How to Write Web Content Quickly

Websites run on content.  Whether it’s the descriptive text used to spice up your product pages, the “About Us” page that tells prospective customers why they should do business with you or the blog updates that help improve your site’s search engine optimization while forming a connection with your clients, the bottom line is this – you need web content and you need lots of it!

But you’re a business owner, not a writer!  You have hundreds of other tasks to do to keep your web store running, so how are you supposed to find the time to sit down and crank out paragraph after paragraph of content for your site?  Let’s take a look at two strategies that can be used to generate web content quickly.

Strategy #1 – Outsource

First of all, if you’d rather schedule an extra trip to the dentist’s office than sit down and write for hours on end, you might want to consider outsourcing your content creation needs to a freelance writer or agency.  Yes, there will be some upfront expenses, but since you can often find good writers who are willing to write for as little as $.01-$.02/word, it may make sense for you to outsource some or all of your content needs.

Think about it for a second…  Suppose you want to create four new posts for your company blog, at an average length of 500 words a piece – a task that would take you at least four hours to finish writing the content on your own.  Outsourcing this content to a writer at the rates listed above would cost you $20-$40 upfront, but if you were able to use those four hours on more profitable activities – like split-testing your ad campaigns to result in more sales – hiring out your writing needs could actually make good financial sense.

To find a good freelance writer, ask around.  Yes, you can find freelance writers by posting jobs on freelance portal websites like Guru.com or Elance.com, searching the web for “freelance writers” or even hanging around internet business forums, but generally speaking, you’ll get the best results if you’re able to get a referral from a business contact who’s worked with the writer before.

Strategy #2 – Learn to Write Faster

Of course, outsourcing isn’t for everyone.  You may not have the upfront capital required to hire a writer, or you may just prefer to write all of your content in your unique voice.  If your business operates in a highly-technical field, you might also find that outsourcing to a writer with the in-depth knowledge required to produce unique content for your website will be cost-prohibitive.

But no matter what the case for you, if you decide to produce all of your website content on your own, know that it is possible to learn how to write faster.  Many people think of writing talent as a gift – either you have it or you don’t.  But in fact, writing is a skill like any other and the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

So if you need to speed up your writing pace, consider the following method to help boost your average “words per minute” rate:

Step One – Conduct your background research

Before we even get start writing, we’re going to need to do a little information gathering.  If you’re writing a technical piece of content, you’ll want to locate a few resources to use as references throughout your article.  But even if you’re writing something company-specific (like an “About Us” page or blog updates about your business’s latest achievements), you’ll find it helpful to see how other people have structured similar content.

To do this, go to Google and type in whatever keywords you think are relevant to your chosen article topic (or navigate to your competitor’s pages to see how they’ve handled similar pages or updates in the past).  From the search results that appear, identify the top 3 highest quality sources and open them in separate browser tabs.  Ideally, these reference pages should be high quality, neutral and informative (think Wikipedia versus someone’s personal blog).

Read through each of your three sources pages once and then minimize the windows.  This process shouldn’t take more than 10-20 minutes to complete and should give you enough background information to begin writing your content.

Step Two – Getting down to business

Now that you have a basic understanding of the subject matter you’re writing on, set a timer for 20 minutes and start writing!  Use the following tips to make this time as productive as possible:

Write as if you were speaking to a friend.  Imagine that a good buddy has asked you to recap the three web articles you just read.  How would you explain them?  What important points would you choose and how would you organize them?  Start from this mindset and write in the way you’d share your information with a friend or family member.

Use a distraction-free writing app.  Tools like FocusWriter or WriteMonkey can help you to stay focused during your 20-minute writing sessions by turning your entire screen into a writing desk.  These tools aren’t an ideal solution if you anticipate needing to reference your source articles as you write, but they can be a lifesaver if you find yourself  frequently distracted by email, Facebook or other time-wasting websites.

Don’t edit as you go.  The idea of this exercise is to write as much as possible for 20 minutes, and you can’t do that if you’re stopping every other sentence to think of the right word or look up a fact. Instead, if you get stuck anywhere in your article, insert the word “[xx]”.  Then, when your 20 minutes are up, you can search your document for all instances of this word and revise as necessary.

Step Three – Practice, practice, practice

As with so many things in life, the more you take the time to sit down and write, the better at it you’ll be.  With this in mind, the key to learning to write web content faster lies simply in setting up time to practice!

One way to make writing practice a part of your daily routine is with an exercise called “morning pages.”  The concept comes from Julia Cameron’s classic work, “The Artist’s Way” and refers to the practice of writing three pages of content every morning in order to get the creative juices flowing.  The pages can be on any topic – whether a “stream of consciousness” style writing or the development of actual content for your website – as the exercise is simply intended to get you writing every day.

With consistent practice (check out the website 750Words.com for a convenient way to perform this activity every day), you’ll find that your writing skills will improve dramatically and your ability to write web content quickly will increase exponentially.

Image: J. Paxon Reyes