Your blog and social media channels are core pieces of your digital marketing strategy. Learning how to write more efficiently – and in a way that properly reflects your brand – is key to turning leads into paying customers. This guide will give you fifteen ways to improve your writing process for your blog and social media.
You keep hearing that you should be sharing more content than you currently do. This leaves you frustrated because you don’t want to sit at your computer all day just to get out a few sentences that don’t even sound like your brand. But you also don’t want your blog, Instagram, Facebook, and all the other places you show up online to stay empty.
I promise you there’s a way to make this entire process easier. First, let’s look at the purpose behind writing more often for your online platforms.
How Does My Blog Help Me Get Customers?
Your blog is a powerful relationship-builder. It acts as another branch of your business, in addition to the products or services that your business is most known for.
By sharing educational, inspirational, and entertaining blog posts with the internet, you’re able to add readers to your audience. (Hopefully, you’re capturing these readers in your email list.)
Over time these readers become more invested in your brand’s personality and worldview, eventually buying whatever you’re selling.
A blog written with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind will organically help your business become more searchable online. This allows you to have a constant flow of new eyes on your website.
How Do My Social Media Channels Help Me Get Customers?
Social media allows you to engage with other people in creative and personable ways. Whether it’s ideal customers, influencers, or industry peers, social media helps you demonstrate to these people why you’re a top choice within your niche.
As you combine written word, audio, and video, you convince your ideal customers to opt into your email list, visit your website, or follow whichever call to action is present.
Regardless of the final form of your content – written word, audio, or video – it all starts with writing. If you want to start sharing higher-quality content on a more consistent basis, then it’s time to improve your writing process.
Tools and Resources That Will Help Your Writing Process
Outsourcing
Investing money into this area of your business, so you have time to focus on your specialty – and the areas of your business you don’t want anyone else touching.
Proofreader
A proofreader helps you toward the backend of your writing process, by finetuning what you’ve already written. They check for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, as well as a general sense of readability.
Contributing Writer
If you’re looking for help earlier on in the writing process you can hire a writer who has a unique perspective on your specific field of work. Their name will show up in the byline, meaning they keep the authorship rights.
Ghostwriter
As opposed to a contributing writer, a ghostwriter does not keep authorship rights. Their identity remains hidden (hence, “ghost”). For this reason, they tend to charge premium rates, as opposed to other types of writers.
Outsourcing is the most hands-off option when it comes to creating content on a more frequent basis than you currently do. The content practically gets handed to you without you having to do keyword research or planning.
In the case of KQ Writing Studio, we provide video calls with our monthly ghostwriting packages, to make sure our clients are on the same page as us, creatively speaking.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
I consider using artificial intelligence (AI) as a midpoint between outsourcing and doing it yourself. Since AI lacks the human heart and mind, you’ll still want to edit and add your personal touches after AI writes your content.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a chatbot that collects information all over the internet to provide focused responses to your requests. When you type scripts (or directions) into the chat box, the bot starts generating content based on those directions. You can continue to tweak the chatbot’s first piece of content by adding new requests or prompts to the chat box.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a typing assistant that optimizes content of all lengths and styles. You can either copy and paste what you’ve written in a Google Doc or begin typing within Grammarly itself. Once the entire piece is there, you can check Grammarly’s scoreboard, which indicates how well your writing turned out, in terms of delivery, engagement, and tone of voice.
Text to Speech Reader
Text to Speech Reader is a digital reader that helps you hear your writing spoken out loud at various speeds. Reviewing your content audibly adds another layer of proofreading that might be missed while you’re reading your work. This text-to-speech app allows you to simply listen for any possible errors or awkward moments within your content.
WordCounter
WordCounter is an online editor that keeps track of key numbers related to your written content. This helps a ton if you’re trying to meet certain quotas, like character count, word count, paragraph count, and keyword density.
Dictionaries and Thesauri
Sometimes a particular word is on the tip of your tongue, and you need extra help communicating the idea in your head. When you keep a dictionary or thesaurus handy, you can quickly find the right words to use in your blog posts and social media captions.
When I was growing up, we had hard copy dictionaries and thesauri, but now we have plenty of digital options with additional functions. Beyond defining words and listing synonyms, these tools demonstrate how to use each word in the right context.
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Whether you’re enhancing your social media, email campaigns, or website content, these hooks will keep your marketing dynamic, relevant, and captivating!
Improving Your Writing Process On Your Own
If you’re not quite at the point of hiring a writer to do the work for you, it’s time to add writing sessions to your calendar. If you’re about ready to give up writing content, please don’t. I have good news! You’re not a bad writer. You just haven’t energized your writing process with these twelve key elements:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Incubation
- Signature
- Imagery
- Deadlines
- Flow
- Contrast
- Hyperbole
- In medias res
- Breath
- Mirroring
- Teasers
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Writing from the perspective of search engine optimization allows you to touch on the ideas that matter to both the algorithm and humans. Do this by conducting keyword research and putting your reader’s needs first.
Incubation
Remove yourself from your rough draft instead of forcing words onto the page. Give yourself time to walk around or work on another project. Afterward, you can edit and proofread your writing with a fresh pair of eyes.
Signature
Give yourself permission to go against the grain in order to demonstrate your unique writing style. Remember that you will attract your ideal audience when you let your distinct personality and perspective shine.
Imagery
How vibrant is your language? Can your reader imagine what you’re writing without having to try too hard? Are you supporting your words with graphs, images, or infographics when appropriate?
Deadlines
You might be frustrated by your writing pace simply because you haven’t given yourself any deadlines. Fill in your calendar with due dates so that you know what you need to complete on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Flow
Yes, your writing might be technically sound, but does it come from an inspired place within you? This is when I tell you to dump the rules and listen to your intuition.
Contrast
When you present an opposing view of a single subject, you help your reader think critically about where they stand and whether or not they relate to your point of view.
Hyperbole
Using exaggerated and unreasonable statements can capture your reader’s attention and create a million moments of laughter, which inspires further connection.
In Medias Res
This element automatically builds your reader’s curiosity and willingness to continue reading. Instead of starting with a typical introduction, I began in the middle of my story or statement. Here you are. I think it worked.
Breath
When you speak out loud, you naturally pause to breathe. Do this in your writing by adding extra dashes. Line breaks. Shortened sentences. Ellipses and…parentheses.
Mirroring
As you’re figuring out your unique writing style, look at other pieces of content that you find appealing and easy to read. Apply that style or flow to your specific subject matter.
Teasers
You don’t have to fit all of your ideas into a single piece of content. When you want to wrap up your current topic, promise your reader you’ll expand on it or create a part two in the future.
Wrap-Up: 15 Ways to Improve Your Writing Process
There’s no such thing as a perfect writing process, but these fifteen ideas will certainly help:
- Outsourcing
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
- Dictionaries and thesauri
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Incubation
- Signature
- Imagery
- Deadlines
- Flow
- Contrast
- Hyperbole
- In medias res
- Breath
- Mirroring
- Teasers
It’s time to dump your fear of doing things the wrong way. Go with your gut.
If you feel an internal nudge to share a heartfelt message, respond to it by grabbing a pen and paper or hopping in front of your laptop. Allow what’s coming out to simply be. Drop the self-criticism.
Someone out there might be waiting to hear exactly what you have to say.
Further Reading on KatQuintana.com: If you’re looking for more ways to improve your blog writing process, check out my post on how to quickly write blog posts using templates.
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