Captain’s log, stardate 20191016

How to start writing more

Sent by Jonathan Stark on October 17th, 2019

One of the topics Rochelle and I discussed with Seth Godin on episode 100 of TBOA was the surprising benefits of starting a daily writing practice.

Not only does showing up every day to share your expertise grow your audience (and therefore your income), it also makes you better at what you do (which is also good for your income).

Everyone I know who has successfully stuck with writing daily says roughly the same thing:

“It’s transformative; the best thing I’ve ever done for my business.”

Once you’re sold on the idea of publishing articles daily, your next question is probably, “Okay but... where do I start?”

Here’s what I would recommend:

Decide who you’re writing for... who are the people you want to help?

PRO TIP: The more specific you get about your ideal reader, the easier it’ll be to identify relevant topics and write compelling articles. If you can, picture a specific person who you actually know who is in your target audience and imagine you’re writing for them.

Get clear about the pains you want to help your readers alleviate.

PRO TIP: Lead with the symptoms they’re experiencing, not the underlying cause of the symptoms.

For example, “bad at business relationships” might be the underlying cause of a symptom like, “I hate my clients!!!” People are usually acutely aware of their symptoms and usually not very aware of the underlying causes.

Spend about 15 minutes jotting down thirty super focused article ideas. If you can’t come up with thirty in that timeframe, then you might not have a clear enough picture of your target reader, or maybe you’re not getting atomic enough with your ideas.

PRO TIP: If you really can’t come up with thirty ideas, do some Google searches for your audiences’ pains and comb through the results looking for questions, especially ones that contain emotionally charged language. Each question can become the basis for an article.

Once you’ve gone through these three steps, you should be ready to start banging out daily articles, at least for a month.

Hopefully that’ll be long enough to get you hooked 🙂

Yours,

—J