July 20, 2018

How to Make the Content Writing Process Easier (And Get Better Results)

Consistently creating high-quality content is hard. Whether you’re a professional content writer or someone

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without a writing background trying to figure out this whole content marketing thing – creating content requires a lot of work, and doing it well is an ongoing struggle.

I can’t provide any shortcuts to make content writing quick and easy, while still maintaining the level of quality good content marketing requires. But I can provide a few tried and tested tips that make the writing process easier, while ensuring the end results are still well worth it.

5 Tips for Easier Content Writing

Devote time to research.

As a reminder: I didn’t promise that these tips would make the work faster, just easier and better. Committing some real time to doing solid research before you start writing will help with both those things.

This is the step most likely to get lost in the shuffle when you rush your writing. You may think you can get by just getting words onto the page so it’s done. The problem is it’s much harder to write about something you don’t understand than it is to write on a topic you know well. Trying to pull information out of your brain that’s not there is difficult!

And obviously, doing your research upfront means your piece will be more accurate and include better information than if you’re essentially making guesses or making things up.

Unless you’re already an expert on the topic you’re writing about (and a lot of the time, even then), you have to make sure you do your research. Give yourself time to learn your topic well before you dive into writing.

Create an outline.

When I was in school, I used to rebel against this idea. Sure, every teacher recommends it, but I knew what I was doing. Why spend time on organization when I could skip that step and just get to the writing?

Soon after I started writing professionally, I realized how silly my earlier thinking had been. No matter how good of a writer you are, creating outlines can make you better, make your work process more efficient, and make writing easier.

This is especially true when you’re writing for the web. Between SEO and the way people read online (specifically, a lot of skimming), using headings and lists to organize your writing is important.

When you create an outline in advance you:

Determine the post will have a structure that makes it easy to read.
Can create advance opportunities for optimizing and including headings and sections that aid in SEO.
Give yourself a head start on the post that makes the actual writing part easier.

You know the writer’s cliché of staring at a blank word document? Filling that blank document in with an outline is easier than starting with the writing itself. And once you do start writing, the document won’t be blank anymore and you’ll have your initial notes and structure to guide you as go.

Find your writing time of day.

Mine is usually morning and early afternoon, but yours may be something completely different. Writing requires a lot of mental energy. It will be much harder to do well if you try to do it at a time of day when your brain doesn’t want to do that work.

Everyone has times of day when they have more energy and will be more productive. Start paying attention to how productive you are in the morning versus in the afternoon versus in the evening. Once you identify the time of day when writing’s easiest, start to plan your schedule around it. You’ll both be more productive and do better work.

Block distractions (but do take planned breaks).

The internet is very distracting. Writing requires focus, but it’s hard to keep that focus when you know Facebook or Buzzfeed (or whatever your go-to time waster is) is just a click away.

Here’s the thing: your brain does need breaks. You don’t have to swear off every distracting website on the web during your working hours, and doing so might actually be to your detriment. But if you let your brain wander off course every few minutes (or worse, seconds), then you’ll have a harder time getting your writing done and the distraction will show in a more scattered and unclear end result.

So decide in advance that you’re allowed breaks and plan out when you’ll take them. You can use something like the Pomodoro Method to time them out in set intervals or you can assign yourself a certain number of words or sections before your next break is allowed.

And if you have trouble keeping your focus in between the planned breaks, you can block all the distracting websites with a tool like Focus. It’s ok to need a little outside help to control your worst impulses – certainly better than giving into them and facing a harder, slower writing process because of it.

Don’t aim for perfection.

You should absolutely hold yourself to a standard of quality, but if you always aim for perfection in your writing, you’ll overthink the writing process and make things a lot harder on yourself. At some point, your writing has to be done so you can move onto the next thing. And trust me that you’re thinking a lot more about the words you choose than your readers are – most of them are skimming, remember?

Do commit to writing well. Make sure:

The information you include is accurate
Your word choices aren’t awkward
Your sentences make sense and read well.
You correct any typos or errors during the proofreading process (and don’t skip the proofreading process!)
And that your content is well designed to achieve its goals – whether that means educating readers, increasing brand awareness, or including CTAs to drive a specific action.

If your writing makes sense, provides valuable information, and is easy to read, then you’re probably good! Don’t drag down your process by overanalyzing every word choice to make it perfect.

At the end of the day, writing is subjective anyway and you’ll never make everyone happy. What’s most important is making sure your content writing is useful enough to help your readers and achieve its goal.

If you’re worried your staff is getting burned out trying to keep up with all the writing that good content marketing requires, I may be able to help. Get in touch to see if we might be a good fit.

