Developing a Winning Content Writing Strategy

Over the last few months I've been working on establishing a content strategy for myself. What I learned is that there is no ONE SIZE FITS ALL for this task.

You need to see what other people do, take what works for you, and form the strategy for yourself.

Discipline plays a big part because if you don't have some sort of structure, creating content will eventually dissipate. Or, you will show up to write/produce and stare at a screen for hours.

There are a few topics to cover here. Active creation and passive creation. I will provide a breakdown of each and explain the methodology behind what to do.

Active creation will be defined as sitting in front of paper or a screen and writing/producing content.

Passive creation will be the actions that get the brain juices flowing in the process, which helps us create the content and generate ideas.?

Passive Creation

Passive creation is often overlooked because people tend to just work without thinking. This is inefficient and I can't even begin to stress the amount of times I stared at a screen because I didn't give my mind time to generate ideas.

In reality, there are an infinite number of things to write about in existence. It's as simple as taking a quote and expanding upon it with your own personal experience. This is the important, personal experience and when you use this lens you will NEVER run out of ideas.

The catch here is you need the flow of thoughts and information to get your brain moving and producing this type of content. Here are a few tips to get started.

1. Take a shower

This is an easy one we have all experienced.

Give your brain a thought to focus on prior to hopping into the shower. The relaxation of a shower has been shown to get your brain activated. As you go into autopilot mode, your mind will start running through your scenario passively while you are relaxed.

This often leads to awesome ideas - you just need to be proactive when using it initially.

2. Take a walk

Taking a walk has been proven time and time again as a powerful tool for idea generation. Our brains just tend to work better when it’s in an active state and there’s a ton of science now to prove it

A Stanford study in 2014 showed:

Stanford researchers found that walking boosts creative inspiration. They examined the creativity levels of people while they walked versus while they sat. A person's creative output increased by an average of 60 percent when walking.

I can definitely attest to the benefits. When I separate from the flow of writing and give my brain a thought and just go, I tend to come up with a ton of ideas.

3. Consume Content

I list this under passive content creation as you are not actively writing or producing.

Consuming and digesting content created by others will lead to too many ideas and you will be overwhelmed. The key thing to remember here is you are listening to learn and spark the ideation process.

Pay attention to what you are consuming and look for bits and pieces that you can latch onto.

This method has given me a plethora of things to write about. Don't sell yourself short here; remember we are applying things to our own personal experiences. We can be quick to shut something down thinking "I'm not qualified" to write, but only if we allow it.

4. Meditation

Most people shy away from this one.

"It doesn't work" or "It doesn't work for ME". It works for everyone. But like anything else it is a learned skill and takes time to develop.

Like taking a shower, meditation clears your mind which kills the ego. When you aren't thinking about what you have to do tomorrow it becomes a lot easier to be creative.

Practicing this is 100% worth it.

Active Creation

1. Store your ideas

Passive creation will lead to a flow of ideas. Take these thoughts and get them down on paper. I recommend using a tool like notion.so to keep track. I always have a running queue of things I catch throughout the week to write about.

Keep your storage organized and workable. I may share a template I use in the future for this but for now, work on what is easiest for you.

2. Outline

Before any writing I prefer to outline what I'm going to talk about.

This means taking all snippets, tweets, quotes, and dumping them into a doc. I then break them up into a flow while adding some context of what I want to write about .

When I do this,? my process of writing becomes much simpler since I've already built the frame for the picture that I'm going to place into it.

It makes streamlining the writing process so much easier. The nice thing here is outlines don't take as long. Having multiple outlines up at the same time allows me to just “pick the ripe apple out of the tree” when I want to write.

3. Set Your Writing Time

Writing is extremely hard when distractions are present. You will inevitably end up looking at your phone or reading something if you don't shut down your distractions.

I still struggle with this at times.

"I can still write with my phone out"

Except the writing takes me 3x as long.

You can use apps like RescueTime or Freedom

These apps help block out distractions - do it on your computer and on your phone.

With that done - set a certain amount of time for your writing, I recommend 30 minutes to start.

4. Visualize your Writing

Another good practice in this is to visualize your writing. Adding imagery is a huge piece of writing. The more elements of visualization you can add the better it will stand out. (This is not mandatory.)

From my own experience I can say drawing out imagery adds life to a piece.

Last Piece

Just start creating; hesitation is the biggest content killer. Don't worry about what others think and just act.