Writing Process: Behind the Scenes With a Content Marketing Writer

Content Marketing Writing: A System for Success

How do you approach your writing process? Content marketing, when done right, benefits your business. It gives your brand authority while helping your clients solve problems. But, there are a ton of steps to take before you ever write a word.

This post won’t get into how to do content marketing or earn money blogging. Instead, I’m sharing my process as a content marketing writer—the steps I take once you give me a project.

If you’re a business owner or writer, then these steps may help create or refine your writing process.
If you hire freelancers, then this is my answer to the question, “What’s your writing process?”

How Content Writing Methods Help Your Business

If you Google “writing process,” then you’ll get five to seven steps. These stages include prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. But, a great writer is more than the words they create and edit.

Strong writers deliver regular communication and reliable services. Those with a stable system provide consistency. An exceptional writer:

Reads and confirms your request upon receipt (during business hours established in your contract).
Learns about your ideal customers and researches your industry.
Creates error-free content according to your brief and within your word limit.
Doesn’t need hand-holding but reaches out with clear questions as needed.
Delivers your project on time, every time.
Welcomes feedback and works with you to nail style and tone.
Grows over time to adapt to your process, clients, and writing needs.
Understands the latest trends and changes both in marketing and in your industry.

So how does that help your company?

Quite simply, it takes a burden off your shoulders. Regardless if you’re an agency or a large corporation, a dependable team makes business run smooth. It’s one less thing that you have to worry about.

That’s the whole point of outsourcing work. At least, that’s why I use a virtual assistant for some tasks. My work life gets a little easier, and I can spend my time where it’s needed.

Content Marketing: Writing Process Examples

So, without further ado, here are the steps I take once you send me a brief.

Confirm assignment.
Add a card to my Trello list: Writing Projects.
Create a project due date for the Trello card.
Attach a content brief or description to the card, if available.
With Zapier, this auto-generates a due date on my Google Calendar.

Content writing process trello board organization — My Trello board for writing work.

Writer Tip: I also enter the title and payment details into my income spreadsheet. I’ve tried adding a Zap for this, but haven’t been successful.

Writing Process: Pre-Writing and Organization

Scan content brief and any provided documents.
Create a Google doc with the project title.
Transfer over the outline, keywords, and links from the brief.

Writing Process: Research

Pull up any sources from the brief online.
Put in keywords, title, phrases into several Google searches.
Take note of any related phrases or terms using the Chrome app Surfer.
Jot down any prominent words from the SERP ads and metadata.
Review Google’s list of questions.
Open the top results for keywords if relevant to the project.
Scan related research to refresh my brain on the subject matter.

An example of how Surfer looks on my Google page.

Writer Tip: I enjoy using an old-fashioned notebook to brain map terminology, ideas, and questions. Sometimes I transfer this information to my document, but not every time.

If you add information to your text from URLs, then keep your research process clean and save time by:

Italicize or change the font color to show this information is a direct quote.
Paste the URL next to the data found on a website.

Further Research for Content Marketing Writers

It’s also a good idea to look over other blog posts on your client’s site. If your client doesn’t provide a style guide or detailed brief, then you’ll need to figure out a lot of details on your own. For example:

What type of header case does the site use?
AP or Chicago style?
How do they write numbers?
Periods in bulleted posts or not?
How do they start and end posts?
How are quotes and sources mentioned in the content?

Writing process examples of style for blog titles and headers — Capitalize My Title is a great website for help with header styles.

Plus, take note of any formatting of the blog that may affect how you write your content. Often, I will cut and paste the longest paragraph I find in a blog post. Then I check for word and character count. This helps me get an idea of when to break my paragraphs. Some clients leave line spaces after every sentence or two. Others do so after three or four sentences. It helps knowing how your content will look on their website.

Writing Process: Drafting

Flesh out the full outline or quick draft.
Review draft to see where statistics are needed to support my content.
Pull up statistics. This often means tracking many URLs back to find the source and date of the information.
Cut and paste any statistics into the appropriate part of the outline along with the URL.
Complete a solid draft.

Writer Tip: At this point, I like to let it rest. I switch to a different project and come back a few hours or a day later. But, if this first part went fast and I’m super into the content, then I’ll keep going.

Writing Process: Revising and Editing

Read the draft and work section by section to turn it into a final draft.
Review the style guide and make any changes.
Run the final draft through Grammarly Premium.
Cut content from Grammarly and paste into the Hemingway App.
The goal is to eliminate most of the colors. So, shorten hard or very hard sentences. Remove most adverbs.
Aim for 8th grade or lower in the Hemingway App.

During this revision stage, I’m also looking for any repetition. Sentences that start with the same word. Or the same verb used twice in a paragraph. Depending on the content, I may read it out loud or record myself reading the copy.

writing process tools hemingway app — An example of how Hemingway App looks.

Copy content from the Hemingway App and paste without formatting into the Google doc.
Add formatting for headers and lists.
Add links.

What About SEO for Content Writing?

Are you asking what about SEO? Here’s the thing. Once I research and write down keywords and phrases, those are next to me the entire time I write. Keywords flow naturally into the content because that’s what my project is about.

While writing, I’m regularly using the Google search term, “Synonym,” along with a word. Or “Define” and a word. It helps me better understand the different concepts that should make up my content. Doing this tends to give me content with keywords naturally woven into my material. Then, I finish up my project with my last two steps.

Review SEO and optimize content.
Final review (check formatting and links).

writing process stages basic seo — SEO in the simplest terms.

Then, I send it over to the client. And I move my Trello card into my “Completed” list.

Want more tools to help your writing process? Check out my writing and blogging resources page!

Content Marketing Writing: But Wait, There’s More!

And every time I type this list, I feel embarrassed. My writing process seems long. I question myself and wonder if I’m going overboard. But, the thing is that I’m not checking off boxes here.

Until I documented my process, I had no idea how many steps I was taking. I’ve done it so many times that it all flows through my system without much thought, which I love it because I can focus on the project, not how to write, edit, or optimize for search engines.

Depending on your client, you may have quite a few more steps!

For example, if I need a headline, then that adds more time. I’ll use Co-Schedule’s headline analyzer or the FATJOE blog title generator. I try to come up with 5-10.
If the client gives me a subject but no angle or brief, then I may need further research. A great place to start is with Answer the Public.

And of course, clients may use other channels like Slack or Asana. You may include images in your contract or have writers upload your blog to your website. Some writers provide social media posts with each blog for an extra fee as well.

So, everyone has an approach that works for them. I spend a lot of time getting it right on the first go. It saves us both time on revisions. That’s not to say that I don’t need help getting your client’s voice right. Or benefit from a second set of eyes, preferably an editor, to ask questions or identify gaps in the content.

The Best Approach to Content Writing Processes

The best approach is one that’s repeatable. It has to fit your needs and those of your clients. So whether you take five steps or 31, do what feels natural. More importantly, design a writing process that delivers consistent results.