Although there are business people who enjoy writing, the vast majority of marketers consider content marketing to be a necessary evil. It’s a chore, not unlike washing dishes, folding laundry, or doing taxes.
There probably isn’t anything we can put in this article that will make you suddenly began to love the process of putting words onto the page, especially if it’s something you already don’t like doing. However, there are a few tips we can give you that can make the process of coming up with material for your content marketing plan a little bit easier.
Here are three suggestions that can save you a great deal of time, stress, and aggravation…
#1 Plan Your Topics Ahead of Time
Writing anything is twice as hard as it needs to be when you’re starting with a blank page. Make it easier for yourself, mentally and creatively, by jotting down a few notes in outline form. Those will guide you from one idea to the next. More importantly, they’ll stop you from struggling to come up with new ideas as you move from one paragraph to the next.
#2 Break Writing into Three Steps
A lot of marketers think that writing content is something that’s done within a certain block of time. But the professionals do it in three distinct steps.
- First, outline a topic, along with any research or important points that have to be included.
- Second, turn those rough outlines and notes into a completed draft that flows from the beginning to the end.
- Finally, edit and proofread the finished piece so it reads cleanly and coherently.
By following a similar approach, you can make your writing sharper and avoid the trap of not knowing which steps to take next.
#3 Promote Your Published Content
Deciding to sit down and come up with new content gets a lot easier when you’re getting page views, compliments, and inbound marketing results. So, rather than simply throwing a piece of writing that took you hours to finish online and hoping for the best, make the effort to promote it via email, social networking, and internal links from your other pages and articles. The resulting feedback will motivate you and even help you come up with ideas for future topics.
Using these three tips, you should be able to write the content you need faster and with less hassle. That might make you feel inclined to do it more often (or at least put it off less often than you do now!).
No matter what, don’t lose sight of the fact that content pushes your internet marketing campaigns forward like nothing else. That fact alone makes it worth the effort to come up with new material week after week.