What's the most challenging part of Content Writing for you?
Alexey Shashkov
84 replies
Hello, makers! I'm trying to find a problem in content writing that others haven't identified as a problem worth working on.
If you write any textual content like articles, blog posts, social posts, or tweets regularly, what's the most painful part about that for you?
Replies
Collin Thompson@techronin
I find the hardest thing about developing content is: maintaining a strong engaging narrative, that resonates with the reader— and then doing this over and over and over again on a consistent schedule.
There is so much click bait on the web with pithy advice "tips and tricks" and not enough content that is genuinely helpful.
Coming up with content that is genuinely helpful and that can "stand the test of time" is extremely difficult and mentally taxing. Especially if you need to sustain this over a long period of time to get the results you want.
I have soo much appreciation for the Ben Thompson's out there who write very deep and analytical pieces that have alot of impact and help people.
I don't think there is a hack for this, but if anyone has some advice for long form content creators I'd be grateful to hear what works for them when trying to maintain a quality bar and balancing this with the pace of releases.
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FromNotion
@techronin Hi, Collin. It’s a really huge problem. You hit the bulls-eye of the problem. What about hopping on a Zoom call and discussing it?
@shashcoffe yeah I’m totally down. I’m praying that you have a neurotranslater that scans by brain periodically for great ideas and then turns it into 2500 word Seo optimized blog posts, is that what they call is about?
FromNotion
@techronin Yeah, the Neurotranslator would be a cool tool =) What are the best practices to create great SEO-optimized blog posts for you today?
@shashcoffe I would separate these into two buckets. With SEO Saas tools and without. If you have the luxury of owning tools like AHREFS, or SEMRUSH - these tools can be super helpful on almost all dimensions of crafting optimised content. The problem is, they're hella-stupid expensive. With them you can do keyword analysis, competitor analysis and see what kind of content is driving the most traffic. Without these tools it's a bit harder, but doable, but I would say you have to constantly be a student of the optimised content game and thoroughly understand headlines, paragraph structures, and how to add valuable information. to your prospective users. It goes without saying that you really need to be consistent and experiment alot, and overt time you find the signal and they keywords and channels that are best for your content.
FromNotion
@techronin The best reply, Collin. Much appreciated!
I see the Blog and Newsletter links on your site are not active yet. Do you write a blog and a newsletter?
CEO Short List
Aggregated source of topics you care about, mixed with AI copy generation. New ideas + new ways of expressing ideas
FromNotion
@alex_papageorge Hi, Alex. Have you already tried any tools for that? Copy.ai, Jarvis.ai?
CEO Short List
@shashcoffe I'll check it out! Thanks for the note
FromNotion
@alex_papageorge I’m glad to be helpful, Alex!
For blog posts defiantly the scary big white page at the start!
@maxwellcdavis In the newsletter that I receive, the author (Ann Handley) suggested to note down various things for daily inspiration.
"How did you spend your day?
What did you see? Notice?
What did you overhear? Snippets of conversation overheard from strangers, neighbors, unsuspecting spouses on a Zoom call, kids?
Draw a related doodle or sketch. Important point: Just draw. Do not judge your talent or its artistic mettle. Your objective is just to loosen up/have fun—not judge the quality of your art.
After a few days, you'll start to notice the world a little differently. You'll start to act like a hunter-gatherer, collecting things inside your noggin so you can record them later. And you'll get your groove back—almost by default.
You aren't "writing." You're "just making a list.""
FromNotion
@maxwellcdavis Maxwell, I have the same problem. How do you usually hurdle that obstacle?
FromNotion
@maxwellcdavis @w_j That’s a good advice. Thanks for sharing. I’m going to try that approach.
Given that variety of tools.Sometimes it becomes difficult to choose what to use for specific content
Idk why, but the hardest part for me is to start.
FromNotion
@anna_voronina148 Hey Anna! Thanks for the reply. How many times have you tried to start?
@shashcoffe , it happens literally every time I need to start writing something. Probably, it has to do with the feedback on my writing skills I received in the past.
FromNotion
@anna_voronina148 You mean you were criticized and that's the reason?
