Speeding up content writing

Successful online marketers owe a lot of their success to the quality of the content they publish. But, in addition to the quality of the content, which must be successful in engaging, helping and/or entertaining browsers, there is also likely to be a lot of it. And when we say a lot, we mean regular, high-quality content posted day-in-day-out, or week-in-week-out for a substantial period of time.

Have you got the time to write content?

It is rarely the case that an entrepreneur has the time to devote, even if they had the writing skills, to content writing. Writing blogs, articles and news features takes time, patience and effort, not just in researching topics, trending ideas and keywords and phrases, but in actually writing the content so that it reads clearly and concisely.

‘It’s all in the edit’

It’s true, after you’ve splurged down a first draft, the editing involved is crucial to turn it into a publishable piece of content. And yes, you’ve guessed it, it all takes your precious time.

How to speed up your content writing

There are several ways to go about speeding up your content writing. If you are determined you are going to research and write your own content there are a number of things you can do to become faster.

Practise, practise, practise

Like any other skill, the more you practise the better and faster you will become. When you first start writing it might take you a whole day to write one 700-word article. Seasoned professionals can have this down in just a few hours or less depending on the amount of research required.

But if this sounds arduous, and you don’t have time on your side to practise, there are further more tech-enabled aids to hand.

Use an AI-powered content optimisation tool to save time on SEO research

There are many content writing tools online that can help you get your initial content idea shaped up into SEO-insight-driven keywords and phrases. All those hours Googling your subject and seeing what other sources say so that you can inform your content and your readers better can be saved with a tool like this.

It’s worth researching the right tool for you as they don’t all do the same thing and there is a cost involved.

Frase, ClickFlow and Topic are just a few options. Of course, you’ll need to spend time getting to know each interface so it might be worth taking the free trial of a few to see which best suits your purposes before committing to it full-time.

Use a writing tool to save time on checking grammar and punctuation

These tools are less about the SEO, in fact not at all about SEO, but they are about helping you to produce quality writing. Grammar, punctuation and spelling is the help you are after here so you don’t have to spend the time editing and proofreading.

Grammarly is the main, most well-known content writing aid for producing work that is in the correct tense, not full of repetition and grammar mishaps that trips readers up and makes them click away.

Grammarly isn’t perfect. It has been known to suggest random words in trying to stay your work clear of repetition and you won’t want all of its suggestions, depending on the tone of voice for your piece of content. But it is excellent for helping content writers produce grammatically clear, concise, mistake-free writing.

The Hemingway App is similarly useful for helping writers to produce clear, concise work that gets to the point and doesn’t waste readers’ time on dead-ends, repeats and woolly phrases. And best of all, it’s free.

Get a content writer to write content for you

You’ll need to understand the costs involved in outsourcing your content writing against the benefit to your business, but hiring a content writer might save you the time you need to concentrate on other areas of your business.

There are many levels of working with a content writer so you should explore your options here. Perhaps you want to dictate the topics or even draft ideas that the writer can polish and write up properly for you. Or perhaps you want a content writer to do everything from research to writing. The cost will vary according to the level of work you want.

It’s another business decision to weigh up but there’s no doubt that well-written content can be used to engage and grow audiences as well generate leads and establish you as an authority in your industry. Content is, after all, how you tell the world about your business.

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