May 28, 2018

7 Good Business Blogging Examples

Blogging has become one of the most valuable marketing tools that businesses have for improving SEO, building an email list, and connecting more directly with customers and leads. When done well, blogging can do a lot of good for your business.

But blogging isn’t easy to do well. It requires a lot of ongoing work to produce regular content, and making sure the content you publish is useful and entertaining to your audience is a constant challenge on top of that.

If your company struggles with business blogging and could use some inspiration, I’ve brought together a few good examples of businesses* that consistently produce solid blog content for their audiences.

1. Care/of

Care/of is a vitamin subscription service that customizes the vitamins they send to each customer based on their particular lifestyle and needs. The company’s blog includes articles that directly discuss the benefits of the supplements they sell, summarizing and referencing research studies that back up their claims. But they also publish posts less directly related to their products that address health-related topics that their target audience is likely to care about.

Some good posts that demonstrate this are:

Spice of Life: A Closer Look at the Benefits of All-Powerful Turmeric
Turmeric is one of the supplements they sell, so this post is directly touting the benefits of a product, but the post manages not to feel overly promotional. It gets into the history of how turmeric has been used as both as a spice and a medicinal aid and references a number of research studies that have found evidence of its health benefits.
5 Ways to De-Stress Over the Holidays
During the holiday season, people get overwhelmed and stress becomes a big part of many people’s lives. This post covers a number of strategies that can help people reduce stress, including (but not limited to) taking some of the supplements the company provides. It’s another good example of a post that provides value first, but mentions their products where it’s relevant.
7 Healthy Living Blogs You Need to Follow Now
I call this a sharing-the-love post. It can feel unnatural to write a blog post that sends your readers to other blogs similar to yours, but people have room in their lives for more than one blog about a topic!

By highlighting other blogs that cover health-related topics (most of them more about recipes or exercise rather than supplements, so not direct competitors to Care/of), this post provides something valuable to readers while also potentially starting positive relationships with influencers in the space.

2. Media Bistro

Media Bistro helps play matchmaker for hiring managers in the media industry and the talented professionals they hire. Since the company has two equally important audiences, they produce two blogs: one for employers and one that offers career advice to media professionals.

The blog for employers is a good mix of posts that cover news relevant to hiring managers, answers to questions their readers are likely to have and general advice. Some recent examples worth checking out include:

Congress Weighs Massive Changes to 401(k) Contributions
Employee benefits are something every hiring manager has on their minds, the benefits they offer and how competitive they are can make a big difference in the caliber of talent they attract. So when the government considers legislative changes that could affect the value of a common employee benefit like the 401(k), it’s something the Media Bistro audience needs to hear about. This post explains the proposed changes and what it would mean for the blog’s readers
Can You Hire or Fire Based on Political Beliefs?
In the divisive atmosphere that’s followed the last presidential election, this is a question probably on the mind of more than a few hiring managers. This blog post provides both the technical answer (legally, yes, at least in most states), while also getting into the bigger question of whether or not you should factor politics into your personnel decisions.

The career advice blog regularly publishes roundups of top jobs available in different cities – something that’s definitely valuable to readers looking for a job – along with posts that offer general career advice and answers to common questions. A few good examples to look at are:

6 Ways to Track Down a Magazine Editor
For many professional writers, figuring out the right person to pitch is a big part of the job. This post provides specific steps writers can take to discover the editors at publications they want to pitch. It’s a useful piece that solves a common problem readers have.

How to Land Higher Paying Assignments
No matter the industry, any blog about careers should address the issue of money. It’s one of the biggest topics readers are thinking about. Media Bistro tackles the topic in this post, which provides specific advice on how to start making more money and backs it up with anecdotes from expert sources.

3. Priceonomics

Priceonomics has a business model based on data: tracking it effectively and putting it to good use. And they use their blog to effectively demonstrate the kind of good use their clients can put it to. Their blog posts all use data to answer common questions – or at least as often, questions you didn’t even know you had, but find yourself really interested in learning the answer to.

A lot of the content on their own blog serves as an example of collaborations with their clients. By showing the ways their customers use data to create great content, they make a case for their products, while also entertaining their readers.

Their posts are a mix of fun, useful, and just interesting information. Here are a few good examples:

Is There a Connection Between Bad Grammar and Bad Reviews?
This post is a good example of a collaboration with a client, Datafiniti, a company that has a large database of products and their reviews. Once you hear the question, you probably think back to the large number of badly written negative reviews you’ve read – many of them with lots of unnecessary capital letters or confusing typos. It’s a good example of the kind of question you didn’t know you had until you heard it, and now you kind of want to know the answer, don’t you?

