Resume Writers' Digest: Coming Up With Content For Career Seekers

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Coming Up With Content For Career Seekers

Content is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your resume writing business website, increase your visibility with targeted prospects, and increase your conversion rate for resume prospects becoming resume clients.

But sometimes it can be a challenge to come up with ideas for what to write about. Here are some ideas for helping you come up with interesting and compelling content ideas.

Read!
It might seem like a novel idea, but reading more can help your mind become more creative — even if you're reading fiction. Reading for enjoyment can open creative portions of your mind that you may have had closed for a while. This is especially true if you've been super focused on your resume writing business and not doing much in the way of recreation. Oddly, watching TV doesn't help. Reading uses more energy and more of your brain, while watching TV uses less energy than sleeping.

Exercise
If you feel stuck, get out of the house and do some exercise. If it's a nice day, take a brisk walk around your neighborhood; if it's not a nice day, go to an indoor mall or gym to walk around and don't think about your business or that resume you haven't started writing yet. Just think about breathing, and how your arms and legs feel while moving. A 10-minute brisk walk focusing only on your breathing and movement can open your creative mind faster than almost any other activity.

Reuse, Repurpose, and Repeat
If you've been blogging for a long time, it's likely that you feel like you've said it before. Well, if you posted about something five years ago, it's likely out of date. Take a little time once a week or so, or if you're stuck for ideas, and go back to an old blog post. Rewrite it and update it, especially if the advice is now old or irrelevant. In addition, you can take a bunch of old blog posts, move them to a Word document, edit and create an ebook. Any way that you can make the old new again is a good way to create fresh content.

Finally, remember to keep a note pad, or use your smartphone to write down ideas as they come to you. Don't believe for one moment you'll remember it later. Even if you're in the shower and come up with an idea, get out and write it down before it goes away. By tracking all your ideas, you'll easily be able to sit down anytime you have the time, look at your list of ideas and create fresh content on demand. (I use Evernote to keep track of blog post ideas.)

Jumpstart Your Writing With Pass-Along Materials

After describing Pass-Along Materials to one resume writer, she told me that she prefers to create her own content. Hey, I have no problem with that. But if you don't want to reinvent the wheel — or you just want a jumpstart on your writing, consider Pass-Along Materials. Here are just some of the topics you can access: