What’s the key to establishing your online presence? In a nutshell, it’s creating content.
Your content should be helpful to your readers while making your business shine.
As you may know, however, creating valuable content takes time, so if content creation is NOT your thing, it may take you hours (days, maybe?) to write a simple blog post or article.
You dread each time you have to work on writing or creating graphics because you know it’ll be hours before you’re done. and you’re probably thinking about all the other things you could be doing within that time.
But you know what? It doesn’t have to be this way.
You don’t have to spend hours agonizing over each piece of content that you create.
In fact, if you follow a few basic content productivity tips, you’ll trim hours off the creation process and MAYBE even grow to enjoy it (:
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Make a list of topics you want to cover
What should you write about as a service provider? This is a common question and the answer can vary.
What you want to remember here is that your topics should generally be geared towards your target audience or your ideal client.
I know it’s tempting to write about your life struggles or what the kids are up to, but unless your blog is about these topics, you really won’t be speaking to your readers.
Think about the services you offer and what your ideal reader will want to read.
For example, if your ideal customers are bloggers, you could write about topics that will help their business, such as how to be more efficient, affiliate marketing, analytics, maintaining a business while traveling, etc.
Create an outline
Remember your high school essay outlines? Urgh, I sure don’t miss those days. But rest assured, your blog outline does not have to be like that.
You can make a simple outline with just a few bullet points or it can be more complex with complete paragraphs that will need to be expanded later.
Whichever method works for you is fine as there’s no wrong way to make an outline.
But why even create an outline?
The truth is, it’s much easier to write when you already know the main points you want to cover, so try this:
- Write down several points you want to touch on
- Go back and number them in order of importance
You’ll want to share your most important points in the first part of your content.
Write a dreadful first draft (haha)
Maybe you struggle with content creation because you’re trying to craft the perfect piece.
OF COURSE you want the perfect 👌 article but please understand that it’s much easier to write a terrible first draft and edit it later than it is to create perfection the first time around.
Even the most experienced writers have to edit their content. Don’t make this hard on yourself!
A good way to write your first draft is to set a timer.
Using only your outline, start writing. Don’t overthink it and you don’t have to start with the introduction if you don’t want to.
You can start by writing your conclusion or the main part of your post if that’s what you prefer.
Also, don’t worry if you jump around as you create your content, just write quickly!
Your goal right now is just to get your ideas on the page. Later, you’ll organize or edit those ideas.
Control interruptions
This is a biggie! We work from home or remotely, so repeated interruptions are a common issue with content creation (the doorbell, the kids wrestling in the den, whatever it is).
When you’re interrupted frequently, you lose track of your thoughts and have to look back to figure out where you were.
Once you’re in a creative state of mind, it’s important to stay in it until you’ve completed your project. Most interruptions really can wait until later.
If you truly can’t avoid interruptions, consider writing at night or early in the morning when life is more peaceful.
Create in batches
Try to write several blog posts or articles back to back (as many as you can). Do the same for your graphics.
When you work this way, you’ll stimulate your creativity and come up with even more ideas.
Plus, you’ll now have content that you can schedule for a future date.
Content productivity is a skill that anyone can learn but not all content hacks will work for you.
You’re going to have to figure out what you like best and focus on the tips that make you the most productive.
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