Content Creation Part 14

Who Will Write Your Content?

In our last section you were asked to come up with at least 100 topic ideas for web content.

If you have done this, great ... well done! You are an action taker. If you haven't done this yet, then let's take little "baby steps" to get there, and we'll do this one "baby step" at a time.

Baby Step #1

- Take out your list and just write 10 ideas down before doing anything else.
- If you can't write 10 ideas down, then just write down 5 ideas.
- If you can't write 5 ideas down, then just write down 2 ideas.
- If you can't write 2 ideas down, then just write down 1 idea.

Great! you've taken that first baby step!

Now ... the next step is to make a decision about who will write your web content.

There are really only two content writing options when it all boils down to making things happen.

Either ...

1) You will write the content, or
2) Someone else will write it for you.

Both of these options have "pros" and "cons", and whichever option you choose will require an investment of your time and effort, as you will either be writing content, or managing the content creation process.

There are other options, but these will lead to no results or poor results. You can ...

#3) do "nothing" (i.e. no one writes content), or
#4) abdicate the process entirely by giving all of the responsibility of creating content for your website or blog to somebody else and hope and pray that they will "amaze" you.

Most website owners choose one of the lesser of the above options (i.e. 3 or 4), and so it comes as no surprise that they are getting either no results or very poor results.

If you want to grow a successful presence online, you will need to focus on one of the two options that get results: either writing content yourself or outsourcing the work.

Let's start with the pros and cons of doing it yourself, i.e. writing your own web content.

WRITING YOUR OWN WEB CONTENT - PROS AND CONS

Let's start with the "cons" of creating web content yourself.

The obvious "con" is that it takes time to plan, research, write and edit your own web content. The more you do it, however, the better and faster you will get, but there's no getting around the fact that creating quality content for your website or blog will require a commitment and investment of your time and a considerable deal of "sweat" equity on your part.

The other "con" is that if you plan to create content other than simple written text and adding ready-made images to your blog posts, articles, tutorials, etc. (e.g. e.g. stock images), then you will need to invest in tools like image-editing applications (e.g. Photoshop) and video editing software and learn how to use these tools.

As mentioned in earlier training sections, you don't need to be a writer to blog (i.e. talk about your business in writing). Other than investing time into the writing process and learning how to use tools (if you plan to also create your own images, videos, audio, etc.), there really aren't any other "cons" to writing your own web content.

Let's turn now to the "pros" of writing your own content.

There are many pros to writing your own web content.

First of all, if you are a small or solo business owner, a skilled technician, a passionate hobbyist or you have been doing anything repeatedly for a long time, then you probably have a greater level of expert knowledge about your business, products, services, industry or area of passion, interest or expertise than most of the people you would be looking to outsource the work of writing content to.

If you "know your stuff" and can put your expertise into writing, you will generally get better results than outsourcing your content writing to someone else. Blog posts and articles written by people who truly care about their business, or who have a genuine interest or passion for their industry or niche or a hobby, etc. typically come across better to readers, as the writing will naturally feel more genuine and authoritative.

Even if you are not a great writer, what you write about will tend to reflect your knowledge and experience better than most, as you are already immersed in your subject or area of expertise and therefore will naturally tend to use more relevant language, jargon and other terminology specific or related to your niche or industry. This will not only resonate better with readers who have a similar interest, it will also help you get better results in search engines.

The next "pro" is cost. If your budget is tight or you're just starting out online and can't afford to start outsourcing yet, you can keep your costs low and save money by writing your own web content. If you use a platform like #WordPress, you can really keep your online costs to an absolute minimum - in most cases, the only cost you would have are webhosting and the cost of renewing your domain each year. In most cases, this cost is less than around $100 a year.

Another "pro" to writing your own web content is that you have complete control over the content creation process. You control what to write about, what points need to be covered in your content and when things need to be written, completed and published by.

One final "pro" I'd like to mention here is that even if you plan to outsource your content creation to others, at least consider starting out by writing your own web content initially, as you will then have created samples of the type of quality work you expect your outsourced content writers to match or exceed.

As you can see, there are many "pros" to writing your own web "prose" 🙂

IN SUMMARY

If you can write your own web content, you will benefit from content that:

- projects genuine authority with readers
- includes terminology and phrases that search engines can pick up
- can cost little to nothing to create
- puts you in complete control of the process
- sets the standard of quality you expect when outsourcing the writing to others

ACTION STEP

Your action step for today is to give the idea of writing your own web content serious consideration. At least consider the possibility of starting out by creating a couple of blog posts or articles yourself, so that you will be familiar with the process (i.e. how long it takes, what kind of planning and research is involved, what type of expertise is required, etc.) and can then communicate your needs and requirements clearly and confidently to others, should you choose to outsource your content writing later.

Next section, we'll share with you an easy-to-follow, proven and effective content writing strategy that you can use if you decide to write your own articles and blog posts.

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