Wow, this is article 500!! 🎉
I wish I could say I did an article a day, like Seth Godin or Flavio Copes. However, I did miss writing on my wedding days and had zero regrets about that 🥳.
I did write 500 tech-related articles already... Can you believe it? That means we went into lockdown about 500 days ago (How time flies, right?).
This article contains the five most important things I've learned from writing 500 articles.
1. Plan your content and life
It might look simple on paper, write some words every day, but the struggle is real. It can be a mental drain at times, so the best thing you can do is plan around your content and life.
You might get the part about content. Every time you have an idea write it down in Notion. This way, you should never run out of ideas.
A second side to doing such a crazy challenge is your personal life.
Every single day ~ Yes, every single day, you have to write content. That means holidays, weekends, days you don't feel like it. And it can not just be hard on yourself, but on your partner, friends and family as well.
The main thing I learned is to keep them informed. When going on a holiday, I try to do some work in advance to enjoy some time off. My wife is luckily super supportive and lets me do my blog on the weekend. However, some days we need to communicate when I'm writing and when we do something fun.
2. You don't need to write perfect content
Before we dive into this point, let me tell you a bit about my motives for writing:
- Keep up to date with tech
- Imprint techniques in my brain
- Improve my English writing
- Improve my technical writing
- Learn in public
As we take these points, you can see my goals are far from your other blog goals like: Get x million views, or Sell x amount of ads.
I write for myself to become better, and with that comes a side effect that people are intrigued by my way of learning and want to learn with me.
I have days where people reach out and say I made a mistake. This can be anything from typos to having the wrong Codepen linked to the article.
I appreciate people telling me these things. It's yet another way of learning. I always thank these people and change that part of the article.
If you are that person who is procrastinating putting out their first article, run it through Grammarly, read it once more yourself and GO! Put that content out there.
3. Write for your best readers
As you may have seen above, I'm a big fan of writing for myself and like-minded people. I know from myself that I like small bite-sized articles. I don't read super long articles as they don't get to the point quickly enough for my liking.
My writing style reflects my reading style in that sense. It's small, to-the-point articles that solve problems quickly. And I know that's why a lot of people like reading my articles.
Moral of the story: Write content you would read, as you know best, to write it like that.
4. Motivate yourself
You can't write 500... let's even make that 30 articles consecutive when you're not motivated.
If you don't enjoy writing and it's a struggle, don't do it. For me writing down my ideas and learnings is such a liberating feeling. This, in turn, motivates me to write more.
There are days where my brain is overflowing with the idea after idea. I open up my Notion and write down all of those ideas.
When the next writing session comes, I often read the headlines I wrote down and immediately get re-motivated by my enthusiasm when coming up with the ideas.
5. Enjoy what you're doing
With motivating comes enjoyment. Like I said before: If you don't like writing, don't do it.
This doesn't mean you can't put out content, but maybe you like making videos more? Or just publishing ebooks?
Do whatever makes you happy as a person. And don't worry about sucking at it first, pretty sure we all do in the beginning.
Find your passion and use that to put out content people (and you) love.
Recap
If you are keen to put out a lot of content, keep in mind it's not easy. There's a lot of planning around it, not just in content but also in your life in general. Don't be afraid that you have to be perfect, nobody is! Write for your best readers, which are people like-minded often. That said, it comes down to writing content you would read yourself. And lastly, enjoy the process!
Thank you for reading, and let's connect!
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