“Speed is the new currency of business.” - Marc R. Benioff, Chairman, and CEO of Salesforce

Content is a business and that business currently rules king. The first lesson of content writers up against competitors, Flash factories skidding over keyboards at inhumane speeds, speed is the currency of content. Beyond twenty-four-hour-turnover-twenty-somethings on Fiverr, thinking SEO, Google analyses upload frequency, the more frequently you publish the higher you're ranked in SERP.

In 2020, quantity is not a trade for quality. Search engine algorithms prefer long-form and comprehensive content. Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines state, black and white, Google considers non-superficial, expertly written and well-researched content high-authority; and first-page content is the only content.

Writing for an online demographic, once you understand your target audience from under the umbrella of SEO and you have your topic, you can begin to adjust your method and resources to end the blank page civil war.

How to publish content writing faster.

Never be caught wondering what to write.

Ideas flicker to the forefront less regularly when you need them and more when you're curled on the couch absently debating into space. Get into the habit of jotting them down as an idea log, for example in the notepad on your phone, which for most is, literally,  handy. Blogger Michael D. Pollock on writer's block: “If you have a good idea storage and retrieval system, you’ll never run short on ideas.”

Know what to publish and when to publish it, one month ahead.

Deadline is the most ruminated word to bounce the parameters of the professional writer's mind. Whether you hunger for them or they occasionally catalyse for you internal debates on career change, clamping down on deadlines distinguishes the dead serious from the amateur.

Parkinson's law states: “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Whether you give yourself two weeks or two hours, this is the time it'll take you to finish it. Reasonably allocate for a task the time you think it would take you at your most fast-paced.

Strategically schedule a publishing calendar to manage your editorial content. Include which topic from your idea bank, what day you'll be researching it, drafting, editing, publishing and the time you have for gathering and slash or creating resources such as video and image.

Don't let your publishing schedule turn self-flagellation tool. If you’re wrestling with an article move to the next and flag the first as unwritten. Allow your writing and your interest in what you're writing to flow naturally.

Scheduling allows balanced topic distribution across your portfolio and for more efficient use of your idea bank. Two articles with separate takes on a single topic, for example, may use the same body of research. Write them at the same time whilst the information is fresh for you.

Can you leech a valuable series from one subject? Interviews, testimonials, research pieces, non-narrative fiction, demos, how-tos, etc. are all different angles of approach for a single subject whilst showcasing the scope of your skills.

How to write better content without hesitation.

Great content is in the name. It contains body, instructive, educational or entertaining it is thick with substance which feeds and anticipates your audience's needs. Great content gives something more in regularly evolving and multi-modal formats. To write great content, know your options for what to write and how to write it.

Blog Posts.

Blog posts are greedily user consumed and search engine favoured and build long-term credibility with a readership. How-tos, Collaborations, Q&As, Interviews, Editorial News, Comparisons, Listicles and Step-by-Step Guides are all popular blog post formats.

Google Search Suggestions hyperlinked in blue in SERP give a good idea into reader demand when considering topic approach. Keyword.io allows you to type in your subject to get a list of keywords that can be useful for SEO and generating series on single topics.

Article titles such as Expectations vs. Reality, The Next Big Thing in X and This Week's Top Stories About X from online generators such as hubspot.com and impactbnd.com force variation in format and can be used to ward off writer's block.

White Papers.

White papers are longer, denser and more specialist than blog posts. They're educational, backed by evidence and used to show subject authority and solidify reputation. Online readers having short attention spans, they're best used as bargaining chips, content upgrades or marketing tools. If your reader is ready enough to read a white paper they've enough investment in the information it holds to email subscribe.

Journalistic.

Online journalism can be either personal or brand-sponsored. Much like an offline journalist it involves human interest pieces, the construction of click-bait, tabloid-esque headlines, fact-checking, sending cold outreach emails and following up leads to pursue stories. 

Pioneering research is time-consuming but powerful giving it's writer new information that can be used and cited by other sources. Freelancing, these stories from online journalists are then pitched to third-party publications if not posted directly to personal portfolios.

For online journalists, ProfNet is a free resource of 30,000 expert profiles in 13 subject areas available for quote and query when putting together research pieces. Review sites such as Trustpilot, social media posted inquiries on Facebook and Twitter and websites such as Reddit, Quora, Yahoo! Answers and AskOpinion are all useful for gathering leads and searching for sources. Google Alerts too is a free tool which can act as a passive research assistant sending new sources directly to your inbox as they are posted according to the keywords or search queries you add to it.

Copywriting.

The last form of content I'll touch on here is Copywriting. Writing copy includes Web page copy such as About pages and Landing Pages, Infographics, Product descriptions, Sales and Social media posts. Copywriters aim for sparky and interactive slogans, phrases or a few paragraphs of emotive text which fuels conversation, controversy, brand awareness, brand exposure and sells products. Copywriting demands a day by day socioeconomic sensitivity, an empathetic intuition for generalised psychology and a readiness to abuse both prior for the benefit of the writer.