Episode 116: Top Tips for Writing Blogs, Posts, Articles and Books For Your Small Business and/or Brand
Is writing one of your goals? Do you want to write but often feel discouraged that you may not be good at it? For this coaching episode, Fiona talks about her experience as a writer for more than twenty years and her advice on how to write blogs, articles and books for your small business and/or brand. Listen now as she shares her top tips.
Interested in getting published in online and print publications? Check out our How to Get Published online course which goes through all the things you need to know to get your writing out into the world!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
On writing for your business
Fiona's experience as a writer
Themes/Pillars to talk to
The key message
Questions to answer
Writing down a fuller piece
Final tips
Conclusion
Links/Resources Mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Anyone can write, but it does take practise and do not compare yourself to people that have been writing for a long time or where writing was part and parcel of their job. So, in addition to being a published writer, I've worked as an editor. I've had to correct and rewrite a lot of people's work. I also worked as head of marketing and I had a whole content team that I was editing and looking at and checking and literally oversaw so many pages and pages and pages of writing. So don't compare yourself to other people who've had a lot of experience in writing, but also remember that anyone can write. It's like anything else that you do in life. The more you do it, the better you get at it.
Hello and welcome to Episode 116 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today, it is a coaching session and as always, I'm recording this in my little home office at the back of our garden here in North Warrandyte. And I just want to pay my respects to the traditional owners of this land, which I'm recording this podcast, Wurundjeri of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. And just remind anyone listening, whether you're in Australia, whether you're not with your First Nations, whether or not that we all have so much work to do to ensure equality for everyone.
So today's episode is a coaching episode, and I'm going to be talking about something that is really something I love because I have so much experience in it and I've been doing it for a good 20 years for so many different places around the world. And I know that it's something that some small business owners struggle with. And it's my hope that by listening to this today, that struggle is reduced or even maybe transformed into something that you're actually going to enjoy. All right. Let's get stuck into it.
So today we are going to talk about writing! So whether it is writing content for your website, whether it is writing content to be published in, say, an online article in your favourite publication or publication that your ideal audience devours or whether it's for a blog or a webinar or whatever it is. I know that quite often people can get stuck firstly in thinking I'm not a good writer and for whatever that comes from, it could have been at high school, you didn't love English. It could be that you wrote something once and you shared it with someone and they thought it was rubbish. It could be that you have a block around it and so you've always outsourced it, but you would actually like to try it for yourself.
I mean, good writing comes into so many elements of business today, from your pitch deck to your emails to your blog, to your social media posts on Instagram and having that confidence really, I think, you know, I always say this clarity equals confidence.
So if you can have some tactics that you can work through and hopefully I'll give you some of those today to help you feel more confident when it comes to writing, that is really going to help you show up in so many areas of your business. Even if you do outsource part of it, it might be that actually you feel the confidence to be able to pull together the draught of which you then send to somebody else to rework and tweak.
But I know that for a lot of people, they've just got this mental block around “I'm not a good writer. I can't write.” And I want to sort of alleviate a little bit of that for you. So, before I get stuck into that, I just sort of wanted to give you a bit of context.
If this is your first time listening or your first time coming into any kind of interaction with me. Hello. Welcome. So I have been a published writer for at least 20 years. I think it was 2000 that I had my first article published, if not maybe 2001. So I studied a Bachelor of Arts and I majored in literature and sociology. And after that I did a postgraduate in journalism. But when I was 21, literally two days or three days after my 21st birthday, I moved to London. I bought a one-way ticket to London, and I had internships at Dazed and Confused magazine and at New Woman, which used to be a kind of women's glossy of the U.K. And so I wrote articles for them.
