During the last 9 years I wrote more than 1 million words. Most of them are on my blog, at http://dragosroua.com, but I have a few dozen of thousands in other platforms, like Lifehacker or Facebook. On Steemit alone, I wrote more than 20k words during the last 3 months.
I’m not writing this to brag, but to give a little bit of context for this article.
Writing is a skill. It can be learned, it can be improved, it can be consistently applied in order to get value in exchange of it. And Steemit is a great place to generate value directly, by applying your writing skills.
Oh, and just to make things a little bit spicier: I am Romanian and I never had an English lesson in school (we were taught Russian, go figure). I learned English myself, in my thirties, by watching movies and translating coding documentation. It was a bumpy journey, to be honest. Reading the first articles I wrote in English, 9 years ago, is still a very painful experience. I cringe with shame at some of the phrases I wrote, back in my early blogging days. Oh, and the grammar nazis! I had some very awkward interactions with them. It wasn’t uncommon that pretty much every comment on my first articles was just to make fun of me.
Oh well. That’s how you learn, I guess.
Now, back to the topic. Like I said, writing is a skill. Even if you start with nothing, by applying discipline and constant work, you can drastically improve it. I shared those bits and pieces from my own experience just to show you it actually works. I’m sure there are many other stories, far more spectacular than mine.
At the end of the day, what matters is that you overcame your limitations and pushed yourself to a different level.
What follows is a very short guide based on my own experience on many platforms. It’s a guide as in it has just a few guiding lines, just to get you started. It’s not rocket science, as you will see, but it does require a little bit of discipline.
1. Find Your Niche
We’re all different. And that’s a good thing. Otherwise it will have been extremely, but I mean, extremely, boring. Each of us is a unique combination of experience, preferences and goals. This unique combination makes you valuable to other people. So, if you’re interested in science, write about science. If you’re interested in memes, write about memes. Whatever makes you different is also what makes you valuable.
But there’s a catch.
Finding a niche is not only about what you’re good at, but also about what other people want to read. What you’re good at accounts for only 50% of the niche. The other half is based on your audience preferences. So this process of discovering your niche is not only an inner journey, as some may assume. That’s part of the process, but it’s not enough. You should always keep an eye on what actually gets read. It doesn’t mean to blindly follow trends, but to understand your audience and calibrate your message.
So a good start would be to make a list of topics and watch the trending and hot pages on Steemit. If there’s some overlapping between your list of topics and the articles on those pages, then you have a winner.
If there’s not, well, it may be a bit difficult, but not necessarily bad. If you write, for instance, about biology, and there’s not a single biology article on the trending or hot page, it doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have an audience. Run a few tests and see if it’s catching up. You may be just uncovering an area nobody thought about.
2. Find Your Voice
Seth Godin rarely writes more than 600 words. Steve Pavlina used to write 2-3000 words per article. Everybody has a specific voice. And by voice I understand a combination of all of these:
- number of words per article
- tone of voice
- intros and endings
- linking strategy
- alternate media (images, videos)
This voice of yours will become, in time, your brand. People will read an article, without knowing who wrote it and they will start thinking: “hmm, this sounds like Seth Godin”, or “hmm, this sounds like Steve Pavlina”. You got it.
Finding your voice is a relatively long process. In my case it took about 50-100 articles until I got comfortable with a certain style. But your mileage may vary. The only way to identify this is to experiment. Write an article per day, for 30 days. That’s a good start.
3. Create And Maintain A Posts Incubator
This is probably the most surprising, yet most effective thing you can do in order to maintain a constant posting stream. A posts incubator is basically a storage setup for writing ideas. I don’t know about you, but I get my ideas most of the time when I’m not at the computer. I get them while I walk, while I’m watching movies, while I’m running or even while I’m joyfully sitting on the throne (many of you are checking their Facebook on the throne, so don’t give me that look, ok?).
I use a specific software for this, called Mac Journal, but you don’t have to. A simple note taking app will do the trick. As long as you use it consistently and create the habit of writing down those bits and pieces that are going through your head, you’ll be ok.
Most of the time, I just write down the title and the main ideas. Later on, when I have more time, I elaborate. This very post started like this, I just had the idea right before going to sleep, so I jotted the title and the 5 main topics. Next morning, I started to elaborate.
Maintaining a posts incubator will solve a very delicate problem: “what do I write about today?”. If you empty your mind constantly and write down all those ideas, you’ll end up with a backlog of at least 20-30 posts. And, believe it or not, this will create another problem: “when am I going to publish all that stuff that I wrote?”
4. Create And Respect An Editorial Calendar
Editorial calendar to the rescue! The second best thing after a posts incubator is an editorial calendar. Writing on the impulse or at the “news command” (whenever there’s some news around, you start commenting on that) it’s very time consuming. It’s also difficult to evaluate. The antidote is to create a clear schedule for your publishing activities.
It doesn’t have to be very elaborate, but it does need to exist. It can be as simple as: “I’m going to write 5 articles per week, from Monday to Friday”. Or it can be something like: “I’m going to publish 5 articles per day, every day, every 2 hours, starting 10AM”. The important thing is to have it somewhere handy and to respect it.
Some may think that a calendar will take out “spontaneity”. Well, not necessarily. If there’s an impulse to write something, just go ahead. It will be a nice addition to whatever you wrote so far.
5. Create And Maintain A Comment Policy
Content doesn’t mean only articles. It can also mean comments. Especially on Steemit, where every contribution can be rewarded. Commenting can be a very interesting way to create relationships and to enforce your personal brand.
A comment policy can include the following items:
- responding to all the comments on your own articles
- commenting constantly to a list of influencers
- commenting to support a list of authors you like
You got the idea.
As you saw, it’s not rocket science, but it does give a little bit of structure. My suggestion is to create a very loose structure and follow it for at least 30 days.
At the end of this interval, re-evaluate.
Steem on :)
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me 
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