When I say “faster content writing” I don’t mean writing or typing fast, what I mean is, you should be able to generate new content writing ideas very fast.
70% B2B content marketers find it very difficult to come up with new and engaging content (source). Everybody wants to write great content and use content marketing to promote business, but when it comes to generating fresh and engaging content, most of the people are stumped. After all, how many ideas can you come up with? Read 10 tips to write high-quality content extremely fast.
Faster content writing means continuously coming up with new ideas and then giving shape to those ideas as fast as possible so that they can be published as blog posts and articles. Read With what frequency should you publish your blog?
People who are capable of faster content writing are not prodigiously talented (some of them might be). They’re not constantly being bombarded with outstanding ideas for faster content writing. They have just developed a system that enables them to generate new content on a daily basis.
Why faster content writing is a challenge?
Faster content writing is a challenge because
- Not everyone is a writer or at least a habitual writer
- Constantly coming up with new ideas requires research and concentration
- Writing takes time no matter how great an idea you have come upon
- Even the physical part of content writing – typing, that is – can be a challenge to some
- Ideas don’t grow on trees – you need to constantly read social media updates and blog posts and articles by others.
Read 20 benefits of hiring professional content writing services.
Is faster content writing possible?
Yes it is. It is not magical. It doesn’t even require special talents. You just need to get in the habit of writing content faster using all the tools available to you. Faster content writing is mental state, actually.
If your brain is not attuned to processing information and then converting that information into writing, faster content writing will be difficult for you. Again, it doesn’t mean it cannot be achieved. In a couple of weeks, you will get into a groove and every opportunity you come across will be a content writing opportunity. Read 22 ways to create compelling content when you are stuck for ideas.
Another thing you need to keep in mind is that faster content writing is more of a system rather than a singular activity. It’s a process that you will need to set in motion and it may take a few weeks before you can achieve faster content writing in a fruitful sense. You need to learn to gather information and then organize that information. You will need to learn to work on multiple blog posts and articles and organize them in their respective files and folders. You will have to keep an eye on the research data and bits of information that you may use in your blog posts and articles. Anyway, let’s get down to the basic topic of this blog post:
20 ideas for faster content writing
- Have a well-defined content strategy: If you don’t have direction it will be very difficult to come up with content writing ideas. Once you have a well-define content strategy at your hand your content writing will be faster because you will know what you are trying to achieve.
- Prepare a long list of keywords and search terms: A list of keywords and search terms will help you define your topics. You can get at least 5 blogging ideas out of every keyword and search term, and if you have 20 keywords and search terms, you already have 100 blogging ideas. If you plan to publish one blog post everyday, you are set for the next 100 days. If you follow the next steps, by the time you are through with 100 blogging ideas, you will have a collection of 300 more blogging ideas. Why is it important to have blogging ideas? Because once you have a title in front of you, content writing becomes much faster.
- Start maintaining an ideas file: These days I’m using OneNote to keep all my content writing and content marketing blogging ideas at one place. I’m also using XMind to organize topics and track at what stage I am with these topics. Read 10 productivity tools that I use for content writing.
- Prepare your own list of content writing productivity tools: We are blessed with lots of tools in this digital age that can help us achieve faster content writing. We have state-of-the-art word processors. As I have mentioned in the above-linked blog post about content writing productivity tools, you can do content writing on your PC, laptop, tablet as well as mobile phone these days. So, you’re not even confined to a single place. Whenever you are visited upon by an idea, you can start writing. Use your favourite text editor on your mobile phone. Explore various word processors.
- Learn to save ideas as you come across them: For instantly saving ideas I use Google Keep when I am not in front of my PC. Of course, when I’m working on my PC I use the OneNote clipper in the browser. Save blogging ideas right left and center. Never give too much thought into what you should save and what you shouldn’t save. These days space isn’t a problem whether you are saving information on your local drive or on a cloud drive.
- Work on multiple blogging ideas simultaneously: When you start writing a blog post you don’t have to finish it in one go. If you’re feeling stuck, leave it and move on. Do some other work. Don’t spend much time if nothing comes to your mind. If you are receptive of faster content writing, ideas will come on their own and then you can quickly open the file (this is where the ability to work on any device comes handy) and start writing.
