Tag Archives: Writing

10 Ways to Increase Your Writing Productivity

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Have you ever wondered how some writers manage to churn out so much material in such a short amount of time?

It seems these amazingly prolific authors do nothing else with their lives but write. They would have to in order to produce the sheer volume of work that leaves their desks, wouldn’t they?

Not necessarily.

The key to increasing your productivity is to fully utilize your allotted writing time by writing your already-planned material first. You do have an allotted time scheduled for your writing, don’t you?

Maybe we’d better skip straight to the tips then.

Here are the top ten ways to increase your writing productivity today…

10 – Time Management
Create a weekly time-table for yourself. Be honest about how much time you can afford to set aside purely for writing without distraction. This time is NOT to be used for reading or researching. This is pure creative writing time. Stick to this time-table as rigorously as you can.

9 – Read
Read everything. Read books you’ve read before because you love them. Read really bad books. Read outside your usual genre. Read advertisements on cereal boxes. You’ll quickly learn what makes a story or article memorable and how to spot a lemon at 500 paces. Just read.

8 – Plan
Always have a basic idea of what you will write before you sit down to the task. Think about this in the car (or bus) on the way home. Create the upcoming conflict while you are in the shower. Talk over the impending scene at dinner (and if you are alone, tell the dog/cat/plant – it doesn’t matter!) However you arrange it, by the time you sit down to write it, the scene will be almost perfected in your mind. Writers block cannot exist if you’ve already planned what you are going to write.

7 – Deadline
Set yourself a realistic, yet strict deadline. If you are writing an article, set your deadline for the day after you anticipate finalizing the research. No excuses. If you are writing a longer piece, be aware of your own limitations, but don’t be so lenient on yourself that you procrastinate forever.

6 – Pressure
Put yourself under pressure. Nobody creates their best work under pressure, but it will be enough to get a completed draft finished. You can always revise and perfect it later, but get it done first. Set that deadline, then email your friends and call your family. Tell them what project you are working on. Tell them when you plan to have it ready. Then tell them they must call you (or email you) on that day to read your efforts. If you have not completed this task, they are allowed to tease/taunt/chide you until your ears burn. That’s pressure! And accountability, which is a key motivator.

5 – Ideas
Keep a file or notepad of ideas that strike you. Take it with you everywhere you go and write down every little thing that seems interesting. It might not fit into the story you are working on, but it just may inspire something else later on.

4 – Multi-Task
Never work on only one project at a time. This sounds like the easiest way to distract yourself, but it works. The mind is a strange creature. If you actively begin three projects at once, then anytime your mind refuses to cooperate with one storyline or character situation, switch to a short story or article instead.

3 – Edit
Be ruthless. Remember, you’re on a deadline here, so cut your beloved words to the bone, where the real story is hiding beneath all that flowery prose. Be sure your character’s eyes are the same color at the end as they were at the beginning. Check that your plot makes some kind of sense, and know when to throw out words you love. You can always put them into the ‘ideas file’ and re-use them later, so don’t panic.

2 – Submit
There is no point in writing if you are never going to submit it to the judgmental eyes of a complete stranger. So do a little homework, find a suitable market for your piece and send it out the door. Not tomorrow, but now. It’s written, edited and polished, so it’s no good to you sitting in the bottom drawer. If it is rejected, send it back out. A rejection is not personal. It’s an editor’s way of telling you they already spent their budget this month. Send it to someone with better money sense.

And The Number One way to Increase Your Productivity is…

1 – Write More
Silly isn’t it? But it is true. Switch off the television. Put the kids to bed a little earlier. Get out of bed an hour earlier. Take a pocket-recorder with you in the car. Jot things down in your lunch-break. Pretend to have a tummy-bug and lock yourself in the bathroom for an hour (this works!!) Take a notepad to bed with you instead of a book. Stop surfing the net and open a new word-processing file.

But write more.

Writing Tutorial – Internet Content Writing For SEO And For Your Potential Customers

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As we mentioned in the summary of this article, it is more important than ever to write and publish quality content. Although the ability to craft good writing on behalf of your business has always been and will always be vital, the internet has broadened the scope of what can be done and what must be done.

Let’s face it, there are just a lot more venues for writing copy now. For any company to succeed in the current and rapidly changing business environment of today, it must engage in online content writing. Where and how often will probably be determined by the type of business you’re in, but regardless, it’s a good idea.

Before we dive into the how to and why to, here is a short list of some places that you can publish content online. We’ll just stick to the free examples for now.

