The best ways to avoid the dreaded Writers Block
“Writer’s block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown. The condition ranges in difficulty from coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years. Throughout history, writer’s block has been a documented problem.” Credit Wikipedia.
When it comes to content marketing for your estate agency, it is vitally important to dedicated good time and if outsourcing, finding the best content writers, so that your return on investment on content you produce is at the best levels for you business.
Content marketing – What is it exactly? Quite simply, it is producing content, usually for online usage, that drives awareness to your business and ideally and most commonly, increases your website traffic and search engine rankings.
Within estate agency now there are many that produce content marketing on a regular basis and distribute it via their websites, out to their social media channels, on news platforms and more. There are some agents that really have mastered the art of quality writing and get some handsome results for their efforts, I speak to a few agencies across the UK who do not regret ever having invested in having regular content produced for them each and every month and can vouch that it has increased their local brand awareness.
So, to get yourself great content you need to start writing some and this is where for many writers block will come in to play – You struggle to the creative mind flowing and words down on paper / on your screen and what should normally take you an hour or so will end up taking a couple of days and mostly likely end up with the piece of paper being discarded or the delete button on the word file being clicked.
Here are a few reasons for writers block and how to resolve them:
I’m not good enough to write. Many think this, they assume either they need to be an experienced author or the quality of what they will write is just not up to standard. This is usually not the case, many blogs online are not written by professional people and in fact some of the best blogs written are be amateurs who have a passion and in-depth knowledge on what they are writing about. Remove these cobwebs from your mind and attempt to write yourself a blog on your favourite topic, be it business or leisure, I am sure you will at least get a few paragraphs together that will read well and most likely intrigue and engage a reader.
Not the right time. With our busy lives it is probably hardly ever the best time to dedicate a spot in your diary to researching and writing up a blog. It may also be that you have not the best news story / subject / knowledge in order to write – I say this is not an excuse as Google holds a wealth of information that will enable you to gather content to compliment what you are writing. Part of writing is the research, in fact I’d go so far to say that a blog takes up 50% of time in researching and another 50% in writing. Not the right time still in your mind? Relieve your mind by taking a walk, brewing yourself a cup of tea, read the newspaper, answer some old emails and get the cobweb out from your mind that it is not the right time to be writing content.
Distractions. Well, if you have a distraction I would say eliminate it / them? If it is noise then move away from that noise, or turn the noise down or set a time for yourself to write when they noise is not there ie early morning or late evenings. If you are on of those people always with the Youtube tab up in your browser or checking your phone for Tweets then take these temptations away which will ruin your creative mind (unless you are using Youtube / Twitter for research). Dare I say tuck yourself away in a room with a do not disturb sign on, put the phone on silent, get writing and get the job done!
I can not come up with a subject / title. Well fine, if the world does not hold enough subjects to write about then I just don’t know what you are thinking… Even if we narrow down Estate Agency we have an unlimited amount of subjects to concentrate on from finance to interior design, radiators to local schooling. If you are stuck then go back to that great source of information Google and type in some key words and see what comes up, I am sure something will tickle your creative mind being it a title or an image. Use social media too, look at what other estate agents are writing about, see what is trending and, dare I say, copy some of these ideas to create yourself a unique piece you can release and not be stuck at the first hurdle with the excuse of ‘I do not know what to write about‘.
I’ve started writing though I can not finish the blog as I am somewhat lost how to. OK, you have chosen a subject and you think you are on course to complete it in record time and you suddenly become lost and the special ending is eluding you or what you have written seems to read dumb and disjointed. Not uncommon, I have spent time writing what I think was a great blog and read really well what I was trying to get across, but there is just no ending to it… Well, on this occasion I would suggest, as I do, save the blog and keep it in a folder on your desktop (or on your desktop as I do so it constantly reminds me). This will then not mean you have lost the work you have done and you will be surprised that in the near future you will read something or see something that will give you the perfect piece to add to the blog you write in order for you to finish and upload it to be read. Do not waste too much time on those blogs you have gotten lost with, you are best to start something new instead and come back to it at a later date rather than fighting writers block.
It has been written about before so that is the end of that. Rubbish I say, nearly each and every topic you could possibly imagine has been written about countless times so this is no excuse for you to not write about something which has been written about already. Just like news papers, news channels on TV / Radio they all share out the same news though go about how it is shared differently. Nothing is stopping you re-writing the rule book, taking something which has been written about before and making it a much better piece, adding images, graphs and videos etc or just coming at things in a totally different way.
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