Whether you’re writing a blog post or a book, you’ve likely asked yourself what you should write. It may feel like you could write about anything – after all, thanks to the internet, you can research anything you want. But just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.
If you’re writing for your business, instead of thinking about every topic you could write about, you need to identify what your current and future clients need to read from you.
Step 1: Feelings
I’m sure you’ve heard that people don’t buy features, they buy feelings. They choose their reading material the same way. So before you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), you need to ask yourself how you want your readers to feel after they read your post or book.
When I work with clients on this, I ask them to come up with three to five words that describe how they want people to feel after any interaction with their business. These are also called your brand values or brand words.
Take some time over this step to come up with the right list of words for you. These shouldn’t change in their core message. For example, my main words are supported, empowered, fearless, determined, and nurtured. So whatever feeling I seek to inspire through a particular piece of writing is going to be either one of these or something closely related.
Once you have a list you’re happy with, write it down and post it in your writing space.
When you write something new for your business, take some time to decide which of those words (or related feelings) you’re going to concentrate on.
Step 2: Where does it fit in your business?
Once you know how you want your reader to feel after they read your new piece, you need to think about how what you’re writing fits into your business overall. You can do this by asking yourself questions like these:
- Is what you’re writing a product in and of itself, or is it meant to pique your readers’ interest in one of your products or services?
- Are you writing something to help your clients solve a particular problem?
- Are you trying to teach something?
- Are you trying to establish your expertise?
- Are you trying to help your client get to know you and how you can help them?
Step 3: Bring the feeling and purpose together
Write the feeling you want to inspire and the purpose of your piece on a sheet of paper and brainstorm. You’ll find it easier to brainstorm on unlined paper, and you’ll be more creative if you write with brightly coloured pens or pencils.
When you brainstorm, set a timer for 5 to 10 minutes and try to write continuously. Just write whatever comes to mind – you may be surprised by what comes out. Once time is up, reread what you’ve written. Underline or circle the topics you’re most excited about. Then, write your favourite at the top of a new piece of paper (keep the others for later).
Step 4: Write your statement of argument
In this step, you need to state the point of what you’re writing in one sentence. This sentence must be arguable.
For example, if you were writing an article about soup, this would not work as your statement of argument: Chicken noodle is a kind of soup.
Why wouldn’t it work? Because it’s a simple statement of fact. There’s nothing for you to explore or prove.
This would work: You should eat chicken noodle soup when you have a cold because it has been shown to have healing properties.
Unlike the statement of fact, this one gives you something to work with. You can present and evaluate the studies that have shown ingredients in chicken noodle soup to have healing properties. Also, you can address the effect of eating something that’s soothing and familiar when you’re feeling run down with a cold.
Step 5: Ask questions
Once you have your statement of argument, it’s time to write your outline. I always suggest doing this by asking questions of your statement of argument.
This method is useful because it easy to implement, and it will keep you focused on your main topic.
If you’re writing a blog post, you probably only need 3 or 4 questions. If you’re writing a book, you’ll need to start with 10 or so.
To begin with, just list the questions. So, returning to our statement about soup you could ask these questions:
- Are these healing properties peculiar to chicken noodle soup, or would other soups work just as well?
- What healing properties has it been shown to have?
- Why is chicken noodle soup good when you have a cold?
You’re going to answer these questions to produce your text. I prefer using questions for the outline to listing topics because humans better at answering questions than writing on topics.
After you list your questions, you need to put them in a logical order. The order for the questions I’ve listed isn’t logical. If I were to write this, I’d need to answer question 2 before question 1. Question 3, however, could come at the beginning or the end of the post. When this happens, you’ll just have to write the post and decide which placement is best.
What’s next?
All that’s left now is to write your text (by answering the questions you listed in step 5), and then polishing and publishing it.
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