How To Use Your 9-to-5 to Create Content

Your full-time job can be a content gold mine

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Don’t treat your 9-to-5 as a hindrance or only as a source of financial stability while you build your dream writing career on the side. Use it as a content opportunity and tell better stories while writing on the internet.

The question is: how?

In this AI-powered world, it’s the human touch in your content that helps build that all-important ‘connect’ with your reader. And the easiest way to do that is to share relatable stories from your daily life, because no AI-generated text can do that. At least not yet anyway.

Let me show you an easy framework that will help you create relatable and compelling stories from your full-time job.

As a banker, I will use examples from my job, please replace them with your own. Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Content framework for your job

Let's divide your work into four areas. Take a pen and paper, create a 4x4 grid, and write down the following:

1. Skills: all the skills that you use in your daily job, even if you might think they are not relevant in other fields. E.g., presentations, analysing data, sales, relationship building, writing a simple explanation of complex ideas
2. Qualifications: What is your background and qualifications? E.g., B. A. in Economics, MBA in Finance
3. Day in the life: details of a typical day at work to help link back to the skills that you put in #1. E.g., emails, startup finance, memo writing, selling to new clients
4. Strengths: things that you are good at or others seek your advice onE.g., problem-solving, relationship-building, writing

Photo by Mikey Harris on Unsplash

How do I build with this framework?

Let me share how I built my recipe for writing from my work life.

• I write both detailed and brief memos at work, explaining complex businesses to senior stakeholders. Combine this with my love for writing, and it helped me choose writing as my side-hustle.
• Since I have a degree in economics and business finance, I understand the numbers behind creating a successful solopreneurship.
• Working with startups has taught me how to monetize new products. I am leveraging that to prepare a plan to monetize my writing skill
• Relationship building is a core skill for a salesman. Similarly, building an audience involves developing a deep connection with your readers

Doing this formed the building blocks of my writing journey. And in that journey, I want to help other new writers benefit from the skills that I have learned working in my job for over 10 years.

Pick things from your day job that you like most and start writing. Write down the above list and see how you can piece them together.

Use your job as an enabler in your writing journey, and be ready to share a little piece of you with the world every day. Very quickly, you will see how you start meeting amazing people.

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

As I find my own voice, my writing will delve into a variety of topics. I hope it gives you something to think about or, better yet, helps you act. Do share your thoughts in the comments section so we can keep the dialogue flowing.

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Thank you for reading!