Thoughts on Productivity in Writing

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It has been a long journey to September, almost a year's end. Thinking of productivity, I reminded all 9 months of my writing journey and came up with interesting insights. The insights will help you avoid the same mistakes. End of the day, it is all about sharing experiences and improving skills.

There is a lot of difference between writing for a company and your personal brand. When you write for a firm, it has specific writing standards, editing techniques, research prompts, and manager feedback. When you write to build your brand, it primarily consists of what is there in your mind. There will be no thinking of sentence structure, no grammar, no research prompts, and everything soulful. Of course, you have to edit your draft before publishing it. Writing what your heart says will eventually make you a great writer. Writing for a firm will make you a professional writer. Both have their perks.

Let me break it down for you to make it clear and precise:

First, let’s see the broad concepts of productivity in writing —

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Environment:

Your environment is essential to become attentive and imaginative while writing. You can get ideas while you’re in messy surroundings, but to put it in a detailed storytelling manner you need a clear and peaceful environment.

Writing Tools:

First, put down your thoughts and then use tools like Grammarly to avoid spelling mistakes and grammar errors. Though you write a fantastic concept, your spelling or grammatical errors will make it sound like you are a beginner. Use simple to understand and ways to read words to build a flow in reading.

Inspiration and Creativty:

Seek inspiration from anything you like. Usually, writers don’t need a particular place or thing to get inspired. They are inspired by such silly things as well. So, when you feel unproductive to write, watch something that makes you happy and content. You might get an idea by doing such things or watching such shows. You can use AI to get ideas. Imagine something gets stuck in your head and don’t know where to start, use AI to build a flow and then you are good to write.

Time Management:

I don’t personally believe in time management, especially while writing. Because writers are in an imaginative mode while putting something on paper. They can’t set a certain time as it will cause a distraction. It will distract me. However, time management will build a discipline in writers. If you are doing a full-time job and writing as a favorite hobby, then you must dedicate a certain duration to this to achieve things in both domains. It will also help enhance your productivity.

Difference in productivity in writing for business/brands and building a personal brand:

For a business/brand:

Objective:

A business objective is quite different compared to your personal brand. It has its target audience of different age groups, it has its writing standards and deadlines.

Collaboration:

Here, writers have decent guidance from editors, marketing teams, and subject matter experts. These factors will help achieve the company’s strategic goals. It helps set the style and tone of writing. Most of the time, the brand’s writing is formal and professional. It should resonate with the brand’s image and guidelines. The collaboration will boost creativity and give the desired output.

Measurable Outcomes:

So, the output is directly proportional to your hard work, which is measured based on metrics. The number of views, clicks, bookmarks, etc. The firm will also consider conversion rates, revenue growth, and lead generation through your content piece. As a writer, you will habituate the way of professional writing and gain hands-on experience in understanding brand voice, which will eventually help in building your brand too.

For your personal brand:

• The primary goal of building a personal brand is to set an objective. The way you want to introduce your content to the audience. Whether you want to become a writer, an influencer, or a content creator is based on your choice. Ensure that your content piece represents the same.
• If you want your audience to be diverse, you should write general content that relates to most of them. Though you write on general topics, you should include your unique perspective and touch in the piece.
• There are no deadlines and no writing standards. Since it is your blog/website, you can write it in your style. Be it formal or informal, whichever you are good at. In personal branding, the content focus can be sharing personal experiences, insights, and knowledge that, either entertains or educates them. Ultimately, you have to engage them.
• You have creative freedom as you are your boss. Use the tone and style of your choice, and remember that it will be introduced as your style for your readers. It will show your personality and brand identity.
• You have great independence and autonomy in choosing topics. If you want to write about the general topic on one day and personal experiences on the second day, you will be introduced as a writer who shares knowledge on diverse topics. Not everyone can stick to a single genre while building their branding, and it is completely normal. End of the day, you are creative.
• Here, success is measured by how you receive it. If you take comments and likes as an achievement in your writing, you can compare them from your last piece to the latest one. It depends on how fast you want to grow vs. how creative you want to become.

Points to remember:

Building a personal brand is more about expressing your personality, connecting with your audience, and building a loyal community. Whereas, writing for a business/brand is gaining skills relevant to branding, SEO, writing style, and tone. In the beginning, I suggest both, as you can simultaneously build your brand while writing for a business. But, after getting into the actual writer’s perspective, invest more time in building your brand, as it will help you evolve as a creative individual and let you explore diverse genres.

You can read my views on an entirely different topic here

Happy reading:)