From a SEO standpoint, creating new and consistent blog articles is imperative to your placement in the search rankings. Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! are consistently refining their algorithms to push active websites. However, it’s not enough to simply push out content. The blog articles must be relevant to your audience if you want to retain visitors.
Creating relevant content becomes harder overtime as you find yourself pressed for topics, or is it? If you find yourself relating to this question, then you may have experienced the frustrations of Writer’s Block. You suddenly find yourself struggling to create new, compelling blog articles that will keep your website competitive. To overcome Writer’s Block, you must first understand it’s causes.
What Causes Writer’s Block?
Writer’s Block can be as frustrating to understand as it is to overcome. There may be a multitude of reasons to why you’re having trouble writing – stress, unclear direction, feeling under the weather, boredom – but they all come down to three common conditions: Lack of Ideas, Lack of Motivation, and Lack of Confidence.
Lack of Ideas
More often than not, a lack of ideas stems from a lack of clarity in why you’re writing the blog in the first place. You should always write with a goal in mind, the more concrete the better. Bring clarity to your ideas by asking yourself the following:
- Who is your audience?
- What need does your audience want fulfilled?
- How do I want the audience to feel?
- What do I want the reader to do?
Once you have a clearer understanding of who you’re writing for and why, connect your audience to the topic. This will give you a roadmap from which to pull ideas.
Lack of Motivation
When people talk about motivation in their work, they tend to describe it as an external force that drives people to do extraordinary things. We often forget that motivation is highly personal.
Frame your topic so that it interests you. This may require you to do some additional research to pose a question that you’re curious about.
Lack of Confidence
It’s natural to want to create the most captivating and informative blog articles for your readers. You want to keep your readers engaged and coming back for more. However, pushing for consistent perfection can be debilitating to your work.
Creating blogs are both, creative and a process. Go into your projects knowing that there will always be room for improvement – rarely does anything pass without an edit. The key is to keep writing and get your initial ideas down so they can be developed as you go. Valuable content takes time and revision, ensuring that all facts are relevant and points are relatable.
General Writer’s Block Tips
The most important thing to remember about Writer’s Block is that you can’t let it stop you from creating blog articles. To stay competitive in SEO, you need to find strategies that will take you across the finish line. Although there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, these 5 techniques have proven to be highly effective:
- Research Your Topic
The more informed about the topic, the more options you’ll have in what to write about. If a topic is really broad, break it down into questions that are most interesting to you.
- Write an Outline
Outlining your ideas is something you’ve probably been doing for as long as you can remember. From the traditional structure-plus method to the snowflake method, the key thing to remember is to organize your points in a way that is most coherent to you. Don’t be afraid to experiment, organize your ideas as they come and restructure until you’ve found your flow.
- Time Your Goals
Set a timer to your writing to keep you focused on the more important components of your blog articles. The trick to setting a timer is to create enough pressure to push the blog forward without creating too much anxiety, resulting in you rushing the blog article.
Start with sprint intervals, each lasting no longer than 10-minutes with a short decompressing period between each interval to reflect on your progress. Once you’ve found your rhythm, work for longer periods with decompression periods in between.
- Skip The First Sections
Skipping the first few sections is always a recommended technique for longer papers. The strategy behind skipping sections is to give yourself enough flexibility in the introduction to better focus your flow for the bulk and conclusion of the blog article.
- Change Your Surroundings
Changing where you work can make all the difference in clearing your Writer’s Block. Physically moving to a new environment frees you from distractions as you ease back into your work.
The key to overcoming Writer’s Block is to remove yourself from the work when you’re stuck, to reintroduce your efforts with clearer objectives in mind. Overcoming Writer’s Block takes time and practice, but with initiative comes a better understanding of what works for you.