Do you take the time to invest in yourself?

When it comes to content creation, upskilling your creative toolkit is crucial for creating fresh and relevant content.

There’s no better time than now to invest time to upskill and improve your content.

Upskilling increases ideation

I’ve done quite a few courses over the last few years (with more on the horizon) and knowing that I’ve gained a new skill has opened up my mind to new ideas and concepts.

Each course helps you understand another piece of the content puzzle even better.

Creating content is cyclical

It can seem never-ending, but if you equip yourself with the right skills, it can make things much easier and help you navigate the craziness of the ever-changing digital landscape.

Without learning new skills and keeping up with industry trends, you’ll fall behind when it comes to creating a kickass content marketing strategy.

Reset your creativity by trying something new

A while ago I did a 5 Day Creative Challenge with photographer Emma O’Brien.

Receiving daily challenges centred around a particular theme was a great way to reset creatively and start thinking about photography (and content creation) in a different way.

As a chronic overthinker, it was a lot of fun trying to come up with a shot idea in just one day for five days. Letting go of that idea of perfection definitely improved the quality of the images.

If you want to try your hand at your hand at prompts for yourself, try some of these:

Step out of your content comfort zone

I often find that rather than trying something new, the fear of failure is what holds me back. Learning a new skill can bring up feelings of imposter syndrome, but it’s well worth pushing through and making the best of it regardless of how you feel about your skill level.

I had the pleasure of attending an in-person art workshop to learn from South African artist Amy Ayanda. I am no painter, but my finished artwork was one that I was proud of because I took the leap and tried something new.

painting of the tankwa karoo

Think about what out of the box courses you can take. What have you wanted to learn but haven’t had the courage to act on it yet for fear of not being good enough?

Don’t feel bad about investing in personal development courses. In my opinion, no course is ever wasted. There’s always at least one nugget of information that adds to your skillset and improves your mind in some way – even if you don’t notice it.

It can be intimidating putting forward your ideas and thoughts but it’s better to try and learn from it rather than doing nothing and not moving forward. Here is a little motivation to keep in mind when it comes to trying out new ideas and concepts.

The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.

Seth Godin from the book What to do when it’s your turn

This quote applies to so many aspects in life – creating content for the digital online sphere or putting forward fresh ideas in the workplace. It may seem obvious, but you never know until you try.

Remember: Taking the time to upskill is not wasted time.