Any relationship requires an exchange of time and information.

In order to cultivate a deeper friendship, you tell each other stories about your past and swap dreams for the future.

When you have a blog, cultivating a relationship with your audience happens in a similar way.

The content that you put out is a form of relationship building.

Each article, podcast episode, or video helps you connect with your audience. It adds value to their lives which builds trust.

In the same way that you wouldn’t leave your friend waiting at a café without calling to say you couldn’t make it, it’s critical that you don’t leave your audience wondering where you’ve gone because you only post an article when you feel inspiration strike.

That being said, I understand that it’s not easy to be consistent with content for your blog because there are so many other things that you could be doing.

However, with just a few tweaks to your system, the entire content creation process could be much easier.

How?

When you construct a pool of ideas, or an information collection system, you’ll never run out of interesting content to share with your audience.

Let’s take a look at how you can do that.

Three Steps to Creating an Information Collection System

Step 1: Create an information collection hub.

While there are many wonderful tools on the market for keeping notes, when it comes to building this system, you’ll want to choose just one so all of your ideas and reference materials are in one tidy place.

Evernote is the most powerful tool for keeping notes organized and in one central location, but you can also use tools like:

• Instapaper – Instapaper is reading software that helps you gather content from all of your favorite websites into one place. The format is beautiful, easy-to-read, and well-organized thanks to the option to create categories. Since it’s also available on your phone, it’s incredibly convenient to save and read content while on the go.
• Pocket– Pocket is another type of software for reading and storing interesting information that you find on the web. It’s simple and a great starter. You’ll also be able to quickly see if you’re saving too many articles compared to the time you have available, and this will encourage you to be more discerning in the future.

By choosing one hub to collect all of your information, you’ll be able to easily review what you’ve stored, as well as review your ideas, so you can reference them in the future when writing out your editorial calendar.

Step 2: Capture information.

While it’s important that you store interesting articles and videos you’ve encountered online, it’s also ideal to store pieces of information like:

• Question from clients and readers
• Comments from readers
• Misconceptions past clients have had about your specific field
• Success stories from past clients or readers

There are many ways to organize this information, and in Evernote you can use a simple tag like “blog post idea” so you can search later and have them all in one place to review.

You can also create notebooks for the various categories listed above.

When you capture information in this way, you’re ensuring that you always have ideas for content that will be valuable for your audience and may potentially guide you in the direction of new products, services or offerings.

Step 3: Review what you collected.

While capturing information is an essential ingredient, making the time to review what you’ve collected is the most critical piece of the pie. Interestingly enough, it’s the step we skip most often.

We accumulate tons of information and then simply never review it!

As you can imagine, reviewing everything you collect can take up a significant chunk of time. It’s best to schedule this review in advance.

How do you decide how often to review what you’ve collected?

Try to answer questions like:

• How frequently do I post on my blog?
• How much time do I need to research a topic before creating content around it?
• How complex is my posting process?

For example, a video might be much more complex to produce based on filming and editing than an article, which only requires that you write it and have it edited.

So, will you be reviewing monthly, every two months, or every three months?

Any period of time more than three months will be too infrequent and won’t serve your immediate needs.

When you take the time to review everything you’ve collected, it will surprise you how much content is waiting to be created. Sharing those gems will help ensure that you build a steady rapport with your audience.

Decide on content topics while you review everything you’ve stored.

As you review your collected content in Evernote, Pocket, or Instapaper, you can start to make a list of content ideas for upcoming slots in your editorial calendar.

This can be as simple as making a list of topics in Evernote. Add some bullet points beneath each topic as an outline for what you’ll discuss. You might even decide on the exact dates and place them on your calendar with the topic idea.

When you decide what your content topics are, you’ll be more prepared when sitting down to create it. You’ll be more likely to be consistent, too.

Treat content as an experiment

All of the steps above are necessary. They keep you consistent and build relationships.  Your content offers you a virtual laboratory for products you might have in mind, experiences you want to create, or cords that you want to strike with your audience.

It helps you and your audience learn and make progress toward your respective goals together.

Back to You

What are you currently using to collect information for your content? How do you think you could improve your current system?