The post not only answers this question (the answer is yes, if you’re wondering), but also includes a lot of interesting insights on the average length of reviews (apparently one-word reviews are quite common) and how length and spelling errors both correlate to whether a review is positive or negative. It’s a thorough and interesting analysis that does a good job of demonstrating the value Priceonomics provides to customers.

Ranking the Most (and Least) Nutritious Meals for Your Dollar
This is a good example of a really useful post. If you’re someone who cares about your health (most of us) and also cares about spending your money well (also most of us), then this is the kind of information you need to make better decisions when choosing your meals. This is another collaboration with a customer – this time a company with software that helps people plan and track healthy eating.

It tests the common supposition that healthy eating costs more (spoiler: it does). But it follows up that depressing finding with a list of healthy foods and recipes people can eat that pack a lot of nutrition for the cost. In short, it’s super useful.

4. Grammarly

Grammarly sells subscription software that automatically checks customers’ writing against a number of rules and best practices to help them improve. Obviously, their audience is anyone that writes often – from students, to professional writers, to professionals who want to write better emails. Their blog posts therefore often delve into common problems and questions writers have, but they also sometimes explore fun history or weird information that curious learners (something most writers are likely to be) will find interesting.

Some good examples to check out include:

Want to Stop Procrastinating at Work and Get Stuff Done? Here’s How
If I wasn’t currently hard at work on this blog post as I type, I might feel personally called out by this post. Like a lot of creative professionals and well, probably everybody else, writers often deal with procrastination. Staring at a blank Word document has a way of reminding writers about other things we could be doing.

This post therefore addresses an issue that Grammarly’s target audience definitely cares about. It provides actionable advice that can really make a difference for a common problem.

Mexican Novels to Help You Celebrate Cinco de Mayo
You know something all good writers like to do? Read! In fact, I’ve long considered reading one of the most essential tips for being a good writer. This post makes use of a timely reference (it went up on May 5) to provide Grammarly’s audience with information they’re likely to care about: recommendations for good books.

This post technically doesn’t have anything to do with the company’s product, but that doesn’t matter. It keeps their target audience interested in the blog and more likely to come back for more.

5. Threadless

Threadless mostly sells t-shirts, along with home décor, art, and accessories. People can buy t-shirts anywhere, so what makes Threadless really stand out is the hip and artsy personality they pack into their products. The blog continues that branding with posts that are fun, interesting, and highlight original art (including the art they put on their t-shirts and other products).

Here are a few posts that will give you a good taste of the fun personality they present:

No Context Needed: Overheard at Threadless
This is a funny post that says a lot about the brand as it mixes design (each of the quotes are displayed with original illustrations) and humor. The quotes from employees around the office show the kind of light and goofy atmosphere that defines the company’s work culture and make it easy for readers to feel a connection to the brand.
The Cute Meets Creepy Creations of Comic Artist, Maria Ahokoivu
This post features one of the artists whose work shows up on Threadless products. It humanizes the artist behind the work – she talks about favorite movies and pizza toppings, along with her work as an artist. And the post includes examples of her work, along with some links to specific Threadless products readers can buy. With artist interviews like this, they’ve found a human, personal way to sell.
6 Tips for Making it as an Artist (And Making Money)
Some of the people most likely to love and buy the products Threadless sells are other struggling artists trying to figure out how to get their own designs out in the world. This post provides advice for how to start profiting off your art and includes quotes from artists that have actually pulled it off. It’s valuable advice that speaks to a common struggle of the kind of people who follow and buy from Threadless.

Intercom

Intercom sells customer management software that helps businesses better organize and improve their relationship with customers and leads. As a result, they have three main audiences: marketers, sales reps, and customer support professionals. Their blog addresses topics relevant to each audience, as well as tackling issues important to anyone helping run an SaaS company. They often use their own experiences working at Intercom to provide useful advice to readers likely to face similar challenges.

Here are a couple of good examples of how they do that:

Motivate Your Star Performers with Meaningful Career Conversations
For all three of the main audiences Intercom targets – sales, marketing, and customer support – one of the most important parts of success is finding and keeping good employees. This post provides specific steps that companies can take to make sure good employees want to stick around and uses examples of how Intercom does things to illustrate how the recommended process works and why it’s valuable.

Why Your Privacy Ecosystem is Crucial in the Age of GDPR
This post addresses head on the biggest issue many tech companies are worried about right now: GDPR legislation. It provides useful advice on how to approach your own product and those it integrates with in order to better protect your customers’ privacy and stay on the right side of GDPR.