And then I came back to Australia and I got a job writing articles for Fashion Journal, which was a free straight press. And actually, no, before that I wrote for Yen Magazine. Yen Magazine had just started in Australia. It's defunct now, but it was around for good, I'd say ten years, if not more. And I wrote for the magazine and I didn't really know what to write about. And the editor at the time, Jess Scully, had said to me, I'd love to hear what you have to write about so, you know, send me some ideas. And it just so happened that a good friend of mine in high school, her father read and I think he still runs a clothing factory out of Brunswick in Australia. And I had done some work there, learning how to cut patterns, learning how to sew on machines, and basically had sort of had a go at having my own fashion label. So we made coats and sweaters. And so working in that factory, I had been just so privileged to meet all of these different predominantly women, but also some men. There were some tailors from Italy, though, as these beautiful Polish women who were in their fifties and sixties, who worked there and then on the weekends also did like wedding dresses. There were some amazing Vietnamese people that did a lot of the kind of cutting of patterns. And it was just a very multicultural, amazing place to kind of get a start when, you know, I think it was like 18 or 19 when I was working. And so when she asked, what would you like to write about? I'd been having so many conversations with these people in the factory about the fact that nothing was getting made in Australia anymore. And this factory had just been booming in the 80s. And the man who owned it is Italian. And he came out when he was 14 to Australia and he had to learn quickly a trade. And so he worked as a tailor. And then he started his factory and he actually employed a lot of the people that also came out from Italy around that time. So a lot of the men in particular and some of the women in that factory had been there for like 40 years. And they were incredible. Literally, you could show them a picture of anything and they'd be able to pull it together in like an hour.
And so I had been having these really amazing conversations with them about the changing face of fashion in Australia. And so when Jess asked, what do you want to write about, why don't I dive into that a bit more and so I interviewed them, I also interviewed other people who had had clothing factories. I interviewed the head of the textiles clothing footwear industry in Australia. And because I then had that article to then show other editors and like a sample of my writing, I then got into writing about fashion and predominantly wrote about fashion and lifestyle and small business for the next 10, 15 years. And then I got more into writing about small business and design and other things like that. So that was my start.
And then I went on to become the editor of Fashion Journal and I wrote four cool hunting Refinery29 when it just started everywhere, like so many different places across the globe. So Black Magazine out of New Zealand. I wrote for Empty magazine. Where else? I wrote for the United Arab Emirates National newspaper. I wrote for The Sun Life. I wrote for Nylon in the US, Sohmer in the US, Franki Cleo, Monarchal Flux, Rush, the Design Files Broadsheet. I had a column in The Age newspaper, which was often syndicated in the Sydney Morning Herald studio, Bambini, Bridal Magazines. Like everyone, I basically just went to town and for a long time I like a good kind of side living. I'd say as a writer it was always something I would do in addition to my full time job. And then in 2007, I kind of went out on my own and did full time freelance writing, but also Web copy branded copy custom magazines. I used to be the editor of David Jones magazine, their first one before social media, which is called Precinct. And I have a really strong background with publishing and writing.
So I kind of just wanted to give you that overview so that as I go through these tactics, they're not just things that I've learnt in the last year and a half. These are proven things that I have learnt for 20 years, working with so many titles, so many different editors, so many different formats, you know, from ghostwriting books for celebrities through to newspaper columns, through to listicle calls, on blogs, through to website, copy, through to email sequences. So much content.
And of course, I do write a pretty much a thousand-word newsletter every single Sunday, and it's all about business and tips. So if you are not on that, get on that. You can subscribe over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/subscribe. But yes, I am pretty experienced when it comes to words and writing and I want to say that anyone can write, anyone can write short. People sometimes have a gift for more beautiful writing in some senses. But I also think that it's a practise and people will say to me, oh my gosh, how long does your Sunday email take to write? And sometimes it can take 20 minutes. I mean, sometimes it can be a slog and take an hour. But most of the time it takes between at, say, 20 minutes and 40 minutes. The issue is usually around finding links to put into it. If I've talked about something, that's what can take time, not the actual writing. And sometimes it can take like ten minutes. And that is not to boast, but to say it's gotten there because I've had twenty years. It's not been like, oh yeah, I can just whip that out.
So firstly anyone can write, but it does take practise and do not compare yourself to people that have been writing for a long time or where writing was part and parcel of their job. So in addition to being a published writer, I've worked as an editor. I've had to correct and rewrite a lot of people's work. I also worked as head of marketing and I had a whole content team that I was editing and looking at and checking and literally oversaw so many pages and pages and pages of writing. So don't compare yourself to other people who've had a lot of experience in writing, but also remember that anyone can write. It's like anything else that you do in life. The more you do it, the better you get at it. So that's a bit of context.
