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Robyn hates structure around marketing. Jess is the ultimate planner. But both of us have experienced the feeling that as time has passed in our online businesses, marketing feels less and less fun.

So, we wondered if the problem was that we were being too strategic, and in doing so we were losing sight of our inspiration?

At what point does marketing go from fun to drudgery?

Inspiration, passion, and dreaming is what makes entrepreneurship so much fun! When you start out, you can take a vision and mold it into whatever you want it to be – your creative juices are overflowing!

When we begin marketing, we are inspired and passionate about sharing our vision.. But then… it starts to feel like so much work. And we start overthinking every aspect of what we’re doing.

So, is the issue that we are losing the inspiration when we get too strategic and too planned out in our approaches to marketing?

And if so, how the heck can you balance the logical side of your brain with the creative side, when, at the end of the day, you need to have a little bit of a plan in place to ensure you’re making sales?

Content Creation

The thing we hear over and over from other entrepreneurs is that content creation is what they find least fun about marketing an online business. 

Our approaches to content creation differ in a big way. Robyn prefers to create content intuitively, and without a lot of structure. Jess starts with a clear purpose in mind, and often outlines the points she wants to make before writing the full message.

Robyn’s Approach

Robyn describes her approach to writing content as first spewing out everything on her mind. THEN she digs into the more strategic part of her brain (does she have a hook, does she have a message, is she telling people what to do next?)

The potential with this approach is to spend so much time in a creative headspace, you can lose your purpose. Therefore, your content could come off confusing to your audience.

In order to avoid this, Robyn embraces her unstructured approach to writing from a place that is inspired. She saves multiple pieces of content, then when she needs them for a particular purpose, she selects the one that most closely matches.

Jess’ Approach

Jess starts with the purpose and works backwards from there. Often, that means writing the call to action first, then outlining the rest of the content, then creating the message.

The trouble with this is that it is easy to start overthinking everything and losing the passion in your messaging that comes with allowing your creative juices to flow.

If you are more of a planner like Jess, you can go ahead and start with your call to action, but then say out loud what you would say about that topic if you were having a conversation with a friend. Then write it out. Record yourself if you forget how you said it.

This will help you stay in a conversational tone, and keep you from overthinking every word you write.

The logical side of the brain wants to do x, y, and z. But, the right side of the brain will resist that. And we think THIS is what makes content marketing lose its fun!

Final thoughts ~

Bottom line – It’s important to embrace yourself as a whole!

When you’re sitting down at a computer and you want to write a caption, stop yourself from overthinking. For example, What do you want to talk about? (Right brain.) What is your purpose for putting this out there into the world? (Left brain.)

When you’re looking at your overall marketing plan, you DO need to think about your strategy in terms of where and how often you need to be showing up, how you’ll weave your mission into your messaging, etc. BUT… consider what feels fun to you – and make sure your process reflects that.

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