Your Blog – there are many free blogging sites out there that allow you to publish content any time you want. You can create an interactive community around your blogs and also embed them on your website. Blogs not only let you communicate with others online, they are great back links and also can provide a steady stream of new content for your website.

Articles – yes, articles are free to publish, and even free to syndicate. For example, you can write an article and publish it on a site like EzineArticles, upublish.info, GoArticles, buzzle, amazines and articlebase just to name a few. These are linked back to you. Additionally, someone else can embed your article on their site, or you can do the same. Articles are permanent and great ways to inform your audience.

E-zines – There are a lot of website owners out there who crave new content. It’s the reason they syndicate others’ blogs and articles. But there is another way to get your content published, and that is by going directly to the source. If you have something informative, entertaining or educational to say, you may want to find an e-zine looking for column writers.

Your own website – yes, that’s right, the number one place to publish content is on your own internet property. This is very important because obviously, it’s where you want a potential customer or an existing customer to end up and spend the most time.

There are more examples, but in the interests of time and your eyesight, let’s now dive into somehow to’s and why’s. We’ll start with why you should be publishing quality web content that is related to your business:

Why #1 – The more you publish, the more you will be noticed

This is fairly obvious, right? The more stuff there is floating around in the cyber sea, the greater the chance that somebody is going to read it and think you know what you’re talking about and want to learn more. Think of it as casting an ever-widening net.

Why #2 – Linking

What is really nice about online content writing is that in almost every single case, you are allowed to put a link in or at the end of your content that points back to wherever you want it to. This helps create a funnel of traffic and interest. Additionally, it helps your search engine rankings by providing you with quality back links. And if your content gets syndicated, that’ll grow geometrically.

Why #3 – You become an expert

People like to buy from those that they feel are knowledgeable. And they also appreciate that you took the time to create a truly informative and helpful article, blog or website. It’s just a very effective modern sales and marketing tool.

Why #4 – Everybody’s doing it!

Don’t you want to be one of the cool kids? Of course you do, especially if the other kids happen to be your competition. You can bet dollars to navy beans that some of the businesses that you are competing with are actively marketing online. So why let them have an advantage over you? You are the better choice anyway.

Now, to the final and best part. It’s important to know the whole story. Not just why you write good content, or where to publish it. You must know how to do it. As we often say, it’s not always knowing what to write, but how to write it. Because when it comes to online content writing, you really have to know your stuff.

To begin let’s focus on a simple fact. When you write something that goes on the internet, it’s not just going to be read by people. Google, yahoo, Bing and all the other search engines are going to be checking it out too. This is one of the biggest reasons you publish it in the first place. So what this means is that your content must be crafted to make everybody happy.

This is the tricky part. And it is where many writers, marketers and website owners go awry. The key in writing effective content for the web is that it should appeal to and have the greatest effect on the human reader first. Then worry about keywords and search engines. Believe it or not, that’s exactly what Google wants you to do.

You will be rewarded when you place a bit of content like an article, a blog post, a discussion forum thread, an e-zine column or a new webpage that is truly made for the benefit of a web surfer. Of course, it must also be optimized for search engines and contain relevant keywords.

No problem, right? Yeah, sure. It’s not easy, but the rewards are worth it.

Another point to keep in mind when writing or having something written for you, is the search engines again. Does this sound repetitious? It’s not, exactly. It’s just that if something can be searched, it will be searched. And every bit of online content will be searched, be it from a major search engine or from searches performed on the site where the content is published.

So the real point here is SEO. You want optimized components in all your published writing. That means keyword rich and relevant titles, summaries, descriptions, links and content. This goes for video as well. Doing SEO on your text will help drive traffic to those texts and to wherever they are linked as well.

Finally, as always, you want your writing, especially your website content, to do a good job of selling for you. After all, this is the point, right? If you do all this content publishing to drive visitors to your website, you certainly want to engage them when they arrive, keep their attention and hopefully convert them into a paying client.

That last thought is an article in itself. A book, really. This is where you must be a very good writer. Or you must hire a very good writer. Your text-based content will last a long long time and represent you and your company to billions of web surfers and thousands of search engines, so take care to see that it’s the best content you can create. Doing so carefully and thoughtfully will bring you an ever-increasing stream of visitors and profits.

Writing Tutorial – Internet Content Writing For SEO And For Your Potential Customers

Posted on by

As we mentioned in the summary of this article, it is more important than ever to write and publish quality content. Although the ability to craft good writing on behalf of your business has always been and will always be vital, the internet has broadened the scope of what can be done and what must be done.