FromNotion
@anna_voronina148 Anna, what have you already tried to overcome that fear?
@shashcoffe , first of all, I say to myself that mistakes are not the end of the world and let myself focus on the topic for 30-40 minutes.
Secondly, I write a detailed outline for every blog post.
Thirdly, I send my copy to a native speaking copywriting pro for proofreading.
I think there is always a tough balancing act between writing with a genuine narrative voice and having sales speak entering the copy.
This is very evident with headlines and primary paragraphs. People want to hook you in, people want to be perfect from an SEO perspective, but sometimes when you try to optimize your content, you lose the real writing that you've wanted to share.
I often have to start with content pieces, social posts with engagement as a priority rather than the value offered.
FromNotion
@mitchell_orme Hey, Mitchell! Can we hop on Zoom again and discuss this problem field?
@mitchell_orme we can just write without optimizing our contents especially for it to get rank on Google. I agree with you, most of the time I lose the idea I wanted to share. That's why I'm now using ai writer to write and optimize it automatically.
FromNotion
@anna_mandziuk Hi, Anna, do you have the same problem? What have you tried to solve that?
FromNotion
@ukeme_james1 Hey, Ukeme, can you share how exactly does Writesonic helps you with losing ideas you wanted to share? What’s the process?
I make infographics and then blogs so for me condensing the main parts in infographics and then writing the same in a different form in the blog is bit tough. Everyone has the same valid points all over the internet, so it's always difficult to write unique for your own blogs. I feel most of the time that I am writing someone's else points though I am writing in different words but the same facts. I think every writer feels this underconfidence somewhere in their content writing journey. You cant deny facts and yet you feel you are copying someone's facts.
FromNotion
Inspiration.
Inspiration often doesn't come when you sit down to write or when you really need it. It comes when it wants - when you're in the shower, driving, before you fall asleep :)
For me, the hardest part is to force myself to create when I don't feel inspired.
FromNotion
@anna_mandziuk Hello, Anna! This is probably the biggest problem for me. I want to write a lot and regularly, but it turns out little and rarely =)
Goddamn it, what should we do? How are you trying to solve this inspiration problem?
Brief on Demand by Amy
The most challenging aspect for me personally is being able to come up with fresh and great ideas every single time. Sometimes it feels kind of forced.
FromNotion
@lior_galante_cohen Hello, Lior. I appreciate your answer. You know, I have the same problem and search a solution.
What have you already tried to solve the problem with coming up with ideas?
Brief on Demand by Amy
@shashcoffe I'm always looking for new sources of inspiration. One tool that's been working for me is Feedly: https://feedly.com/
FromNotion
@lior_galante_cohen Interesting. I know Feedly, and I tried it but didn’t find it useful. I’ll try to use it again with your method. Thanks again, Lior.
Life stories. I don't know how to write succinctly, but dividing into multiple posts is a bad option. So when I tell personal stories, I can spend a few days creating and flowing them down.
FromNotion
@antonovna Oh yeah! Alina, I have the same problem. I love writing, but 2 days to write one story is too much. Can you jump on Zoom with me and discuss that area?
My greatest challenge in content writing is writing something very unique. But the irony is that, no matter what topic you choose, someone had already written something on it, even from a better writer or reputable blog.
For example, choose a topic on SEO, you will find it already written on Search Engine Journal or other popular SEO blogs. Unless you want to write what nobody is searching for, hoping someday someone will search for it.
Sometimes, we might be writing what we think people want to know, only to reliase they are search for something else on Google. I did keywords research recently, I noticed that people are searching for "SEO Optimisation". Then I ask myself what is optimization doing again on SEO, is SEO not search engine optimization?
Maybe someone should come up a product that asks audience what they want to read or want to know about. Then write such contents for these set of audience.
FromNotion
@prince_brown_jasper What a brilliant topic! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Prince-Brown. Are you keep writing regularly?
FromNotion
@prince_brown_jasper I see. Is that a regular or a spontaneous process?
FromNotion
@prince_brown_jasper I totally agree with you, man. But can you do that if you don’t have enough skills yet?
FromNotion
@prince_brown_jasper Right. That's why I think quantity goes to quality.