- Do regular reading on your subject: Writing without reading is very difficult. Reading is like a nutrition. It keeps the land of your creativity fertile. Your brain becomes ripe for writing ideas if you are reading other people. If you don’t have time for reading books you can read blogs. You can check out Medium. You can also check out Flipboard for lots of interesting content.
- Track your topic using Google Alerts: This is a nice way of tracking what the others are publishing about your subject. For example, if I never want to run out of content writing ideas about content marketing, I can receive Google Alerts on the topic of “content marketing”. So, whenever someone publishes something about content marketing or says something about content marketing on his or her blog or website, you get an email with the link. This way, you are letting other people send you multiple blogging ideas every day, making your content writing much faster.
- Keep a tab on social networking websites: Lots of interesting stuff is posted on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You don’t need to waste time on multiple social networking platforms. Explore various platforms and see where you can find the most useful and interesting content writing ideas and then spend more time there.
- Subscribe to some mailing lists or newsletters and your subject: If you don’t have much time to visit blogs and websites individually, many of these blogs and websites publish regular newsletters. They will send you emails whenever they update their blog or website and if you want you can visit the link and get content writing ideas from there.
- Get content writing ideas from your existing blog posts and webpages: For example, I can write a complete blog post on how to use social networking websites to get more content writing ideas. Yes, I can write a complete 1000-word long blog post on this subtopic. Similarly, you can revisit your already-published blog posts and see if you can get new content writing ideas from there.
- Re-purpose existing content: I often make slides out of my existing blog posts and then upload them on SlideShare. Here are a few slides on content writing and content marketing that I have uploaded. A good thing about these slides is, especially in the latest versions of PowerPoint, that you can export them into a video file and then upload the video file to YouTube. You can also create graphics from useful portions from your existing blog posts.
- Create an editorial calendar: Maintaining an editorial calendar that you strictly follow will help you write content faster. This is because if you know on what day what you need to publish, you will create a writing schedule accordingly. Scheduling is very important. It helps you in faster content writing.
- Write focused content: Don’t try to pack everything in a single blog post or webpage. Cover a single topic in a particular blog post because this way you will be able to write faster. It will also help you research better and even organizing this research will be a lot better and faster when you focus on a narrow topic.
- Use a dictation software: These days you can do voice typing practically in every device. You can get a dedicated dictation software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking. If you don’t want to spend so much money, Google Docs allows you to do voice typing in the Chrome browser. You can do voice typing on your mobile phone and the typing is quite accurate. This in itself can double your content writing speed.
- Improve your vocabulary: This may seem unrelated but if you are comfortable with vocabulary you will be able to write faster. Lack of proper words can stunt your writing. If all the time you have to check whether you are using the right words or not you will be considerably slowed down. On the other hand, if you have a decent vocabulary your content writing will be quite fast.
- Organize your thoughts using a mind mapping tool: Writing complete sentences and paragraphs can be a problem and at moments it can be quite daunting. On the other hand, writing monosyllabic text or even single words is easier and faster. I don’t use the above-mentioned XMind just to organize topics, I sometimes also use it to organize thoughts for a single blog post. I create a dedicated mind map for a single blog post and then I start adding sections and then adding subsections to those sections, and so on. A good thing about a mind mapping tool is that you can also add multiple comments to the various branches. Once you have a mind map, you can write a blog post in 20 minutes.
- Outsource to an editor: Your content writing can be much faster if you don’t have to worry about grammar, spelling and style. Write like a maniac and then outsource the editing part to an editor. This way, you will be able to write what you want to write and the writing will be high-quality once your editor is through with it.
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Follow a set pattern when writing blog posts: If you jump headlong in the process of content writing you may face mental blocks and other hurdles. Instead, create a structure and then stick to it. For example, writing a particular blog post may include
- Ideation
- Outline
- Research and data gathering
- Draft writing and preparing graphics
- Revision, editing and proofreading
- Publishing
- Distributing the link on social networking websites
- Keep track of your most creative hours of the day: This must be the time when you feel very creative and your words flow like a mountain stream. It may take a few weeks to find out exactly when your writing is seamless but once you have discovered and once you start writing during those periods of the day, your content writing will be much faster.
If you take your content marketing seriously and if you plan on writing content for your website or blog on your own, how you can do faster content writing should be taken seriously. It may not matter in the beginning but as you go on writing week after week, month after month, how much time you spend on writing individual blog posts will begin to matter a lot, especially when writing content is not your livelihood.