Creating content can seem like an impossible task when we lose sight of our achievement goals. As soon as we replace these concrete goals with intangible notions such as “making an impact” or “writing perfect copy”, we risk losing our footing on a very slippery slope: perfectionism leads to procrastination, and procrastination is counterproductive.
To help you in your writing, I suggest a few tips to stimulate your creativity and avoid the pitfalls of procrastination. Because we too often forget that a good text on the web is first and foremost a published text!
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1. Don’t aim for perfection…
Aiming for perfection is a nice intention. It’s true, it is desirable to write without mistakes. It shows your professionalism and makes the text more readable. Using software like Antidote can help you identify and correct the most common mistakes.
However, it is not advisable to aim for “perfect text”. Not only does it not exist, but it also puts a lot of pressure on your shoulders.
Giving yourself permission to be less than perfect will make it easier to produce authentic content – nobody’s perfect! Taking action matters more than the knowledge you accumulate in silence.
2. Set concrete goals!
Give yourself more specific, concrete, and ideally measurable goals:
- Write a text that will attract traffic on a given subject (natural SEO)
- Improve your ranking on a query (keywords)
- Test ideas with a community (market research)
- Develop your company’s brand image (positioning)
- Share knowledge (knowledge application)
By defining clear objectives, it will be much easier to express yourself freely. Otherwise, you’ll spend your time doubting and postponing the publication. Even worse, you might end up not publishing anything, because you’ll be so nervous. Perfection is not attainable and a good text must first be published!
Be aware that constructive people will not resent you for missing “s”. Instead, they will be interested in your ideas and simply point out if you have left any typos. Over time, write down your mistakes in a file and try not to repeat them again! Give yourself a chance to learn.
Despite all this, correct yourself again and again! Remember, your ideas are easier to understand when they are expressed in clear language. Avoid using a style just to look pretty and aim to convey your ideas in the simplest and most understandable way possible.
3. Engage the reader with a catchy title
A good title will be catchy, interesting, and above all relevant. It accurately indicates the subject of the article while attracting the readers’ attention.
Moreover, in SEO, the “Title” tag is probably the most important to optimize your content. By using your main keyword, you will greatly improve your chances of ranking on a relevant query.
From a technical point of view, the tag can contain up to 70 characters. However, I almost always suggest limiting it to 55 characters maximum. The reason is simple: Google uses a width in pixels, not a number of characters, to determine whether a title should be cut.
However, a good headline should be natural. The challenge is to contextualize your keyword. This can be in a sentence, a short phrase, or a question. Show that there is a human being behind the writing of your texts!
4. Write an interesting and authentic text
But what is an interesting text? Let’s go back to our specific objectives…
Who is your reader? Who are your customers? In business, we often talk about buyer personas. It’s the same principle here. To find your reader’s profile, ask yourself the following questions:
- Who is the article aimed at?
- How does your community usually interact with your content?
- What is your communication objective?
No text can reach “everyone”, just as your business does not have “everyone” as a customer – unless you have a truly universal product or service!
You need to understand how your community reacts to your posts. By looking at your Facebook and Google statistics, you can see which content is the most effective and brings you the most relevant traffic.
Finally, what is your objective? Is it to acquire new traffic, to inform about something new in your field, or to advertise a new product or service?
Clearly define what you want to accomplish with your article and target that goal. A good article should have one specific mission.
An overly general mission such as “give me visibility” may make your article too cluttered or confusing.
Also, consider optimizing your images. A page that’s too heavy could scare off busy readers, and an image without an alt tag or with a meaningless file name (123. jpg) could hurt your search engine rankings.
5. Follow the life of your text and optimize it for its use
Once your text is published, its life has just begun!
A good web text evolves according to its use. Unlike print, online texts do not need to be republished to make corrections.
One of my tricks is to follow the statistics of the article to understand how people consult it. Here, it’s not just the bounce rate you need to consider, but also the user experience and lead acquisition.
Over time, actively look for opportunities to slightly modify your text, and add images and infographics, videos, and long tail keywords. This is how I’ve been able to turn underperforming articles into more targeted ones that attract the type of traffic I was looking for.
I especially like adding infographics to my older articles, as well as incorporating long tail keywords. It allows me to repost on social media while offering something new, even if it’s recycled content! Moderation obviously tastes better and you should never abuse this strategy, otherwise, you risk losing the interest of your most loyal readers.
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6. Trust yourself and learn to love what you do
In closing, my main intention with this article was to send you this message: enjoy communicating what you do, how you do it, and with whom.
People love to post human-like messages on social networks. Watch out for your mistakes, yes! But don’t let your fear of making mistakes stop you from communicating. Be open to criticism and constantly strive to become more effective.
Constructive people won’t judge you for a post with a few typos, they’ll look at your ideas, whether you learn from your experiences and whether you’re able to admit your mistakes.
So go ahead and make your voice heard! Even if your topic seems “flat”, there are readers out there who are just waiting to read you. In literature, the “classics” said that everything has been said and done.
That may be true, but you haven’t said or done everything. Your voice deserves to be heard, even if your subject seems the most discussed in the world.
Conclusion
What about you, what are your writing experiences? What do you do to motivate yourself and stay productive? Do you have more productive moments? Do you often suffer from writer’s block?
Share your experiences and tips with us and we look forward to hearing from you!