HelpScout

To promote their customer support software, the HelpScout blog provides a lot of information on providing great customer service, along with posts that more generally address how to run a business well. They regularly publish fairly long posts that include helpful tips coupled with examples that help illustrate the tips.

For an idea of what their posts often look like, here are a couple of good ones to read:

22 Customer Retention Strategies that Work
One of the many good reasons to provide great customer service is that it convinces happy customers to keep coming back – which is good for your bottom line. This post provides a lengthy list of good ways to keep customers happy once you’ve earned that first sale and backs up the recommended strategies with research and statistics.

Writing Support Emails: A Style Guide
Style guides are a valuable tool for businesses that want to be consistent in the way they communicate across different channels, but they’re not commonly associated with support emails. This post provides a corrective to that. It gives specific and useful advice on how to structure emails to better provide your customers with what they need and accomplish your support goals. And it uses specific examples to illustrate the suggestions throughout.

Hopefully spending some time with good examples of business blog posts will give you the inspiration you need to get fired up writing for your own blog. Even though blogging requires a lot of work, it really can be worth it if you keep up with it and make sure you provide great blog posts that are helpful to your audience.

If you’re struggling with staying on top of all the writing that a blog requires, it’s ok to ask for help. Writing blog posts for businesses is a big part of what I do. I can take some of the load off for you. Just contact me to see if we might be a good fit.

*While I think all the blogs I write for are pretty great examples of good business blogging as well, I left them off the list here to avoid personal bias. Lucky for you, that means you can see even more examples of good business blogging over on my writing samples page. Enjoy.

April 2, 2018

How to Give Good Content Writing Feedback

Updated May 2022

We’ve all had the experience before. Someone delivers information in a way that makes clear they think you’ll know exactly what they mean, but you’re stumped. You are just not following what they’re saying to you at all.

This is one of the quirks of communication that everyone deals with at some point. Something can be so clear and obvious in your own head that you think expressing it to the person in front of you (or on the other side of that email) is easy, but what’s clear to you is confusing and muddy to them.

Freelance writers know the feeling of being on the other end of that email well. Most of us have had multiple experiences of hearing feedback from clients that doesn’t tell us what we need to hear in order to understand what the client means.

It’s tricky providing feedback well, but having a good relationship with any writer you hire depends on it. And giving good feedback early on in the relationship will help them learn what you’re looking for, so you won’t have to do as much work later on.

To help you effectively get what you’re wanting from a content writer’s work, here are some tips on how to give good content writing feedback.

1. Read the whole thing.

To start, you want to make sure your feedback is accurate and that means taking the time to read over the entire piece of content they’ve submitted. And really read here—don’t skim.

It’s embarrassing for you and awkward for the writer if they have to point out that you’ve asked them to add a section that actually already exists further down the page or with a heading you didn’t recognize. On top of being awkward, it wastes everyone’s time and you both have better things to do.

2. Get to it quickly.

I know you’re busy, but if you sit on a blog post or white paper for weeks, or worse, months before sending your feedback, that particular piece won’t be fresh in you content writer’s memory. It’s both harder and less efficient to make good updates if they barely remember the piece and the research they did for it anymore by that point. And some freelance content writers (this one included) put feedback deadlines in the contract, so you may miss your chance to get updates altogether if you wait too long.

So give yourself a deadline. Commit to reading over the piece and sending your feedback within a week or two of receiving it. And get it on your to-do list even sooner, if possible.

A note here: any reasonable person you work with will understand that life sometimes gets in the way. So if you your kid gets sick or you have a plumbing emergency that takes over your life for a few days, take the time you need! Your writer should understand. Just try not to make a habit out of slow response times.

3. Be specific.

While it’s obvious to you why the wording in that third paragraph just doesn’t sound right, or the overall tone of the piece doesn’t work—your content writer can’t see into your head. You have to explain it in terms that clearly communicate how to make the changes you want.

A few tips to help you do that:

Avoid general language.

Feedback like “this section doesn’t really work” or “this isn’t clicking” only tells someone that you don’t like what you’re looking at. It doesn’t tell them why. Sure, your writer could re-write that section to be all new wording. But if they don’t understand what you don’t like about it, there’s a good chance they’ll end up repeating whatever issue wasn’t working for you the first time.

Saying something instead like “the tone in this section is too formal” or “this sentence is too long, which makes it hard to follow” actually gives them something to work with when making changes.

Make notes and changes in the text itself.

