The Simplified Content Writing Cycle

Can you imagine yourself writing consistently for one month? No? Probably yes. How about 5 months (here you answer of course). So I challenge you to a year. You replied “well I’m dedicated”. Then comes the last time question. A decade? Now you’re thinking if your blog is still alive.

To cut that Q&A portion short, here’s one simple question: can you write consistently? If you’re answer is yes BUT find the commitment problematic, good thing I have answers. Memorize this writing cycle by heart and in less than a minute you’re good to blog for a decade… and counting.

How It Works: The cycle represents a continues, never-ending process. There are five main stages to content writing. You can go further by dividing this into three if you want (Topic and Idea as brainstorming, Rough Draft and Check & Polish as writing and finally Publish).

For the cycle to begin, you have to start at the topic and continue the engagement.

Here’s the Simplified Content Writing Cycle

Topic – select or identify the topic/category that you want to focus on. Having a clear niche makes that step relatively simple (and the reason why it could be harder to blog on a topic that says everything-under-the-sun).

Idea – is where you zoom in from your selected topic. You have to pinpoint the definite idea that you want to talk about. Topics are still broad in general so picking up the main idea is definitely the next step. You can also call this the “narrow-down” step.

Rough Draft – this is the initial stage of your writing. To make it easier, always identify your main key points and elaborate further. Make it as concise and easily-digestible as possible. Rough drafts needn’t be that perfect… that’s why we move on to…

Check & Polish – the quality control portion of the cycle. It’s always crucial to proofread the content and minimize (if not completely erase) the errors. This also requires you to eliminate redundant sentences or words. Having a hawk’s eye view is a plus. Of course, a lot of writers tends to skip this process but it’s always a gain if you do. After you’re done with that… time to…

Publish – hold on a sec. This is not just about copy-pasting to your post creator and hitting the publish button. This is for you to optimize your posts like adding images, charts, and other interactive materials (like videos if applicable). It’s also about proper post formatting where you get to tweak around the font styles especially those of the title and subtitles. After you’re done with that… hit publish!

Then, you’re back again at topic step. Rinse & repeat. Now you can blog for a decade… and counting.

[Beautiful photo by sassyradish]