My first ever job was as a copywriter. I picked it up when I was just 13 years old - so I can afford to buy parts for my own computer and play video games.
I am now 22, and I am a content manager at a company called Respona. And while the content that I’m creating is completely different than what I was doing 9 years ago, a lot of the core principles behind my work remain the same.
It can be very easy to burn out, especially when you need to create multiple long-form pieces per week, and in this article, I would love to share some of my advice on how you can be more productive while creating better content at the same time.
1. Don’t Write If You Don’t Want To
Starting off with a rather counterintuitive piece of advice. What exactly do I mean by that?
Sometimes you sit down and you blast through a 2,000 - word piece in just a couple of hours. Another time you struggle with a single paragraph for over half an hour.
When you’re feeling uninspired or even burned out on creative tasks, it’s generally a good idea to switch to something that requires less creativity than to waste a bunch of time that you would otherwise be able to complete in a much shorter amount of time.
Or, you can do a short 20-minute meditation session to boost creativity.
2. Do Your Research
This ties directly into the previous tip. One of the best ways to gain inspiration is through research.
By checking all of the competing content, how it’s structured, and the key points that the articles discuss, it will be easier for you to develop an outline for a unique piece of content that covers an angle that the competitors missed.
Usually what I like to do before writing a large content piece is lay out all of the H2 headings. Once you have them down, it’s very easy to just follow the plan, step-by-step and aids a ton with writer’s block.
It is also a good idea to choose which elements should be used in your article. For example, adding a relevant webinar, a book, or a video into the content could help push your message across. Check out these 15 tips to create a successful blog post for more ideas.
3. Write In Short Bursts
It’s pretty much impossible to stay completely focused on writing if your article is over 1,000 words long.
It’s just human nature - we get bored easily, and if we write every single day, we burn out quite easily too.
Another strategy to help overcome that is writing your articles in short bursts. Just do a couple of headings, a few hundred words, and take a little break.
You can either mix it up with other tasks that don’t require you to use your brain as much, or take a real, 5-minute break.
4. If Your Budget Allows It, Hire A Freelancer
This little advice applies more to in-house writers and other team members reading this article.
Sometimes the best way to get something done is to have somebody else do it for you. Especially if you already have a ton of other tasks on your plate.
I used to write for only $15-20 per 1000 words, and you can find a lot of decent copywriters charging roughly the same amount in different parts of the world, especially Eastern Europe.
Especially now that a lot of Ukrainians are looking for some extra side gigs.
There are plenty of freelancing platforms where you can hire someone, like Fiverr, Upwork, and Writer Access.
If you’re concerned about quality when you’re no longer writing yourself, try creating an SEO content brief. In just 10-15 minutes, you can prepare a quick outline & bullet points to keep your writers on track creating effective optimized content. You can also use a plagiarism tool to make sure the content you get is unique.
5. Use Content Optimization Tools
If you’re mostly writing guest posts or freelancing for people who don’t really require you to optimize your content for search engines, you can pretty much skip this step.
But if you’re working on something for your own blog, or your clients expect you to provide an SEO-optimized piece, it’s an essential step in developing the content.
The main way to optimize content for search engines is through the proper use of keywords, both in the text of the article, and its headings.
There are many tools available online for this purpose, with some examples being SurferSEO and MarketMuse.
They analyze your text, as well as the content of competing articles, and suggest exactly which keywords need to be implemented in the text, and how many times.
If you’re using images in your content, a good idea would be to also provide alt descriptions for them, and come up with meta/title tags.
6. Make Use Of An AI Writing Tool
In 2022, automation is the name of the game. Businesses are trying to automate and speed up as many of their business processes as they possibly can.
And while an AI writing tool like Jasper AI (widely claimed to be the best AI writer on the market) won’t necessarily replace a good writer, it can certainly help you out with research, outlining, and answering questions.
There are many AI tools available out there, but most of them use the same API as Open AI.
It’s not a strictly copywriting tool as it’s also able to generate code and even images, but I use it for writing quite often.
Usually, when I’m having trouble wording an answer to a difficult question, I just ask the tool to explain it for me.
More often than not, it does a pretty good job! Especially when a question can be answered with a step-by-step list.
In fact, I had the tool write a whole 1,500-word guest post for me just the other day, but the format of that post was basically 15 simple questions answered in a row.
It’s not a super-comprehensive piece, but I got done with it in only about 30 minutes, which is pretty impressive. I wish this was available 10 years ago so I could spend more time playing video games and less time writing.
In addition, spell-checkers like Grammarly should always be in your arsenal, regardless of what you’re writing.
7. Write On One Day, Edit And Optimize The Next Day
This especially applies to larger writing projects upwards of 3,000 words and more.
For me personally, it’s hard to write more than 2,000 words per day. But I also have other tasks that take up most of my day - writing is probably the least time-intensive thing I have to manage right now.
The pieces that I’m writing for our own blog are usually over 3,000 words long. So, by the time I’m done writing them, I’m usually pretty tired and just looking forward to getting the task done.
So, I usually leave the optimization and editing for the next day - this way, it’s much easier for me to focus again, optimize the content quickly, and maybe come up with some ideas on how to improve it that I didn’t think of the day before. But before you get started, make sure you include these 7 points in your blog.
Wrapping Up
Copywriting is one of the skills that everybody should possess, at least to some degree.
But one tip to keep in mind is making sure you understand how to effectively target your audience, and knowing your audience personas and their roles will help you be a better copywriter. This means that when you write, you keep them in mind every step of the way.
Even with AI content generators on the rise, there will always be a market for copywriters, and even if you’re not a writer by definition, chances are, you will be tasked with writing something at least once in your career.