Microsoft Word and Google Docs both provide features for tracking changes and adding comments within a document. This makes it possible for you to comment directly on specific wording or sections that demonstrate the issue you’re addressing. If you think some of the wording is muddy or confusing, point out specifically where you see that happening rather than expecting the writer to be able to figure it out. If you think there are claims in the piece that need to be better backed up with sources, point out which ones.

Matching your feedback to the particular pieces of the content it applies to will help the writer see clearly what you mean. They’ll learn both what sort of changes you’re looking for now, and how to avoid making those same mistakes in the future.

Provide examples of what you’re looking for.

Particularly when it comes to issues of tone and style, it can be hard to communicate exactly what you want using descriptive terms. If you can point to other blog posts or content pieces—whether on your own website or elsewhere—that illustrate what you’re looking for, it can help a writer figure out the right approach to take.

Pro tip: Even better, provide a style guide upfront that covers this territory. A good style guide increases the chances a writer will get things right on the first try, saving you both time in the editing process.

4. Be respectful.

Clarity is a big part of the good feedback equation, but respect is just as important. When you hire a professional content writer, treat them with professionalism.

What that means, in practice:

Negative feedback is ok, but tone matters.

That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to provide criticisms. Anyone working in a creative field should have enough of a thick skin to take (respectful) criticism of their work.

Hopefully, the line between constructive criticism and being insulting or mean is clear to you. If it’s not, let someone else in your company be in charge of providing feedback for now and maybe consider therapy or communication classes to learn the difference, because it’s a pretty important life skill to have. I don’t mean that in a snide way, but as genuine advice.

Saying “this writing is awful” or “don’t you know anything?” isn’t helpful, but saying “this piece could really use some more work, could you take some time to do a little more research and find some data or case studies to back up your points?” is perfectly reasonable.

Keep things professional.

This relates to tone, but is worth saying on its own. Don’t yell at a content writer because you don’t like their work. Don’t insult their intelligence or use vulgar language to describe what you think of it. For the love of all that matters in this world, do NOT use racist, sexist, or ableist slurs in your response.

Every content writer you hire, whether they’re a freelancer or employee, is someone with a career and their own professional contacts. Know that if you’re the client or boss from hell, it will hurt your reputation.

Remember: writing is subjective.

One of the really cool things about language is that there are a lot of right ways to say the same thing. Someone can have a writing style that doesn’t work for you, but is still perfectly good writing. Remember that your opinion on this subject is not the objectively correct opinion.

When you’re paying for someone to write for you, you’re allowed to have an opinion on the writing—of course you are. But don’t frame your feedback as though you know the right way to say things and your writer is clearly wrong for not choosing the wording you would have. If you do, you’ll come off as arrogant and patronizing.

Instead, approach your feedback as an exercise in helping your writer understand how to come around to your preferences for style and tone—or better yet, the preferences you believe your audience has for style and tone. After all, you may be the client, but they’re not actually writing for you.

Final Words

A good working relationship with a freelance content writer can be extremely beneficial to your company and your content marketing program. Good feedback is an important part of being able to keep the writers you hire for the long term and get them to a place where they know how to deliver the kind of content you’re looking for. It’s worth spending time, especially early in the relationship, providing specific and respectful feedback to any writer you work with.

February 6, 2018

Should You Use Gated Content?

For many businesses, one of the frustrating things about content marketing is feeling like you’re investing a lot of time and money, putting a lot of value out into the world – but it’s hard to connect that work back to solid leads and sales. One of the tools content marketers have to bridge that gap and turn content into a more direct lead generation tool is gated content.

But while putting content behind a form means you gain something (leads and information), you also lose something. If you’re going to use gated content, you have to think carefully about why and how.

What is Gated Content?

Gated content is any content that’s only accessible to people that provide something in exchange for viewing it. In most marketing cases, that means personal information like a name and email address or business information like your title and business size. Sometimes it can also mean content that goes behind a paywall, so you can only see it after paying for it, but that’s more common for media publications than marketing uses.

4 Reasons to Gate Content

Gated content gives you a way to get something back for the content you put so much work into. There are a few good reasons to consider gating your content:

To gain leads

When a person hands over information about themselves to download your content, you end up with more knowledge about a potential future customer. You know what topic they’re interested in (based on what they downloaded) and how to get back in touch with them. That’s information you can do something with if they look like a promising lead.

To collect more information from your leads

A name and an email address can be enough to count someone as a lead, but the more you know about them the more you’re able to be targeted in your contact with them. Sometimes the form for a piece of gated content includes additional fields like business size and industry. And if someone that’s already a lead comes back to check out more of your gated content, you can ask for different information than you did the first time – you already have their email, but maybe they can tell you now the services they offer or their biggest business challenge.

