5 Ways To Create Content For Your Website Faster

We’ve said before that content is king, and I think we’ve hammered home the point that content is really important for your website, in terms of both offering value for your customers and making your business easier to find in organic searches. But there is only so much time in the day, and you spend most of it looking after your customers, and doing work that keeps your business running. Who has the time to write blog posts, case studies, product information and various other bits and pieces, you ask.

But content is very important, and it simply needs to be done. With that in mind, here are five ideas for speeding up the writing process so you can get more content onto your website, faster.

1.  Take advantage of your time and inspiration when you can

Some days are just not good blogging days. You have too many other things clamouring for your attention, you have no idea what to write about, or you feel completely demotivated – maybe even all three. While you can’t always predict when writer’s block is going to strike, you can make allowances for it and plan around it. By this, I mean take advantage of the days when you do feel inspired, and you do have the time to sit down and write a blog post. Or two. Or even three. Okay, three might be pushing it a bit, but the more you do when you have time and feel like it, the less you have to do when you don’t want to. It’s good to have a few spares in your pocket that you can upload when you just don’t have time to write something new. (Technically this isn’t a time-saving tip in the grand scheme of things, but it saves you time when you really need it.)

2. Keep a notebook of ideas

I have a Notepad document containing all my ideas for blog posts. Some of them are perfectly sensible. Others are complete nonsense that probably made sense at the time, and that I haven’t deleted because maybe one day I will remember that they are in fact pure genius. Some of them have been in there for two or three years. Some of them aren’t even complete sentences. Maybe the lesson here is ‘make better notes’…

Anyway, if you write down things you find interesting when they come to you, you will hopefully find yourself with a little bank of ideas, or at least seeds that you can use as a starting point for a blog post. Then when it’s time for you to write a post, you won’t spend the first half an hour wondering what on earth you should write about.

3. Do the easy bits first

When it comes to actually getting the words down, it can be difficult to get into it at first even if you do know what you want to write about and are happy to do it. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need to write your blog post (or About Page content, or whatever) from beginning to end in order. You can write the title last if you want to. Sometimes the writing of the post informs you of what you are actually writing about, and the title then follows. What you end up with might not be the article you had originally set out to write. Write the conclusion first if you want to. Write whatever springs into your head, whatever spurs you into action. Worry about the structure, the grammar, and the sensibleness of it later. Just make a start. This is much quicker than wasting time staring at a blank Word document, and it feels better, too.

4. Get your customers to do it for you

New content doesn’t have to be blog posts. What about testimonials? Testimonials provide you with new content that you don’t have to write. All you need to do is ask your customers to review your products or services, and upload what they send you onto your website. We have lots of information about sourcing reviews and testimonials – and using them effectively – on our blog.

Case studies are another way of getting new content onto your website. They require more effort on your part than testimonials do, but they provide you with an idea and a structure to work with, and you can ask your customers to pitch in with a few words about their experience with you or your product and how you have helped them.

5. Don’t create, curate

Not all of the content you add to your website needs to be made from scratch. What that means is that you can source interesting content either from your website or from other websites, news sites, blogs, and social media accounts, that is going to provide your customers with value. It doesn’t meant that you should plagiarize someone else’s content, break any copyright laws, fail to attribute the content back to its original source, or create duplicate content. You won’t win friends with Google or other writers and internet users by doing this.

However, there is a right way to go about content curation, and it involves gathering interesting information, putting it together in your own way, drawing your own conclusions, opinions and analysis from it, attributing it to the site where you found it, and inviting your readers to comment. Having a starting point to work with can really help you get started, and how you present it and add your own spin on it is up to you. There is some more information about curating content here.

If you enjoyed this blog post and you haven’t written any of your own yet (or really hate doing it), get in touch with SilverDisc and we could be doing the hard work for you (because we love it. Or at least I do.) That’s hidden tip #6.