But I wanted to talk to you today about practical steps that you can put in place when it comes to writing. Now, this is not a content strategy session if you're really interested in that, definitely book in a session with me. But when it comes to your business and writing, you do want to think about kind of content themes or what is your brand the go to? For now, when I work with people and their content strategy, we often come up with sort of four or five key themes or pillars that they can keep coming back to. One of those is always going to be your brand and sometimes that will be most of the time that will be the biggest slice of the pie. So you might have say, in my business, I might have my daily business coach. So that will be all the things we've got coming up where I'm speaking, which podcasts I've been on, the behind the scenes, all sorts of things, client testimonials that all comes under. My brand, then I might have other things that I'm the go to brand for. So if you sell shoes or fashion, you might have style as one of your content themes. So the first thing to figure out when you're writing is to figure out what am I the go to brand for and then what can I kind of cluster or clump into groups that are kind of themes or pillars? Because from there you can then think, “OK, if I am going to be known for style, then what sort of articles could I pitch if I'm potentially going to get published in a blog or magazine?”
You might also think if I'm it's a style, what sort of things could we put on the blog? Maybe it's tips, maybe it's how to wear. Maybe it's five ways to do X with this scarf or shoe bag or whatever it is. So you want to think about your content, themes or pillars first.
If I'm running a class and I do have a course called How to Get Published in online and Print, which is much more focused on how to actually get your writing published in a magazine or newspaper or things like that. But I always start with asking people, which is similar to what is your brand to go to for, but really knowing what your subject matter expert at. So if you can kind of imagine like a Venn diagram or if you're familiar with the guy, the kind of circles crossing over one another and you want to think about your interests, your skills and your experience. So if you're sitting there thinking, well, I can't really come up with the content themes, go one step back and think about what am I a subject matter expert in or what are the people that work for me, subject matter experts.
So, you want to think about your interests, your skills and your experience. And in the middle will be the things that your subject matter expertise. So let's talk about Beyonce, because she's Beyonce. She's such a good example of a brand. But let's say that she does this exercise and she decides that her go-to themes or things to talk about or subject matter expert list are motherhood style, businesswoman, music, African-American culture. So she decides, “OK, this is what I'm talking about and I'm going to consistently talk about those things.”
That's the first thing to kind of get clear on. So going back to what is my brand the go to for and what kind of pillars or themes would help me kind of cement that idea publicly, that we are the go to brand for this. This, this, this. This is a 50. From there, you want to then think about, OK, in terms of content, it could be OK, we have to write our website content. So how do we bring these content themes into the website content? So style? So again, style is one of your brand’s go-to pillars. You might look at your website and decide firstly that the text needs to be in certain formats or fonts or typography that really brings that style to life. But also you might decide on a particular tone that is going to bring that style to life. So it could be that you're kind of hip hop, street style, and so your tone is sort of punchy and fresh. It could be that you're a classic and like Chanel style. So therefore the tone might be more eloquent and elongated or more sort of beautifully articulate. So those are some things to sort of think about. First, when it comes to the writing, what do you the go to for? What are the kind of content pillars that you can talk to?
And then when it actually comes down to writing, which is what we're talking about today, you want to be thinking almost like a journalist, which is what is the key message? So what am I trying to get across here? So when I studied journalism, we learnt about the printing press and newspapers and everything else. And the way that it used to work is that the most important information needed to be in the first paragraph. And that was in case the printing press didn't work. At least the most important information would get out there. And you say that quite often. You'll see that especially in news articles, the first paragraph will contain everything that needs to be known and giving you context very quickly. So it might say something like “On Thursday night, Jeffrey Jeffries was arrested for the alleged murder of his turtle, Thomas Thomas.” Then it will go into the actual story. So it's giving you straight away the big thing that you need to know.
