Good habits make a person successful.
Habits make us walk on a straight path rather than running in circles.
And for a content writer, habits matter. A writer needs to be many personalities to create quality content “continuously”.
Continuity here offers a great deal. It is the keystone of the whole process.
Businesses demand a constant supply of content, they cannot wait for an eventual burst of creativity and sadly can’t postpone during writer’s block.
Content needs to keep flowing as a river, with writers being their glacier which should not run out of water. And that is an issue.
So, how do you create excellent content continuously that drives real impact?
To answer the question, we went through many successful content writers and enlisted the most effective 7 daily habits that make a content writer successful.
7 Daily Habits To Continuously Boom Content Writing
1. Read – News, Fiction, Ad copies… everything
Reading is obviously the first step in writing content.
Reading offers many benefits that include gaining knowledge, understanding the tone of other writers and increasing vocabulary and visualisation.
And when I said to read everything, I meant read everything (but in order). Surely reading the 1st standard stories all day won’t do much good to you, you gotta choose which ones to choose to read.
First of all, read Industry News. It keeps you updated on what’s going on in the industry, how consumers are being affected by it and how long-lasting that effect could be. You can set up a feed from Feedly or any other RSS feed app to keep you updated on the sources you trust.
Second, reading Fiction can help too. Fiction improves your visualisation and storytelling. It inspires your creativity and helps build your vocabulary.
Third, read Reports, Marketing copies etc. Reports help you give a better idea of how can you present information more clearly. Marketing copies and newsletters offer you various ways that other content writers use to engage their readers.
2. Write – Inspired, wanted, motivated or not
Consider writing a muscle too. If you don’t keep using it, you will start losing it.
There will always be times when you wouldn’t feel inspired to write. And there will be mo motivation coming from inside, but skipping will make it harder to do it the next day.
So, keep writing if not a complete blog then half of it. If you don’t feel any want to write, just open up your laptop and write something else. Write what you learned yesterday, and write what you want to learn tomorrow. Set a goal to write at least 10-20 minutes every day.
Keeping up that habit will make it much easier with time to write every day with clarity even if you would feel inspired or not.
3. Push Limits
Being inside a barrier won’t do any good for you in the long run.
If you are a newbie who’s just starting content writing or freelancing, you should try to say Yes to more projects.
This way you write for various industries and learn about them so that you can later figure out what’s your favourite one. You learn more when you work more with various clients.
Even if you’re gonna get paid less but you know you will learn more about SEO or would get a chance of working with professionals or experienced writers, you should not let that opportunity slide.
When I started first off, I used to switch between industries a lot. I started with digital marketing blogs then I worked with pharmaceutical companies, and the education industry, I even wrote blogs on space science. That makes me learn more perspectives on writing content. Different industries make you learn different tones and paces of writing content based on their target audience.
Even in the later stages of your content writing journey, you should try stepping out the barrier every now and then. It will help you a lot on the long road.
4. Establishing Voice
We know the hard fact that we are not the only writer in the industry.
There are hundreds and thousands of them and they all are striving continuously to become better. So, how can you stand out in such a crowd?
One way is by establishing your own voice. Have you encountered a blog where you first went for some information but then you liked their voice and now you prefer to choose them. This is the effect a unique voice can make.
Everyone out there might have the same data and probably the same thing to say but what will differ is how you say it. You can add your own experiences and your own reaction to any big event in your industry to make it more unique.
Surely, your company might want you to avoid opinionated blogs but still giving it a touch of your perspective won’t do much harm.
In the start, I was told a number of times by the senior editor to stop writing my own opinions but I always if I can’t write it my way what’s the difference between me and an AI robot. With time, I learned to combine content guidelines with my perspective to write content that fulfils both of the criteria. Just keep writing and you will find your own voice too.
5. Question
How successful content creators are able to identify worthy problems and their great solutions? In the words of Jack Sparrow,
One Word My Love, Curiosity!
Curiosity drives a writer to find something new and write excellent content around it. The curiosity to acknowledge gained information and to gain the knowledge they don’t have still makes them stand out from the crowd.
The insights driven by this constant curiosity help them carve quality content. And as Google’s head of marketing, Lorraine Twohill said, “You need to be curious to identify problems worth solving, and then come up with new solutions.”
Now, this leads to our next habit,
6. Offering Solutions
To be frank, if the audience was just looking for plain information, the internet wouldn’t be so crowded. The element that differs among blogs and makes users remember your site is how you offer the solution.
You need to understand that user is coming to your blog to satisfy specific needs and it’s your job to fulfil them. If you just sit and pass on commentary they would leave in no time. You have to go through the industry, get the information they want and offer them that in the easiest way possible.
Give them the solution, information, specific data etc. and they will remember your name.
7. Do Not Procrastinate
I don’t think I need to explain it much but it is something that I can’t ignore in the list of top habits to be successful.
Procrastination can not lead you anywhere in any aspect of your life. If you think that exceeding one deadline or doing the thing the next day won’t affect anything, you’re completely mistaken.
If you can do the stuff, you must do the stuff. Every successful human out there in any field says the same thing and that makes it more than obvious that it is a rule, not a guideline.
Start early, finish the work earlier than the deadline, and keep continuing it. Make it a habit of your daily life, and you will start succeeding in every aspect you want.
Remember, if it’s important, it’s not an option, you have to “do it”.
Personal Secret for Efficiency
Apart from the above-mentioned habits, if there is anything that I personally would like to mention is that it’s not a 100m race, it’s a marathon.
You won’t feel the best of yourself every day and it’s common. The hardest thing is to still give your best no matter what. Just keep practising consistency and with time it will be a piece of cake.
The Bottom Line
Content writers do face consistent pressure to write excellent blogs, marketing copies, white papers and whatnot.
Just understand that being successful on this road starts with the habits you chose long before you see the upstairs. Repeat these habits every day and make it your daily routine.
Just keep dribbling the ball. You won’t always feel like Michael Jordan and that’s okay. The biggest thing is to keep going.
I hope you would have found it informative and got everything you were looking for, if not then our comment box is wide open for you. Or you can mail us your query at [email protected]. We will love to help you out.
Also, Thank You For Reading Along. It means a lot to us.
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