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Ask HN: How do you write effectively?

8 pointsby feroz1about 8 years ago
Hey guys,<p>Just wondered how you churn out effective content?<p>I.e. If you have to write 10&#x2F;20 pieces of content a week how do you do that? How do you 1. Come up with the topics. And 2. How do you actually sit down and write it and not get distracted?<p>thanks!

4 comments

Rannathabout 8 years ago
It&#x27;s been a few years since university, but:<p>Coming up with ideas is an exercise in creativity. So you need to exercise your creativity. Brainstorm everyday try to come up with 10 topics, they don&#x27;t need to be good. Optionally, prune them down to what you think is good, and summarize why you think so. When it&#x27;s easy come up with 10 do 15, 20, etc. Eventually you&#x27;ll have the creativity muscles of Stephen King :).<p>Not getting distracted is a matter of discipline. Set aside time everyday to write. Start small and work up (a few hundred words then work your way up to 2000+). Beyond that have a basic idea what you want to write. Outlines help immensely.
verganileonardoabout 8 years ago
Hey! My two cents<p>2 sources of ideas: - Keyword Research (use SEM Rush, KeywordTool.io and AnswerThePublic; this is great for SEO)<p>- Qualitative Research with customers&#x2F;leads (just send an email asking them what are their goals, challenges, obstacles, etc; that is a great way to start writing topics that your clients care about)<p>How to write fast - I try to copy the structure of similar articles and then fill in the blanks - I just sit and write as fast as I can - and then review and edit to make it better. I think that separating this two steps is a great way to write more - first you write, then you judge your content.<p>Another tip - I usually see more success writing fewer articles with higher quality (and word count!) - 2k+ words articles perform a lot better and can position you as a source of relevant and deep content
npratiniabout 8 years ago
Hard to answer the ideas question without more context, but I&#x27;d focus on ideas related to something you are passionate&#x2F;knowledgeable&#x2F;curious&#x2F;have an opinion about. It&#x27;s so much easier to write a piece of content when you actually care about the topic and have something add to what&#x27;s already out there.<p>As for writing, I find it super helpful to have a formula that I can repeat for multiple articles... again, depends on the topics you&#x27;re writing about. Give yourself timeframes - you&#x27;ll probably fail to stay within the limits at first, but it can often help to keep you focused.
ISLabout 8 years ago
It&#x27;s hard to imagine having 10 important things to say to the world in a week.<p>If forced to do so, I would consider whatever is really important to my audience and write forthright, accurate information about those things.