It gives you an in to continue the relationship

Someone who views a blog post may find it valuable, but then leave the website and never return. When someone gives you contact information they’re showing engagement and giving you a way to keep the relationship going – something that can often be hard to pull off in content marketing.

It signals higher-value content

While content marketing is often all about providing value to your audience (for free), there’s definitely still a sense in our culture that a thing too easily gotten can’t be worth as much. For someone with that mentality, a piece of content they have to give something up for will immediately look more valuable than something publicly available to everyone. Putting content behind a form can therefore be a way of communicating that there’s something special about this piece of content, which can make it look more enticing to your audience.

5 Reasons Not to Gate Content

I’m going to come right out with a clear stance here: not all content should be gated. The benefits of leaving content publicly available on your website are too significant to gate everything.

Gated content creates friction.

Anytime you put a barrier between people and what you want them to see, you’re decreasing the number of people that will take that step. In some contexts, that’s ok. Having fewer relevant leads is better than lots of irrelevant ones. But a big part of marketing is creating awareness of your brand and product, and content has an important role to play in that. It won’t help people learn you exist if they can’t see any of the content you create because it’s hidden behind a form.

It can cause annoyance.

If someone doesn’t know enough about your brand to trust you and care about what you have to say, being hit with a form first thing asking them to hand over their information is obnoxious. Not only will they probably not provide the information you’ve asked for, but their overall experience on your website will be negative.

If you overuse gated content without taking the time to build up trust with freely accessible content, then you can expect your visitors to experience annoyance and frustration – clearly not emotions you want to cause in potential customers.

You lose out on SEO value.

When you put your content out of reach for prospects, you’re putting it out of reach for Google’s algorithms as well. Why would they want to rank a page that has partial information on it with a form to learn more rather than a page on the same subject that lays out all the information a searcher would need? If SEO is a priority (and it should be for most businesses doing content marketing), then most of your content should remain ungated.

You lose out on links.

This is related to SEO, but worth mentioning on its own. When a writer is looking for content to link to in a post or article that will add value to their readers, they’re less likely to choose a resource that their readers won’t find readily accessible. With some exceptions where what’s behind the gate is so uniquely valuable as to be worth it (original research being the main one), they’ll skip over your gated content and find a resource that’s not behind a form to use.

Your blog can be a tool to gain leads without gated content.

If your blog content is consistently useful and you promote your email list throughout the blog and website, then you can gain email signups and leads without putting your content behind a gate. Sticking your best stuff behind a form isn’t the only way to gain leads.

What’s Right For You?

Whether or not you should gate your content depends on three main things:

Your goals
Your audience
Whether or not you have content worth gating

If the main goals of your content marketing program are awareness and SEO, then gated content probably isn’t for you. But if it’s crucial to you to gain leads with your content and your blog isn’t doing the trick, then working up some especially high-quality resources to put behind a form could be a great idea. It all depends on your overall goals and if gating makes sense within the rest of your content strategy.

If You Use Gated Content

If you do decide to start using gated content, then it’s important to do so in a way that keeps your audience top of mind and helps you meet your goals.

Make sure your content is worth it.

First things first, if you put lackluster content behind a gate, people will resent you for it. And if you reach out to contact them after, you’re doing so at a disadvantage because they already lost their trust in you. So you have to make sure any gated content you create is top of the line.

Ask yourself:

Do I know this is a topic my audience cares about?
Is there anything in my gated content people couldn’t easily find with a simple Google search?
Will my audience walk away from this content having learned something they can use to make their lives or work better?

If you can’t confidently answer all three of those questions with a “yes,” this content shouldn’t go behind a form.

Don’t ask for too much.

There are definitely people who would be willing to download content that only asks for an email address, but will balk if you ask for their email, title, business size, industry, date of birth, name of their firstborn…you get the idea. The more time it takes someone to fill out the form and the more they feel like they have to give up, the harder you’re making it for them to say “yes” and complete the task to reach your content.

Think about starting small – just ask for a little information the first time a prospect encounters your gated content. If they come back for more later (a different piece of gated content, that is), you can ask for more.

Promote it like a product.

If you’re putting the time in to create content that’s of a high enough value to put behind a form, then you should commit time to getting it in front of people. Promote your gated content on social media. Plan other relevant content pieces you can use to help promote your gated content and work CTAs into them. Consider pitching relevant guest posts to other blogs that will include links to your gated content, to help get it in front of a new audience. You might even consider paid promotion if you want to make sure you get that much more out of it.

