If you’re a business owner that maintains your company blog in order to attract new leads and build client relationships, then you know how difficult it is to consistently create high-quality content. Even producing a single blog a week seems to fall to the bottom of your agenda.
In fact, 41% of businesses have trouble staying on top of their content creation efforts. However, we’ve found that having a simple repeatable process can help to ensure you never run out of ideas for content and your posts always get completed on schedule.
Below we highlight a workable process you can use to create high quality content at a much faster rate.
Let’s jump in!
1. Have an Existing Stock of Ideas
There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank word document, trying to come up with your entire post right on the spot. To avoid this soul-wracking misery it’s helpful to have a running document that’s filled with compelling post ideas.
This can be something as simple as a Google Doc, an Excel spreadsheet, or a page within Evernote. It doesn’t matter where it is, just as long as you have it.
Inside your “idea document” you’ll keep fragments of ideas, interesting angles you can take, half-finished sentences, references, and of course, blog post headlines. That way every time you sit down to write you can open up your document and pull an idea from the list and get to work.
2. Use Templates and Outlines
There’s no need to create the structure of your blog post from scratch. Online readers already expect content to be in a specific format, so it’s a good idea to stay in line with these pre-conceived notions. This will make your content easier to read and digest.
Some common blog post formats include:
- List-based posts
- Ultimate guide posts
- Round-up posts
- The resource post
- The case study
- The thought leadership post
Once you have a basic temple that your post will fall under, it’s time to outline your post. Most blogs will follow a format like the one below:
- Your compelling intro
- Your summation statement (what the blog will be about)
- The meat of your post
- Your conclusion
- Your CTA (what do you want your reader to do)
3. Do Research and Reading First
With your post outlined it’s time to fill in the gaps and spend some time researching the main points. By researching before you write you’ll already have an idea of what you’re going to say.
This will make the writing process much more fluid and you’ll avoid taking breaks, which will interrupt your flow and prolong the writing process.
4. Write First, Edit Later
When the time comes to finally sit down and write you need to minimize any potential distractions. This means setting your phone to airplane mode, turning off the wi-fi, closing the office door, and getting to work.
By cutting down distractions you’ll feel less compelled to do something else mid-sentence. When you’re writing try to get all of the words down without stopping.
Refrain from making any edits until you’ve finished your first draft. It’s much easier (and faster) to edit once you already have the bulk of the words down.
5. Schedule Your Content Ahead of Time
If you have a strict content schedule it can be helpful to work ahead. Meaning the content you’re creating today won’t be posted for (ideally) a week or two. This will take some pressure off the writing process and will help to ensure you always have a steady stream of content.
It’s truly a great feeling knowing you already have a month’s worth of blog posts scheduled and ready to rock.
Even with a repeatable content framework, you still might not have the time to regularly create awesome content for your fans, clients, and, customers. If you need a little help with your content creation efforts, then reach out to our team today.
