Create something today – even if it sucks.
Just start.
Staring at a blank screen is extremely distracting.
I find that the best way to start is to just pick a topic & Google it. Jot down some relevant bullet points, quotes, words, images, videos, links – anything that catches your eye.
Create an outline.
Writing without a plan is fine if you’re writing in a journal. But if you want to create content worth reading, you’ll at least need to hone in on one particular topic, give it an intro, body and conclusion, and follow a central idea the whole way through. It’s not as hard as it seems- I’ll break it down.
For example…
- I wanted to improve my writing.
- I like marketing.
- I thought about what I do in my job, and what I like about marketing.
- I broke that down into 3 broad topics (Industry Skills, Measuring Performance & Brand Management).
- I picked one, and started thinking about stuff that falls under that category (actually, to be honest, I thought about a lot of things, and categorised my random ideas into one of those 3 headings as best I could).
- My thoughts came back to writing.
- I wrote this post.
If you’re still not feeling it…
My go-to whenever I have ZERO inspiration, but need to produce content, is to read. Personally, I love to read online blogs, since that’s the platform I most often write for.
Just remember, you can always go back and refine your work. But you need to actually write something to be able to improve it.
What I actually read.
I love whitepapers and easy-to-digest blog posts.
Hence why my writing style reflects this: short sentences and paragraphs, occasionally broken up by sub-headings, bullet points and the odd infographic.
It’s worth noting that this style of writing is also SEO friendly (aka search engines like it).
I have subscribed via email to the following websites [hyperlinked], which means they send me a daily, weekly or monthly digest of popular posts to read at my leisure (which you can also do on my site, if you like my posts – just scroll down to the bottom and subscribe!):
These guys all post great content that’s worth reading and easy to understand (plus they don’t send spam!).
Daily reading and writing have been my biggest contributors to refining and expanding my skills as both a marketer and a writer.
I highly recommend you give it a go! It’s free, so why not?
Until next time,
Beth