Justin McGill
February 17, 2015 5 Comments AUTHOR: Justin McGill CATEGORIES: Behind the Scenes, Online Marketing, Productivity / Life Hacks

I have a lot of different things going on, but one thing I’ve started doing recently is writing 750 words every single day. This has already made a positive income on my businesses and for my personal brand.

This can seem daunting, but the way I do things allows me to get this done rather easily.

Here’s my process for writing 750 words every single day.

Developing a Writing Process

First things first, you’re going to need a system for producing great content. This took me awhile to figure out, but it really boiled down to creating a daily habit of writing 750 words per day. That’s it, no magic pill or formula here. Just write…every day.

It might not be something you ever publish, but you (or someone on your team) needs to write every single day. I chose 750 words because it’s enough of a challenge, yet at the same time isn’t daunting enough to prevent me from feeling motivated to do it every day. If you’re interested in gamifying this process, you can even go to 750words.com.

gamifying this process, you can even go to 750words.com.

When to Write

I usually write first thing in the morning. I have been setting my alarm for 5:45 and once I get out of bed, I fire up my laptop and start writing. I don’t go to my main PC because I have three monitors and lots of tabs and apps open that would potentially distract me.

So why first thing in the morning?

For starters, the family is still asleep. It’s dark and quiet still at this time.

According to Dan Ariely, a professor in behavioral economics, our brains are the most productive the first two hours after waking up. I have noticed that by the end of the day my brainpower isn’t anywhere near the levels it is at first thing in the morning. I try and use this time to write, instead of doing things that don’t capitalize on this fact (such as checking email, social media, etc).

I have also noticed that on days where I don’t write early in the morning, I usually start stressing myself out. I have a streak going of 37 consecutive days (at the time of writing this) that I don’t want to break. So that starts weighing on you more and more the longer you wait. One day I was laying in bed, had my laptop open, and didn’t finish writing my 750 words until 11:50pm.

How to Write

Before I write anything, I ALWAYS have an outline. For example, here’s my outline for this particular blog post:

outline for blog post

You’ll see I just start with a very high level outline. Then I’ll start adding more to it as I think of more key topics I want to discuss for each section. In this particular outline, I actually came up with a concept for a separate post (determining what to write about).

You’ll find that ideas are easier to come by once you just start writing. Then you’ll start wondering how you’re going to write all these ideas. The good news is, you have the answer and you’re reading about it right now (hint: it’s called just doing this every day!)

Now, it’s important that you understand it doesn’t always need to be blog posts. You might write 750 words to use for email newsletters, drip campaigns, etc. My goal is to write 750 words of new content that you can use in marketing and sales.

There are different tools out there for you to write, but I just fire up Word and write my initial drafts there. I like to format things as I write, so I’m not a big fan of the markdown language and editors that focus on minimalizing your editing options. Figure out what works for you though and run with it.

I’d recommend that you at least find a tool that lets you write offline so that if you’re traveling or don’t have internet access, you’re flow isn’t interrupted.

Ideal Blog Post Length

So how long should a blog post be? It depends. I know that isn’t what you wanted to hear, but it depends on what your goals are for the content. Is it to rank high in search engines? Is it to have the people that do read it be fully engaged?

If your goal is to rank high in search results, then research shows longer content performs better than shorter content. In fact, a study by SerpIQ, shows that the average top 3 results in Google has nearly 2,500 words.

On the opposite end, Seth Godin keeps his content extremely brief:

seth godin short blog posts

That is literally two full blog posts. The challenge is Seth Godin has a globally recognized brand, so I wouldn’t recommend starting with this format.

Do it Daily

Consistency trumps everything else. If you are doing this every single day, you will come out ahead.

Maybe you only want to write 250 or 500 words every day, but whatever it is, just do it…every day (including weekends). No one else is going to be able to match your consistency.

Writing every day can have massive advantages, especially for business purposes. Your competitors aren’t doing this. Even if they have content marketers in place for their business, I guarantee 99% of them are not writing fresh new content every day.

Even if your business is at a point where you can hire a content marketing person, you should not only have that person write every day, but you should also keep up the practice. This allows you to publish multiple posts per day on multiple sites per day, create email campaigns for all the various kinds of lead stages, create downloadable lead magnets, and on and on.

Conclusion

Set a goal to write X number of words per day. Whatever that number is to get you motivated to start writing and feel good about your accomplishments when you’re done. Then, as Nike would say, “just do it.” Every. Single. Day.

Have other writing tips? Share in the comments!

If you liked this post, share it with your network on Twitter or Facebook!

5 Comments

  1. Minhaj 9 years ago says:

    It’s great to hear your new habit. Consistency really matters. I will try to follow your 750 words/day habit on my LinkedIn network. I will post one new post (not sure how many words) in a group that I follow and is very active. How will be that?
    How do you find what to write about? Do you come up with content ideas everyday or plan it before?

    Reply
  2. Quincy 9 years ago says:

    Good strategy, I also find myself to be the most productive when I first wake up. Do you write entire new posts in the span of a week then (assuming 2500 words is the goal) and build on it day to day, or are you creating complete pieces in 750 words everyday?

    Reply
    • Justin McGill 9 years ago says:

      Hi Quincy – I usually shoot for posts in the 750 to 1,500 range. So typically one to two days.

      Reply
  3. Geoffrey Hale 7 years ago says:

    Hi Justin! Great post! I used 750words.com until it was no longer free. I built 130words.com for anyone looking for a free alternative. I’d love it if you would give it a try and let me know if there’s anything missing, save you a few bucks :). I’ll be happy to improve the site for anyone who wants to use it. Cheers!

    Reply

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"Justin is the proto-type of a 21st century business leader. Unmatched skills with evolving technology, combined with the social and emotional intelligence required to handle an increasingly advanced consumer." ~ Michael Lambourne of Blend.