So not that you need to follow that same format, but you want to be thinking about in your blog article, in your post on Instagram, in whatever it is, the content that you're writing. What is the key message? What are you trying to get across? The next thing you want to be thinking about is what is the hook? So if you work with a PR agency or if you're looking at your PR, the editor will often be looking for a hook or an angle. So nothing really is original anymore to say you are someone who works with, let's say, hoarder's. So one of my clients in the past is great, is a expert in hoarding and she has a great business called STUFFology. If anyone wants to check that out and she will work with everyone from first responders through to families of hoarders. And so if she is pitching to the media, the media will be like, well, what's the hook? You know, we've talked about hoarding lots before. We talked about declaring we've talked about Marie Kondo and tidying up what's the hook? So she might come up with “I'm talking about this now because we've spent a certain amount of life recently in lockdown and maybe having a lot of things around us really made us feel secure and safe.” Or she might think, “Oh, there's three new books that have come onto the market in their best sellers and they all relate to hoarding.” So she might use that angle. So what is the hook? Why should people care about whatever it is that you're putting into that blog or that post? So how can you kind of work it back to what's happening in society? How could you work it back to, say, a popular culture? Things are reference. So it might be referencing business and somehow referencing it with Handmaid's Tale, thinking about what is the hooks is the first things to think about? What's the key message? What is the hook?
Another way of kind of getting to that spot is and something I always think of when I'm writing an article, I will always think of what are the questions that this article or this blog or this post is answering. So it's similar to what's the key message, but what are the questions that are being asked and how am I answering those questions? So, for instance, if I am writing an article on how to get unstuck when it comes to coming up with content, I'm thinking, why do we get stuck? Why do we get stuck with content ideas? What are some ways that I can get I can move through that. And also can being stuck actually help me be more creative? So those might be the three questions. And then my article or my blog article or whatever will answer those three questions said. That's another kind of tactic that you can use when you sit down to write about something. Even if you're writing an email to someone, be thinking, what questions are my answering within this piece of writing the other way that you can look at things, and this is something that you see a lot in kind of feature articles or longer form medium articles or LinkedIn or especially in like Sunday, lift out magazines from the newspaper of which I used to write.
A lot of features in this sort of format is to think if this were a movie, how would it start and conclude? So what I mean by this is we've all read articles like a feature article where it'll start with something like it was 11:15 at night on a seemingly ordinary Thursday when Jen Stevenson was walking from her job as a nurse to her car parked nearby. You're instantly sort of like, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? You may be expecting the worst. And it's similar to the way that a film will start. It will sort of start with this sort of setting the tone. You'll have emotional music, either exciting peppy music or slow dramatic music. And the same thing can happen in writing a blog post or anything else. You can think if this was a movie, how would I kind of set the scene? How would I tell the story? And then you're going to come back to that at the conclusion as well.
So you'll often, again, in that feature article say this person is walking from where the nurse to their car they might finish with. It's now 11:15 p.m. on the Wednesday one year exactly until since Jen Stevenson lost her life and the place where he parked his car, you know, no one would know except for a lone rose that sits tied to the pole next to where her car was parked or something like that. That's going to bring it into sort of full circle.
So keep that in mind, next time you're reading a feature article, really look at the start and the end, and quite often they will tie into each other. And that's another way that you can write.
So you can use that as a tactic and think, OK, I'm just going to get a good start, a good end and kind of fill it in the middle. So that's another kind of tactic. But to get really, really kind of breaking it down. And if you've got a pen and paper, take notes. If you don't definitely come on over to the podcast show notes, which will be available at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/116.
But I'm just going to break down how I actually write a fuller piece. So say a blog article, a piece that gets off like an article off to a publication. It could be for a sales page. Even so, this is what I will work through on a sales page. Obviously, it's a bit different. You've got all these selling points, but this format can still work. So you really want to be thinking about. All of those things that have just said, so what's the most important message so you can literally write that sometimes I'll just have like a Google doc and a most important message and I'll put at the top 10. What is the hook? Why is this important? Why is it different? Why are you doing it now? Put that as a question.
The next I will literally list out the three questions that are being answered in this blog article, so I'll list out questions being answered one to three. So I'm already laying the foundations for a strong article. Then I might put feeling question marks, how do I want people to feel when they've read this? Do I want them to feel energised and feel calm? Do I want them to feel hopeful? Do I want them to feel inspired?
