accumulated through doing the work for years. People feel respected when they’re asked for that outside of the context of being paid to solve a problem or put out a fire. People feel respected when their input is wanted, not just needed.

So many people are playing the job application process like they’re downloading Tinder and trying to hook up with a paycheck on the first message, and people just don’t feel respected by that.

If you execute on this, you will have better connections and more options than anyone you know. If you can’t see the opportunity in that, then don’t do it. Almost everyone will ignore this and send their resumes off to fight it out in the robot arena, then wonder why nothing ever happened.

The process of making something happen doesn’t began with filling out a form on the Internet to apply for a job. The process of making something happen for you, personally, starts with recognizing that people only care about what gives them value, and then providing them with something of value in a way that very clearly sets your mentality apart from everyone else’s.

There's more to "content" than blogging and updating your social profiles, but a lot of people just don't have time to think up new ideas for what they can create. We put this list together to help you fast-track your own content ideation process.

There's a pretty good chance you already have the knowledge, experience, expertise, and tools to create content around many of the topics and forms below, and you just need to be prompted to consciously let what you already know flow out of your head.

As you read through the list below, reflect on each type of content and think of one or two things you could create in that format for your audience. When you're done generating ideas around this list, you'll probably have enough content ideas to keep you or your team busy for the whole year.

The List:

1. Share 100 things.
2. Test something and share the results.
3. Write about an organization you're involved in.
4. Do an AMA (Ask Me Anything).
5. Make an animated GIF.
6. Share the best advice you've ever received.
7. Publish your notes on a book you read recently.
8. Share links you bookmarked about a topic.
9. Do a "brain dump" of ideas.
10. Create an editorial calendar.
11. Add a new call to action to your site.
12. Create a card deck.
13. Write a case study.
14. Tell a cautionary tale.
15. Create a 30-day photo challenge.
16. Create a cheat sheet.
17. Define something that's often misunderstood.
18. Share your process.
19. Add "Click to Tweet" links to your content.
20. Draw a comic.
21. Compare two things.
22. Do a giveaway or contest.
23. Build an online course.
24. Draw a diagram.
25. Define some new industry terminology.
26. Create a directory.
27. Write an email series
28. Promote an event you're attending.
29. Fact or fiction?
30. Answer frequently asked questions.
31. Share your first impressions.
32. Put together a free resources page.
33. Predict the future.
34. Share a favorite creative exercise.
35. Share your progress toward a goal.
36. Write a how-to guide.
37. Write some headlines for future blog posts.
38. Share the story of how you started your business.
39. Add an illustration or graphic to a blog post.
40. Create an infographic.
41. Interview or profile someone.
42. Share some lessons learned from a project.
43. Do a Q&A livestream.
44. Start an advice column.
45. Write a manifesto.
46. Show something on a map.
47. Put together a media kit.
48. Mind map all of your content ideas.
49. Put together a mood board.
50. Make a music video.
51. Write an open letter.
52. Outline a series of blog posts.
53. Create a photo essay.
54. Curate a playlist.
55. Record a podcast.
56. Design a poster.
57. Analyze a trend.
58. Design a slide deck.
59. Create a printable resource.
60. Review a product, tool, or book.
61. Answer a "Question of the Week."
62. Write an ebook.
63. Share a quote.
64. Share your reading list.
65. Comment on a study or statistic.
66. Record a screencast.
67. Share a page from your sketchbook.
68. Draw sketchnotes for a presentation.
69. Express gratitude for something.
70. Make a slideshow.
71. Put someone else in the spotlight.
72. Share a customer's success story.
73. Write a thank you letter.
74. Show events on a timeline.
75. Share a top-ten list.
76. Transcribe an existing video or audio clip.
77. Make a tutorial.
78. Start a video series.
79. Develop a research report.
80. Create a workbook.
81. Design merchandise based on your brand.
82. Curate the best tweets at an event or about a subject.
83. Get diverse perspectives on something from other experts in your field.
84. Create a new client questionnaire form.
85. Start a private Facebook group.
86. Recap an event.
87. Start a link blog.
88. Publish a list of your capabilities.
89. Bust some myths about your industry.
90. Create content for a single-purpose microsite.
91. Turn an old post into an infographic.
92. Film a product demo video.
93. Visualize some difficult-to-understand data.
94. Share your favorite reviews and testimonials of your work.
95. Celebrate a holiday.
96. Rank the ten most important things.
97. Gather your best content into an ebook or audio book.
98. Create a quiz.
99. Hold online office hours.
100. Make a list of "people to know."
101. Create a template for others to use.