Writing a thousand words a day for work is no easy feat, but it’s something that content writers need to contend with almost on a daily basis. If you’re an aspiring content writer, the responsibility to clear this thousand-word wall can be frightening or even give you second thoughts when applying for a job. These fears are not without warrant, especially since there’s a high chance you’ll be forced to write about topics that are foreign or out of your comfort zone.
With day after day of mountainous hurdles to jump over, a few delays can quickly cause your schedule to spiral out of control – and worse yet, you have the growing wrath of your supervisors and clients to deal with. Not to fear, these simple Wordsmith-approved steps will demonstrate why it’s smarter to dismantle each wall instead of having to jump over it. Read on to find out how!
A methodical execution
Every article begins with a topic – the effects of the International Monetary Fund’s newest policy upon a region, the most innovative accounting software or services of 2022, the Irish Potato Famine and so on. Once you have a topic, it’s time to plan its narrative and structure.
Google is our best friend
Regardless what the topic is, you’ll always want to spend a good chunk of the day gathering suitable research – even if you are familiar with the topic, you still need research to back up your arguments or statements!
Obviously, there are some nuances to research gathering and you want to use sources that are credible. Wikipedia is not a good source due to its crowdsourcing style of editing pages, but it’s a handy webpage if you’re just looking to learn the gist of something. If you are short on time for research gathering and must use Wikipedia, look at the little source numbers in the [brackets] attached to each section. Clicking on it will bring you a footnote that quotes an external source – if a URL is provided, check if it corroborates with what the Wikipedia page is saying and quote the external source instead.
However, there isn’t always a nutshell page for what you want to look up. Sometimes you’ll need to visit company or oganisation websites to dig up information. If you aren’t familiar with the industry, brush up on the “about us” or “company history” page before looking at their services provided – it’s free insight!
Compiling
Once you’ve found a few sources that you are happy with, it’s time to gather your information into one location: your Word document will do nicely!
Copy and paste entire sections of that you think is useful onto your document and cite each source – the author’s name and name of publishing website, organisation or institution is usually enough – this will be your references page.
Even if the reference page contains over 3,000 words, we find it’s easier to work with a single chunky reference instead of many scraps and pieces scattered across multiple tabs on our web browser. Afterwards, it’s all about cutting out the irrelevant and whittling down redundancies until you are left with a selection of curated references and facts.
Arranging your outline
With your filtered sources acquired, it’s time to think about how your information should be structured – this depends on the nature of your article:
· For an informational piece on a single topic (eg. a policy’s effects), a traditional formatting following an introduction, a “nutgraph” (the gist of the article in a sentence or two) followed by your arguments with supporting evidence is sufficient.
· For a list-style article, briefly introduce your subject and then use subheads to divide your listed items. Give each item an introduction and then explain your opinion or argument on it – for something like product or service reviews, consider explaining what’s both good and bad about it to prevent subjectivity.
Once you have an outline in place, plug in the facts and quotes that are relevant to each section for even quicker referencing.
Writing
If you’ve done everything above, the writing process shouldn’t be too difficult. A good outline ensures that you won’t lose sight of what you need to write about – and with your research divided into usable chunks, you simply have to connect each chunk to create a narrative – with proper rewriting to avoid plagiarising, of course!
Furthermore, it’s important to keep your reason for writing clear as you craft your article. Although getting clicks is one thing, the purpose of content writing is to serve your audience. To do so, you need to understand their struggles. If you’re writing about the latest accounting software, you’re doing so because you want to help your readers pick a service that will simplify their lives (because honestly, doing accounting work and tax stuff on your own is an absolute pain). By identifying and empathising with your audience’s problems, you already have a quick and effective narrative to work with.
Don’t forget to include call-to-actions with your material. After reading your article, your readers should have a pretty good idea about what they should do next – your CTA will help to solidify that decision. Using the accounting software example again, here’s how we might promote a particular service that we want to endorse:
· Don’t sleep on the EZ-Accounting Pal – simplify your accounting experience today!
· The EZ-Accounting Pal comes out on top of our list – enjoy a free 1-month trial if you aren’t convinced!
Or if we want a more general CTA that promotes the company website, here’s how it might look:
· Interested in keeping up with the latest accounting news? Subscribe to Accounting Boss’s daily blog for more helpful content.
· Stay tuned for more accounting insights – did we mention we offer free accounting consultations?
Lastly, don’t forget to proofread and edit your article. If you’re really strapped on time, services like Grammarly can help you to avoid wordiness and spelling/grammar mistakes. However, we don’t recommend using it for too long, as it’s possible to develop an overreliance on the software and that would cripple your ability to write concisely independently.
Content writing an article a day sounds scary in theory, but an effective work routine lets you turbocharge the writing process. Once you do, you’ll be welcomed amongst the ranks of other quality and consistent content writers!