If you simply create it and sit around hoping people will notice and care, you’ll have done all that work for nothing. Help people find the content you worked so hard on.

A/B test forms and CTAs.

If you’d really like to ask for extra information in your form, but aren’t sure you can get away with it without losing leads, do some testing. Figure out different wording to put on the landing page, different fields to include on the form, and different language and designs for the CTAs you use to direct people to your gated content. It’s hard to predict what people will respond to and what wording or design elements will make a difference. You won’t know for sure what matters most unless you test it out.

Make sure you follow up with relevant messaging.

Once a person takes the step of providing their information to download your content, you have an opportunity to keep the relationship going. Don’t bombard them with email marketing, but do work up some follow-up emails that are relevant to the content they downloaded. Use those emails to see about getting them to sign up for your email list or urge them to take further action, like starting a trial or checking out relevant product pages.

Someone who goes so far as to provide you information in order to access your content is usually going to be a valuable lead, so figure out the best strategy for nurturing those leads once you have them.

Gated content may not be right for every brand, and no brand should make it 100% of their content strategy. But if you do decide it’s right for you, it may be a good way to bring in new, relevant leads that are likely to turn into customers. You just have to make sure you do it right.

January 8, 2018

How to Write When You Don’t Have the Energy

Updated May 2022

Everyone needs the occasional sick day or mental health day. But for most of us, there’s a limit on how much time we can take off before we face career consequences. For writers, that sometimes means having to push through and do difficult, creative work on days where it’s hard.

This is a personal subject for me. For the past few years—predating COVID even—I’ve dealt with health issues that cause chronic fatigue. On top of that, I have many days where my brain is foiled by allergies (a bigger deal in Austin than the word “allergies” communicates to most people). But I run a business based around writing and I’ve had to keep it up on the bad days as well as the good.

Photo by Xavier Sotomayor on Unsplash

Over time, I’ve become used to keeping my work going when my brain and body just want to curl up in bed and avoid anything that requires mental energy. And writing takes a lot of mental energy. Yet, somehow I always meet my deadlines.

For others that struggle with similar issues—or different ones that affect your productivity in similar ways—I’m sharing what’s worked for me in the hopes that it might work for you.

It’s unlikely that every item on this list will be useful for every person reading it. But if you find that even just one thing here makes a difference, then that’s something.

1. Reshape your to-do list based on priority.

Most of us start off each day aiming to do more than we absolutely have to get done. In many contexts, that kind of ambition serves you well and helps you stay productive. But on the bad days, it starts to feel like a burden pressing down on you that makes it harder to get anything on the list done.

When you’re having an off day, an overwhelming to-do list isn’t doing you any favors. Carefully review the list and figure out which items on it can wait. You need the sparse energy you have for the writing that has to get done today. Move that to the top of the list and do it first. After the most important stuff is done, only then do whatever else you can manage. Or go ahead and give yourself the rest of the day off if you need it (and don’t feel guilty about it).

2. Analyze where your energy goes.

I’m a big proponent of focusing on energy management at least as much as time management. When you start paying close attention, you’ll realize that different types of work and activities require different levels of energy from you—and this is something that varies from person to person.

For anyone that regularly deals with low energy levels, knowing how to rework your calendar based on the amount of energy you have available is a crucial skill. But this is worthwhile even for people who don’t struggle with depression or illness. Tracking how your energy levels relate to the work you tackle each day will help you plan your weeks more efficiently. You can minimize tasks that require a disproportionate amount of energy for the value they bring to your work.

For instance, I’m extremely introverted. Adding a networking event to my day uses up a lot of the energy I have for work that day, even on a good day. I know to be strategic about when I plan to attend social events, and when to forego those plans when the energy just isn’t there.

Figure out how the typical tasks you have to deal with in a week compare in this regard so you know which ones to cut down on to conserve the energy you have.

3. Leave wiggle room in your schedule.

If you’re freelance like me, that will mean leaving money on the table, at least in the short term. But when you can’t predict what your days will be like, you have to plan your life in a way that anticipates bad days. And leaving wiggle room in your calendar means you’re much less likely to miss deadlines and disappoint clients, which adds up to more success in the long term.

This isn’t a tip that will help much if you woke up this morning feeling fatigued or depressed for the first time. But if it becomes something that happens regularly, then you have to start planning on it. Worst-case scenario, if you have nothing but good days for a while, that extra wiggle room gives you time to tackle all those tasks you tend to put off till later when you’re busy.

4. Use a social media blocker.

Seriously, it helps. Focusing on work requires energy. Scrolling Twitter doesn’t. The days I’m the most tired are the ones where I find it easiest to scroll for long periods of time without realizing it.

