Where do you find your germs of inspiration?
Where do you find inspiration for your content creation?
For me, inspiration is found in every corner of my life.
I recently had a back and forth with a potential client, and her main concern was not creating the image content, it was what she was going to do with the photos once they were delivered to her.
Although she knows that she wants - and needs - branded lifestyle portraits to post on social in order to get more visibility for her wellness service, she has absolutely no gameplan for inspiration to write in the captions.
“Can’t I just post the images by themselves?”
Nope, that’s not gonna cut it when she’s looking to build a following, establish her expertise and get clients.
Besides, the portraits are visual punctuations of the stories that she wants to share about her business, brand and life, not the story itself. She needs both elements in order to maximize the value of that post, and get more eyeballs on her page.
The goal of the caption is to tell a story while teaching a lesson that is informational and inspirational to members of your tribe. It not only goes a long way to eliminate their pain points, but, it also establishes you as the expert and authority on the topic.
Since she was feeling anxious and a bit lost about the process, I took a time out to share with her some of the ways that I get inspired to write my content:
- Consultation call - yup, I told her that I was going to write about this talk we had, :)
- Direct message exchange with someone on social
- Reacting to a blog article I just read
- Watching a webinar
- Reading someone’s book
- Listening to a TED talk and pulling out a quote that deeply resonated with me
- Introductory call with potential referral partners and advocates of your work
- Commentary on a conversation thread started underneath one of your posts
- Talking about your recent podcast appearance
- Attending a workshop and/or conference
- Your experience speaking at an event or conference
- An exchange between two people on the train
- Pulling an idea from a message written on a sandwich board outside a bar - love those quotes I see all the time! :)
- Overhearing someone’s phone conversation in a very public place
- Listening to music
- Listening to a podcast
- Watching one of your favorite television shows
- Reading the newspaper
- Talk about an experience that happened in your personal life.
How many times have you participated in these activities and never thought once to take note of how it resonates with you and share it with your followers within the context of teaching a lesson through storytelling?
I know, I was there, too - don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s all about awareness, because once you set your mind to finding these opportunities to share these thoughts, concepts and lessons through your content, you will automatically start to find these stories screaming out at you.
And that’s when you need to start capturing these ideas immediately either on your phone or with a pen and paper!
Regardless of whatever inspires you to write, ask yourself how this can directly relate to solving pain points with your tribe, and work with that angle.
Once you have the idea sketched out, dive into your image content portfolio and choose a portrait that visually punctuates the sentiment of the story through your facial expression and the overall mood that the photo presents.
Although you may not be a copywriter, you are able to process and share your thoughts, and that’s really all your tribe wants from you, because your words help them to be better than they were yesterday.
Not a bad reason to get cracking on these stories, eh? :)
Want help figuring out the types of branded portrait images you need to visually punctuate the stories you want to share about your business, brand and life?
I’m super nerdy about this kinda stuff, so, I definitely can help.
Schedule a call with me to see if we’re a fit to work together.
PS - For those of you who aren’t in the know, I mail out these blogs 3x a week, and lemme tell you, they’re a real party, so, if you’d like to get in on this, sign up for it here and I’ll throw in a free gift for you...because I care, :)