Let’s face it, there are just a lot more venues for writing copy now. For any company to succeed in the current and rapidly changing business environment of today, it must engage in online content writing. Where and how often will probably be determined by the type of business you’re in, but regardless, it’s a good idea.

Before we dive into the how to and why to, here is a short list of some places that you can publish content online. We’ll just stick to the free examples for now.

Your Blog – there are many free blogging sites out there that allow you to publish content any time you want. You can create an interactive community around your blogs and also embed them on your website. Blogs not only let you communicate with others online, they are great back links and also can provide a steady stream of new content for your website.

Articles – yes, articles are free to publish, and even free to syndicate. For example, you can write an article and publish it on a site like EzineArticles, upublish.info, GoArticles, buzzle, amazines and articlebase just to name a few. These are linked back to you. Additionally, someone else can embed your article on their site, or you can do the same. Articles are permanent and great ways to inform your audience.

E-zines – There are a lot of website owners out there who crave new content. It’s the reason they syndicate others’ blogs and articles. But there is another way to get your content published, and that is by going directly to the source. If you have something informative, entertaining or educational to say, you may want to find an e-zine looking for column writers.

Your own website – yes, that’s right, the number one place to publish content is on your own internet property. This is very important because obviously, it’s where you want a potential customer or an existing customer to end up and spend the most time.

There are more examples, but in the interests of time and your eyesight, let’s now dive into somehow to’s and why’s. We’ll start with why you should be publishing quality web content that is related to your business:

Why #1 – The more you publish, the more you will be noticed

This is fairly obvious, right? The more stuff there is floating around in the cyber sea, the greater the chance that somebody is going to read it and think you know what you’re talking about and want to learn more. Think of it as casting an ever-widening net.

Why #2 – Linking

What is really nice about online content writing is that in almost every single case, you are allowed to put a link in or at the end of your content that points back to wherever you want it to. This helps create a funnel of traffic and interest. Additionally, it helps your search engine rankings by providing you with quality back links. And if your content gets syndicated, that’ll grow geometrically.

Why #3 – You become an expert

People like to buy from those that they feel are knowledgeable. And they also appreciate that you took the time to create a truly informative and helpful article, blog or website. It’s just a very effective modern sales and marketing tool.

Why #4 – Everybody’s doing it!

Don’t you want to be one of the cool kids? Of course you do, especially if the other kids happen to be your competition. You can bet dollars to navy beans that some of the businesses that you are competing with are actively marketing online. So why let them have an advantage over you? You are the better choice anyway.

Now, to the final and best part. It’s important to know the whole story. Not just why you write good content, or where to publish it. You must know how to do it. As we often say, it’s not always knowing what to write, but how to write it. Because when it comes to online content writing, you really have to know your stuff.

To begin let’s focus on a simple fact. When you write something that goes on the internet, it’s not just going to be read by people. Google, yahoo, Bing and all the other search engines are going to be checking it out too. This is one of the biggest reasons you publish it in the first place. So what this means is that your content must be crafted to make everybody happy.

This is the tricky part. And it is where many writers, marketers and website owners go awry. The key in writing effective content for the web is that it should appeal to and have the greatest effect on the human reader first. Then worry about keywords and search engines. Believe it or not, that’s exactly what Google wants you to do.

You will be rewarded when you place a bit of content like an article, a blog post, a discussion forum thread, an e-zine column or a new webpage that is truly made for the benefit of a web surfer. Of course, it must also be optimized for search engines and contain relevant keywords.

No problem, right? Yeah, sure. It’s not easy, but the rewards are worth it.

Another point to keep in mind when writing or having something written for you, is the search engines again. Does this sound repetitious? It’s not, exactly. It’s just that if something can be searched, it will be searched. And every bit of online content will be searched, be it from a major search engine or from searches performed on the site where the content is published.

So the real point here is SEO. You want optimized components in all your published writing. That means keyword rich and relevant titles, summaries, descriptions, links and content. This goes for video as well. Doing SEO on your text will help drive traffic to those texts and to wherever they are linked as well.

Finally, as always, you want your writing, especially your website content, to do a good job of selling for you. After all, this is the point, right? If you do all this content publishing to drive visitors to your website, you certainly want to engage them when they arrive, keep their attention and hopefully convert them into a paying client.

That last thought is an article in itself. A book, really. This is where you must be a very good writer. Or you must hire a very good writer. Your text-based content will last a long long time and represent you and your company to billions of web surfers and thousands of search engines, so take care to see that it’s the best content you can create. Doing so carefully and thoughtfully will bring you an ever-increasing stream of visitors and profits.