If I've got a blog that is referencing creative women, maybe it's I want them to feel really inspired. So even just having that top, especially the feelings and the questions, will then help you if you're sending questions out to people to be answered, to be on the blog, you know, Q&A style for creative women, you're going to be thinking, OK, if I want this to feel inspired, what sort of questions do I need to ask the people to get that feeling of inspiration?
So it might be what challenges have you overcome? How if you work through hard days, how do you work through creative blocks? Those sorts of things once answered, ideally going to lead the person reading that blog article to feel inspired. So that's at the top of the feelings. And then I'll literally I'm definitely somebody that's into numbers. I will figure out how long does this need to be. And as a writer, I have done this thousands of times. So someone says we're thinking 800 words, I'm OK, 800 words. I will literally then divide those 800 words into intro paragraph one paragraph to paragraph three, paragraph four conclusion. And I will think, OK, the intro needs to be one hundred and fifty words and it sounds like a lot of work. It's actually not a literally list out. OK, intro 150 words.
I need to introduce the concept of creative women, why we're doing this, why is it important and have a call to action or, you know, make sure you get in touch with us at the end and then I'll be like:
- Paragraph #1: Context, you know, where does this person work? Why are they creative women? How did we find out about them?
- Paragraph #2: Question, answer question. Or how did this all happen?
- Paragraph #3: What's their journey look like to get to where they are now?
- Paragraph #4: Ups and downs. What are the challenges?
- Paragraph #5: What would they say to their younger self?
- Paragraph #6: Conclusion how to get in touch with them.
Now, I've just then laid out an 800-word article in how long that take maybe 10 seconds, but kind of when you give yourself I find when I give myself these sort of restrictions or this needs to be one paragraph and it needs to be two hundred words, what's it going to be about?
It's much easier because I've chunked it down into reasonable things than sitting at a blank screen and going, oh my God, I have to write 800 words, where do I begin? Or after about two thousand words, where do I begin? So really breaking it down. And I'll just go through those points again, thinking about what is the key message, thinking about what is the hook, why should anyone care right now? Why how does this relate? Thinking about what are the three questions I'm going to answer in this article, this blog post, this social media post, whatever it is feeling, breaking down the feelings, how will people feel? How do I want them to react at the end of reading this and then breaking it down into the intro? What's the intro? What's the first paragraph? What's the second paragraph, etc., knowing how long your article is going to be. So I know that sounds like a lot of work, but actually like I've just gone through, it doesn't have to be.
And you might just create a template for all your blog articles on an Excel doc in Google Docs or anything else and just sort of go, OK, we always have to think about Hook. What's the key message? What's the hook? What's the three questions? How do we want people to feel? And then paragraph one, paragraph two or three paragraphs. And then it becomes much easier because it's small steps. You've chunked everything out, like I said, instead of just sitting in a blank screen and being overwhelmed by how much work that used to do. The other thing you might be thinking of is like, OK, well, I've you know, we've been writing these blogs. We haven't really had a template for them. We've been writing these email newsletters, haven't really had a template. Should they be 800 words? Should they be more? Should they be less? It's really going to depend on the format. So if you're writing prose, which is not Q&A, it's you just writing that might be shorter or longer if you're writing Q&A again, it really depends on your business. If you're writing something, say you're asking people for quite a bit of money and you're writing case studies and say the input from someone is around two thousand dollars. That's not for most people. That's not an impulse buy. So the case studies might be really long. So say you were asleep, coach, and you charge $2,000 dollars for people to work with you intensively for X amount of time. If I'm going to spend two thousand dollars, I want really detailed case studies, whereas if you have an e-book that's $24.95 and you link me to a blog article, that's a success story. I might read it, I might not necessarily have to have as long an article. So it's really going to depend. I would also test these things and test like dwell time test if people, you know, if you make the article longer, if people are converting more at the end, whatever you call to action is if you make the article shorter, are people really engaging with it? It really, really depends on your audience. It also depends on the format, like I said. So I find, you know, if I'm in a certain mood, I love reading really long articles and really long blog articles. And if it's something technical, so say you're a software company and you're talking about a technical thing or say you're a business coach and you're talking about how to set up Trello boards, that may be a much longer article because you're putting in all the different avenues that someone could go down versus something else that might not take as much time from that person.