Do you use any writing tool to help you write relevant content?
@shashcoffe I use a couple of tools. But first I conduct keywords research using Wordtracker and others. I use SeoReviewTools.com to review my contents. SemScoop.com is another awesome tool I use.
For me, I've focused on the research part of writing. The hardest and biggest problem in writing something useful is finding, gathering, organizing useful ideas quickly. I'm working on launching my software that solves the research problem using advanced A.I. and you can check out how it works at my site
https://ousia.ai
FromNotion
@matthew_scyoc Howdy, Matthew. Your Ousia looks very cool. It reminds me of Co-writer in QuilBot. It's very similar, only you've made a bias toward SEO. Awesome.
How did you find that idea? Why are you working on it?
@shashcoffe I’m not familiar with Quilbot Co-writer. What is the problem it’s trying to solve? Can you describe it a bit?
FromNotion
@matthew_scyoc QuillBot's Co-Writer is an all-in-one writing space that combines online research capabilities, note taking, AI-assisted composition and a lot more to help.
@shashcoffe I tried to use it for "research" (which seems to be the feature you're comparing Ousia to), but from what I can tell, it is performing some type of Google search, using some logic to filter sources, and presenting some or all of the content from the sources inside the tool. It seemed to pull a lot of information without much curation and the sources, text itself seemed very hit or miss.
Have you had a good experience with this tool?
While Quilbot and Ousia may share some UI similarities, the underlying machine learning of Ousia seems to be far more powerful.
For some background:
Ousia actually trains and fine-tunes a model specifically on the user's topic, and then pulls thousands of sources, building the user a completely custom research engine. Ousia actually creates it's own 100% unique questions for the user to review, helping them quickly build a dynamic outline and main themes they want to discuss. Within each specific question, Ousia selects and displays sometimes hundreds of related, but slightly different answers so the user can easily cherry pick which questions and answers they want to cover and build into their piece of content.
FromNotion
@matthew_scyoc Matthew, actually, I don’t find the Co-Writer by QuillBot is useful for me yet. The search is really poor, true. But I actively use Parapraser by QuilBot.
What about Ousia.ai – I’m going to try it when I need to create SEO niche content. Thank you!
FromNotion
I have been working in content marketing for over 5 years. For almost 4 years I have been writing for IT company blogs, social networks, emails, etc. As I see it, the hardest part is to go deep enough into the topic so that the reader perceives you as a professional in his particular field (I write for both businesses and developers).
But what is the challenge here? We are marketing professionals, not devs/entrepreneurs/designers. So there's a huge challenge in being the kind of writer who can quickly analyze unfamiliar topics and change the tone of voice depending on your audience.
FromNotion
@kislingdi Hey, Diana. Thanks a lot for your reply. I really appreciate it.
I meant Challenge as the hardest part of writing. Now I get it – the hardest part for you is to go deep enough into the topic. I totally understand.
I'm curious, how are you solving that hardest part? What's the best practice for you?
@shashcoffe I study hard and take all the help I can get from those who know the subject best. Here's how I deal with it. Btw, thanks for the interesting question!
FromNotion
@kislingdi And thank you for your answers, Diana! Much appreciated!
When I write I think how I start and end my article paragraph and how I related this article to next article... I write content for my project https://jeodart.com
FromNotion
@jeodartseo Hi, Jeo. Your blog posts look pretty good. What's the hardest part of the process of preparing and writing?
I found it so stressful to write up to 4 article per week for my blogs
FromNotion
@ukeme_james1 Hey, Ukeme. Yeah, man, I totally get you! Do you keep writing four articles a week?
FromNotion
@ukeme_james1 Ukeme, are you saying that Writesonc does 100% of the writing work for you? How does it work?
@shashcoffe sometimed more than four but I don't do them manually
I really don't have problem because my writing is written automatically by an AI copywriter
FromNotion
@ukeme_james1 Ukeme, can you tell me more about the process you do use Writesonic? How do you do writing with that?
FromNotion
@ukeme_james1 Really? Can you share your writing? Which AI-copywriting tool do you use?
@shashcoffe I'm using writesonic ai writer 👉. https://cutt.ly/NYKWg17
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