When your brain wants to be focusing on anything but the thing you need to be doing, that’s when social media has the most power. It’s probably not the only distraction in your life you have to grapple with, but it’s one you can do something about.

I use Focus. It costs a small fee, but it’s probably improved my productivity enough to cover its cost several times over. When you’re trying hard to focus and your brain won’t cooperate, getting a message that reminds you of your good intentions each time you try to pull up Facebook can be a helpful reminder to get back on track.

5. Create a ritual for starting work.

When the pandemic sparked a mass shift to remote work, some people were surprised to find that the commute they hated actually served a purpose they hadn’t realized: helping draw a line between their home life and work time. Psychologically, there’s value to having a ritual that delineates when it’s time to switch your brain into “work mode.”

This is a tip I got from Cal Newport’s Deep Work. To provide a tangible signal to my brain that it’s writing time, I put on headphones and pick some music or noise that helps with focus. For some people, that ritual could be taking a walk around the block, or getting your morning cup of coffee ready and settling in at your the desk. The ritual doesn’t have to be anything complicated, just something that creates enough of a routine that you can train your brain to recognize it as a signal to focus.

6. Try listening to music or white noise.

Some writers need absolute silence to focus, but for some of us the right kind of music or noise can help. Personally, I avoid anything with lyrics. But I find some instrumental music like movie and TV scores make for good background noise to write to. Sometimes when I worry even that might be too distracting, I find a white noise video on YouTube or turn to myNoise.

YouTube has tons of videos of pretty images set to music designed to help with focus (and as a side note, the comments on most of these videos are some of the nicest spaces on the web, full of people urging each other to focus—so wholesome). Just do a search for “focus noise” or focus music” and you’ll see lots of results. Give some a try and see if you’re the kind of writer who works better with the right kind of noise in the background.

7. Give exercise breaks a try.

I get it. I understand if you’re looking at the computer screen right now feeling so tired or overwhelmed or beat down by life that this is the last piece of advice you want to hear.

Taking time out of your day for exercise feels counterintuitive when you have so much to do and not enough energy to do it. But I’ve found that it sometimes kick-starts my brain and gives me a couple of hours of productivity afterward. It might not do the same for you, but it’s worth a try.

A Big Caveat: With some of the illnesses that cause chronic pain and/or fatigue, exercise can make symptoms worse. So pay attention to your own body here. Don’t keep doing something you think should be working, even if it doesn’t help in your case.

8. Watch what you eat.

I am not talking about restrictive dieting or weight loss here (not really a fan of those things!). I mean paying attention to insensitivities or ingredients that regularly make you drowsy or distracted. I know having a carb-heavy lunch brings my productivity down in the afternoon, for example. So I save the pasta dishes for dinner.

How people react to food varies, so saving carbs for dinnertime might not make a lick of difference to you. But do some experimenting with cutting certain ingredients out for a period of time to see if you notice a difference. Or start making notes of how you feel throughout the day and what you ate so you can see if there’s a relationship.

Changing your diet won’t make something like a thyroid problem or depression disappear entirely, but cutting out something that makes you feel a little bit worse will help you feel a little bit better. When you’re starting from a place of feeling crummy, that little bit of difference can help.

9. Try supplements or herbal teas.

Look, for all I know it may be the placebo affect, but I’ve found this tea helps when I’m really struggling to focus. And making tea out of fresh ginger (I add in some mint and lemon or lime) seems to help with headaches or allergy-induced brain fog. Ginseng or gingko supplements might work for some people. B-12 or vitamin D supplements may work for others. If you can afford it, ask your doctor to run some tests to see if you’re low on any supplements that are good for energy and brain health.

10. Be forgiving with yourself.

The inspirational stuff you see on social media and in productivity articles aimed at people that don’t have illnesses/depression/whatever you’re dealing with right now may be good for those other people, but they can make those of us struggling to finish the bare minimum feel rotten.

Know that it’s OK not to hold yourself to someone else’s standard when you’re having a bad day (or week, or month).

Feeling stressed out and hopeless won’t help you get things done. Do the best you can, and don’t beat yourself up if what you accomplished today is less than you’d hoped.

I’m not a doctor or medical expert, so if you’re dealing with something that you think may benefit from talking to someone who is, don’t let this post be a substitute. If you have a problem that requires medical treatment, nothing else you try will work as well. But having a few extra tricks in your bag to help out when things are hard doesn’t hurt. I hope these can help you get through the writing that has to get done today and that your tomorrow is better.