So I would be thinking about that. I would also be thinking about the format of can you take this text and create an audio file at the top of your blog as well? That's obviously like a different podcast episode. But yeah, really be thinking about in terms of what does your audience need, what's the key message? And you might be able to get that key message and get those three questions answered really quickly. Other times it might be longer.
So that is some tactics that you can use on how to write and how to be more excited and not so scared about writing some other things that you can use that will help. And this is whether you are writing social media posts, whether you're writing a long blog article. But really try, if you haven't already, to create a tone of voice document for yourself. Now, if you need help with this, you can definitely get in touch with me or I'm happy to refer you to different copywriters, but a tone of voice document.
And I work with clients on these quite a bit. And I have a Google folder full of examples for them as well. But a tone of voice document is really how are we putting ourselves forward predominantly written format in terms of mediums as a business.
So it could be like, are we conversational and are we like really chill and like we use slang and or are we very authoritative and we're very formal. So it depends on the brand or the personality and so many other things that you've worked on in your brand. But a tone of voice document can really, really help when it comes to these things, especially keeping them consistent, especially if you've got different people in the business working across social media, blog, email, inbox management, all of that. So things to have in your tone of voice document.
And again, there are lots of people that can help you build this out. I can also help you with a chat about it. But the key elements to think about in your tone of voice document are what the business represents, what the business does, the vision for the business, your brand values, and how you're going to bring them to life. And then things like who we are and who we are, not words we use, words we don't use.
So certain jargon you might be like we are steering clear of that, even though everyone in our industry uses that. You also want to be thinking about the brand personality. So if you had to create a person out of your brand, what would they be like? What they dress like, what music would they listen to? All of that is going to help you in terms of your tone of voice. Now, there are so many examples of tone of voice documents out there, their tone of voice documents you can look on for Nike, IKEA. MailChimp has a good one zero. There are just so many out there. But really, with your tone of voice, you want to be thinking about who are we, what do we represent, what are our brand values? What are things we love we don't love, what are things we will talk about? We won't talk about how do we speak versus things, you know, words we use, those words we don't use and then have some examples. The more examples that you can have in there, the better, especially negative examples. So having this is what we don't do. That can be just. As great as having this is how we do speak, I always talk about that when people are putting together their brand for their photo shoot brief for photographers, I often say put in there what you do not want because that can also help the photographer figure things out.
So the same goes with your tone of voice document. And like I said, I have a few clients that I work with that are copywriters that specialise in these. I can also help you if you wanted to book in one on one coaching session, but the tone of voice document can really help. Another thing that can help you with this is just accepting natural language. So what I mean by that is the way that we speak as in conversational tone, which a lot of brands use conversational tone. Now, sometimes we don't use that same tone when we're writing, like when we sit down to write a text article or text anything, we kind of get a bit stiff. So one thing that you can use for that is literally using the voice to text icon on your phone. So I often do this for my Sunday emails. I will literally go to the notes app on my phone and I'll find the little microphone. It's usually next to the spacebar. Once you hit that, anything you say is instantly converted to text. So that can help you as well.
So sometimes I'll be, you know, sitting in the car, I'll be waiting for an appointment or something, and I'll just speak into my phone and use that as my Sunday email, because it's going to be conversational, because I'm literally talking I'm not sitting in front of a blank document trying to write something which often can make us feel more formal.
Another thing that you can do in terms of just getting it out there and writing is to get someone else to interview you. So say you wanted to do you want to fix your about us page or you want to do a like meet the founders sort of bigger blog article or a social media post or ideally a blog article which you repurpose for social media and email. But I digress. If you are someone who's like, I can't write about myself, I'm not a good writer, I find this really hard. Get someone to interview you. And again, just get a verbal interview happening and you'll be surprised at what amazing stuff comes out. And again, you could sit down with someone so you could have your son or your sister or your partner or a friend just interview side by side and again, just use the voice to text thing on your phone or you can just use, you know, record it and then put it through a transcript service. A lot of them are free out there.
