Getting "Unstuck" While Writing Content

bymacblane

87 followers

6 years ago

During my consulting years - I worked for McKinsey (twice) - I was often confronted with finding new and innovative ways to change and improve Fortune 500 businesses. Those challenges were always met with a lot of excitement, hard work, and outside of the box thinking. However, there were plenty of times when I was "stuck". I couldn't come up with crafty presentations or sexy charts as content to present to my client. Research was king, but in some cases, there just wasn't that much research for any given problem.

During my first WA attempt at writing content, I found myself stuck in how to best write content that was exciting, insightful, and would meet the demands of the WA guidelines.

How to Get "Unstuck"

I decided to go back to my roots and try a new approach. I employed the same tactics that I used during my consulting years.

• Do the research - research anywhere and everywhere to get as much relevant content as possible.
• Step away from the computer - leave the screen and move to the old-fashioned pen and paper.
• Do a "data dump" of every idea - don't worry about organization yet. That will come later. Just write a list of everything you think you can use.
• Divide and conquer - divide the ideas into categories, however broad.
• Write the outline - develop an outline of what you want to convey to the audience including Google, Bing and Yahoo.
• Within each category, develop an ordered bullet-list of how you will write your content

Finalizing the Content - Back to The Computer

• Write what you know will be impactful - this may be an iterative excersize until it flows smoothly for each of the points you created in your bullet point list.
• Read what you've written as if you were new to the topic and ensure that each paragraph conveys ideas/research that follow your outline
• When you are satisfied by what you wrote, trust you instincts and do the final clean-up.

You will be surprised at how effectively you have communicated your expertise and expect the audience will not bail on you when they begin reading.

Good Luck!

- David