Small Digestible Moments

I went downstairs this morning to have breakfast, a nice bowl of cereal.  As I was pouring my cereal my eye caught the nutrition facts, you know that darn label that tells you how many calories and other stuff you are eating per serving.  The part that got me after I poured a bowl full of cereal was the serving size.  I realized I had WAY more than one serving in my bowl.  I went for two servings!  This made me realize I may have a portion control problem and that there is a marketing lesson in this experience.

Yeah, I tend to find lessons in a lot of things I do.  The lesson this provided has to do with content.

Content is all around us all the time.  Whether it’s your social feeds, an RSS Feed or entertainment - it’s constantly coming to us in all directions.  The worst part is that there are no serving limits, you can gobble up tons of information at any moment of your day for as long as you want.  This thought made me realize, maybe I need to portion control my content. 

I don’t know about you but I read a lot of articles, blog posts and social posts every day to stay on top of my industry, but I still miss things.  The things I miss are usually times when I am working on a new blog post, creating content for a client, building a strategy for another campaign or spending time with my family.  I can live with those moments.

How do we portion control content?  I have decided to do this by taking three steps.

1.  Block out 30 minutes three times a day to consume content, while leaving time for it to digest.

We often consume content but do not give it time to settle in before we are off to consume more.  This is only because we are afraid of missing out, at least I am.  If we strive to be the very best in our industry, we have to stay on top of all things in our industry.  Right?

That is how I used to think, now I find it is more important to take the time to make key connections with people.  Yep, people.  Yes, I may miss some breaking industry news, but I will catch it on the flipside and take my time to digest it.  Do you think this is something that will work for you?

2.  Become a content connoisseur and critic.

As I digest my content I want to take the time to write about the content I just consumed, while it is fresh in my mind.  Then I want to critique it, privately of course.  Once I do this I can revisit my notes to find out which content source was better, allowing me to refine my content pallet.

3.  Discuss my content sources with peers.

I have noticed that the more I discuss content sources with my peers I tend to find better sources.  This allows me to try new sources and discover which ones meet the needs of my content pallet.  My peers will also let me know if a source is bad prior to consuming, although I may still give them a try.
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