So that, again, will help you with natural language and really look at the language that's being used and the words and the phrases that are being used. And you might even highlight some of them and kind of keep them on a document that you come back to because they felt right. They felt like the perfect way to describe the brand. So that's another way to do it. Speaking about those sorts of interviews with you or people in the business, another thing that you might want to do is to interview your ideal audience verbally, again, to interview them with phone calls, or you can, you know, send surveys if you like. But sometimes, again, verbal can be a great way to get the real way that people talk and just listen to the way they talk about your brand, your services, your offerings, your products.
And again, you might just get key phrases, key terms that you can then put into your tone of voice document and then put those into your writing. So that's another one of the kind of tactics that can help when it comes to writing. Another thing that can help is to write about something silly. So instead of sitting there going, oh my gosh, we need to redo our website and I'm freaking out because I'm not a good writer and I don't know what to write about. Think of the silliest thing that you could write about.
So you might think about do any other animals pick their nose the same way that kids do? Or I mean, I'm just thinking of things off the top of my head. Or you could think about how long would it take to walk to Mars from Earth and just sort of put that and then just have a free fall just right. You know, just have a go see what comes out and stop putting pressure on it because it's to do with work. Just have a bit of fun and give yourself twenty minutes to write an article about how you would walk to Mars and sometimes just that practise again, just that having a bit of fun can alleviate the seriousness that sometimes hits people when in the overwhelmingness that comes when you're sitting in front of a blank document. And then the last tactic, and this is something that I use a bit, especially recently, because I've bought a new iPad a few months ago that comes with the Apple pencil.
And what I found is that writing by hand can often give us such clarity as well. So you might think instead of sitting there and I know I run a very much digital business, I'm always talking about digital tools and things like that. But I think sometimes getting a good old pen and paper or a journal or notebook and. Thinking about it in terms of just writing by hand, because writing by hand, we're often just trying to keep up with what's in our brain and sometimes with just the physicality of sitting in front of a screen can make it a bit more formal, whereas scribbling, writing by hand, doing a mind map even again, kind of coming into that scribbling factor can help.
The reason I bought up the iPad was that because the pencil part of the reason I got this is because when I work with clients one on one, I write so much in notebooks, always drawing pictures, I showing them stuff on the zoom. And so I got that to do it in iPad so that it can then be easily converted to text and put into their Trello boards. But I do find that when I'm writing by hand and sometimes it can feel a bit cold to start with, with, you know, you're just not used to doing it that much anymore.
But it can really help you just be more natural, get out more emotive language, get out real thoughts. You're not being distracted by anything else on the computer that might flash up notifications, things like that. So that is yet another tactic to think about. So I know for lots of people, writing can feel very overwhelming. I really hope that some of the tactics that I've talked about today can help you when it comes to these sorts of things. As I mentioned, I do have an online course how to get published in online and print. A lot of things about writing are in that course as well, whether you like. I never want to get published in a media. It can also be really, really helpful if you're writing blogs for your business, if you are writing emails. I used to run this as a live workshop and it was just the best because you'd find these people coming in saying, I've always wanted to be a writer, but I can't write. And by the end of it they'd go away being like, I feel so excited about writing again and I love that.
So if you're interested in that, we'll link to it in the show notes. But you can also find it over at the shop, mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop and just look for that, how to get published in online and print course. So that is it for today. If you have good tips on how to write that you think other small business owners would like to know, tell me them. You know, come on over on the DMs at @mydailybusinesscoach on Instagram, send us an email at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. Yeah. And just let us know what you do to get out of kind of a funk or overwhelm when it comes to writing content for your business. I really hope this has helped. As always, the show notes are available over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/116.
If you have found this episode useful, I would absolutely love it if you could just forward it to a friend and hopefully they find it useful too. And if you have ten seconds, even like five seconds, if you can just hit the reviews, it just really, really helps this podcast get found by other small business owners across the globe. That is it for today. I look forward to hearing from you about how this episode has helped and also your writing tips. All right. Take care. See next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
