How To Write Content: Processes and Tools You Need to Know
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe” said Lincoln, apparently.
Regardless, I've always liked that quote's message. The right tools make work quicker, easier, and better, and writing is no exception.
Whether you already know how to write content or you're trying to get started, here's how I approach the challenge of writing, and some of the free tools I find most useful as a content writer.
How To Write Like A Pro Content Writer
Finding Inspiration and Research
I've written about some of my favorite places to find content ideas in a different post, so what I'll do here is give my opinion about a tool which you might be thinking about using.
Yes, it's the elephant in every online writer's co-working space: generative AI.
Does AI Generate Good Ideas?
In my experience, this depends largely on what type of content you are writing.
For websites like Listverse or Mental Floss that want you to write something original and clever, then tools like ChatGPT are next to useless.
They always come out with titles that are either too generic (10 Best, 10 Largest, etc.) or which have been covered elsewhere online.
However, I have also written lots of content for SEO agencies in the past, where the focus is not so much on creating something unique, but on making sure the posts are on-topic, accurate, and SEO-optimized.
They can be fairly generic as long as they meet those criteria. I've found AI to be quite useful for generating title ideas and subheadings for articles like these.
Is AI Useful For Research?
My answer to this is much simpler: not yet.
For the main type of writing I do, I need to find lots of examples of unusual things, like big ideas that were dreamed up in British pubs, or ordinary people who performed movie-style stunts in real life.
Lately, I've challenged ChatGPT to find me examples based on my topics. Overall, it's been a waste of time.
My estimate would be that about 50% of its answers are made-up, and another 10-20% aren't strongly supported enough to publish.
Often, there will be convincing sounding examples of what I'm looking for, but once I start doing my own research, I'll find that there is no mention of them anywhere.
When I ask ChatGPT to tell me the source, it'll say something like, "You're right to question this. It seems there is no evidence for it."
A Better Solution: Search Operators
Once I've got an idea in mind for an article, what I'll do instead of chasing dead-ends on ChatGPT is head over to Google. But just typing in my topic and scrolling through the results will take far too long.
It's a lot more efficient to use search operators.
For example, if I'm looking for great ideas people have had in pubs, I might search something like "came up with the idea in the pub", with the quotation marks.
This will look for web pages with that exact phrase in them. If many of the resulting pages all cover the same story, then I'll add that to the end of my search with a dash (-) immediately before it. This excludes pages with that word from the results.
Writing and Proofreading
Anything I find that I want to write about in my article will be saved in a dedicated bookmarks folder. The next step in my process is to put them in some kind of logical order, one that allows me to smoothly transition from one item to the next.
Once I have the order, then I head over to my writing template and put the title and subheadings in. That's when my next tool comes into play.
Google Sheets
Yes, that's right, Sheets. Not Docs. Why?
Because I use a custom-built spreadsheet that helps me stick to some useful writing rules I've picked up over the years.
I put it together when I was doing some SEO work for an agency that set limits on the length of subheadings, paragraphs, and the frequency of keywords.
I built a sheet that counts all of these things as I write and lets me see them in a glance.
I find seeing a live word count much more efficient than calculating the total at the end of a paragraph and having to cut it down. My spreadsheet also makes sure my keywords are in the right places.
I ended up having a terrible experience with the agency I created this sheet for, but I can't fault their writing rules. I still use them in my other work, and the spreadsheet helps me apply them while still working quickly.
Pomodoro Clock
We all know that sitting for long stretches is unhealthy, yet basically every writer does it.
The pomodoro technique helps limit some of the harm it causes by getting you to take a short break and move around every 25 minutes or so. (By the way, the Firefox extension I use for this is actually called "Pomodoro Clock," but there are many other free options.)
However, health is only one benefit of taking regular short breaks. An even more practical one, I've found, is that it's a great cure for writer's block.
Whenever I find myself just staring at the screen, unable to figure out what I want to write, taking a time out for five minutes almost always resolves it.
ChatGPT
This is the stage of the writing process where I find ChatGPT more useful.
I don't use it to do any of the writing for me, but it's brilliant for checking my understanding of things. A prompt I regularly use is "Fair to say? -" followed by a sentence I'm not sure about.
I also use it when I'm uncertain about punctuation or when I want to find a good synonym for a word.
Readability Test
Lamentable though it may be, modern audiences don't want to read words like, well, lamentable.
I think it's important for writers to have a voice, but you also don't want to make things unnecessarily difficult for readers.
This is especially true if you are a content writer, because you are trying to appeal to a wide audience. Used the right way, online readability tests can be useful tools for keeping your writing in check.
Personally, I check each of my paragraphs individually and aim for a reading age of 17 and under.
If it's already under 17, I don't try to optimize it by aiming even lower, because I'll end up sounding like a robot. You'll soon realize that these tests strongly favor single-clause sentences and one-syllable words.
LanguageTool
LanguageTool is a handy browser extension that I also learned about while working for that SEO agency.
It works on almost any webpage that allows you to type in text, and it's an excellent spellchecking tool. It's also pretty good at spotting missing words and incorrect phrases. But best of all, it's free!
However, I only use it for the things I've mentioned above. It can also give you writing suggestions, but while I was working for that agency, a warning went out that said some of the writers who had used its suggestions had been flagged for AI.
Weirdly, LanguageTool actually doesn't work in Google Sheets. I simply copy my draft into Docs and then review the mistakes it has highlighted before I submit the article.
Final Tweaks and Checks
Headline Analyzer
As with readability tests, there are quite a few of these to be found online. I use the Monster Insights one because it's free, it doesn't require you to sign up, and it gives you lots of examples of headline phrases that people like to click on.
I try and aim for a score of 80 or above, but it's more important for the headline to sound natural than to cram in phrases that the Analyzer likes.
AI Detector
This is a recent addition to my process, and one that I used to think was unnecessary. That was, until the agency I mentioned earlier used AI as an excuse to not pay me for work and let me go.
They never sent any evidence of their AI checks. They just said they were certain, and because I hadn’t done my own, I had no comeback. Now I always do one myself and take a screenshot.
Continuous Improvement
Learning how to write is a continuous process, even for a content writer with a few years under his belt.
I didn't start out using all of these tools, I added them to my process over time, and I'm sure I'll add more or replace some of them in the future.
In the meantime, I hope this snapshot of my current setup can be helpful to other writers out there.
For anyone reading this who's looking to hire a writer and likes the sound of my process, work with me and I'll be just as thorough as I've described here.