Please do not share this template. This is proprietary and part of the Vosa.co ecosystem of which you are a member. While I won’t know if you copy it and share it, you’re the one that has to look at yourself in the mirror every morning or look me in the eyes at the next conference knowing you’re a Snollygoster. (also, can we please bring back old timey words, they’re fun.)
IMPORTANT! DO NOT GET OVERWHELMED BY THIS BOARD! I cannot stress this enough. You can fill out just the Idea column and nothing else or you can fill out everything. It’s entirely up to you but don’t make this another “job I have to do” or you won’t do it.
This should be a place you want to visit, a place of creative inspiration that brings you happiness and the desire to be creative, not a burdensome task you have to add to your growing list of everyday bullshit.
This board is intended for ideas and tracking of ‘easier’ content that requires little or no production overhead. Any idea that gets categorized as Creation Methodology: Production Content should be moved to the Vosa Content Production Tracker Kanban Board so you can better track all of the moving parts of a larger production as this board is not suited for that.
MINDSET MATTERS! Remember what you’ve learned so far inside Vosa.co - the world around us has spent years training us to follow the rules and not be “creative”, so thinking of yourself as a “content creator” will often times stop you in your tracks. To disrupt that mindset, think of this as “documenting” and not “creating.” You have a constant flow of ideas running through your head - after a call with a client, during a meeting or conversation with a peer, after seeing a post on social media, while on a walk or at the gym, sitting in front of the TV - moments of inspiration pop up everywhere and unexpectedly. When these happen you think “I should write that down!” That writing it down is documenting it. This is no different, whether you make a video or audio recording on your phone or laptop, or you write down your thoughts into a blog or social media post, you’re just documenting. When you think of that 90 second video you want to post on LinkedIn or Youtube as “documenting your thoughts” you break out of the mindset that it needs to have perfect audio, lighting, and fancy editing.
First things first: Save this to your own Notion workspace. Click the three dots next to this board name in the left-hand navigation, then click ‘Duplicate’. You don’t want someone else to see your ideas or be able to edit your board, so make a copy for yourself.
This sketchpad has 11 columns
Idea
This one is pretty simple. What is the fleeting idea you had you want to document your thoughts on? Keep this very simple, your goal here is to be concise so a single topic that will only take a few minutes to document is ideal. For example, talking about this quote from Kevin Mitnick “For the average home-user, anti-virus software is a must.” and how AV is no longer enough given our hybrid work environment is appropriate because it’s a singular idea. Discussing the broader work than spanned Kevin’s life is likely not.
Domain
This one is probably the most difficult one, and that is by design. Refer back to the Personal Brand & Story Canvas’s where you defined your IKIGAI, Golden Circle, Archetypes, Protagonists, and Hero’s Journey. - make sure what you’re creating is aligned with not only your Domain of Expertise but your customer.
If you find a topic that is hot and trending and you’re eager to participate to “get noticed”, compare it to this list of what you have qualification or Subject Matter Expertise in. If the topic isn’t in your lane, stay away from it or get a peer to co-create with you - this is a core component to finding out who your audience is, and who isn’t. If you always talk about technology and CyberSecurity then as a one-off start talking about RevOps, you will turn away the audience you have been building.
Think like your customer and not around what you want to sell them. Further, each one should be a single topic, so if you think one Domain could be “Sales & Marketing” it should actually be two domains: “Sales”, and “Marketing”. If you think one Domain is “Cloud technology & Security”, it should be two domains: “Cloud Technology”, and “Security.” If you think one Domain should be “Business Efficiency & Revenue” it would be two domians: “Business Efficiency”, and “Revenue.” The intent here is to keep you thinking very tightly about your topic and keep it short by avoiding scope creep. You should edit this category to include Domains that matter to you (see video link above if you’re not familiar how to edit Notion forms.)
Tags
Once you’ve assigned your idea to a Domain, here you can give it some Tags that better dial in the topic or you can leave it blank. This can be a Multi-Select list where you can select multiple tags or you can leave it a text field and type in the ones your feeling at the time. You should edit this category to include tags that matter to you (see video link above if you’re not familiar how to edit Notion forms.)