How can we, as freelance copywriters, become more efficient so that we have more free time?
As a professional copywriter, it’s essential to have established processes that create more efficiency in your writing process and allow you more flexibility and ultimately, free time.
As you begin to grow and scale your business, it can be overwhelming to write more, on-board new people, or serve more clients if you don’t have the right things in place for efficiency and effectiveness.
As someone who really enjoys owning my own business because of the way I get to create my own schedule and find the workflows that are right for me, I also understand how hard this is to do. I choose to prioritize efficiency, though, because to me it is important that I have free time to “Dad rock” out on my guitar (and scare my kids while doing it).
To do this, I’ve found that there are three essential ingredients to creating a more efficient process: pre-write, use templates, and establish a consistent writing routine.
When you create tools that help you succeed, you’re able to meet the needs of your business and your clients so that you can grow, scale, and still have time for yourself.
As you apply what you learn in this blog, you’ll ultimately be able to save tons of brain power and time.
Here are three ways you can create more efficiency in your writing business:
Pre-Write!
If you’ve been copywriting for a while, you probably already have some sort of pre-writing process. Maybe it’s research, outlining, note taking, or brainstorming.
Pre-writing is not a new concept. However, I’m going to argue that the most important aspect of writing a lot quickly is the time, attention, and effort put into pre-writing. if you don’t pre-write well, you will not write a lot quickly.
The good news is that more pre-writing means less writer's block.
Good copy begins with good information. Pre-writing helps you to gather all the information you need in order to write well and write fast.
Without the pre-writing phase, you’re likely to get stuck in your writing process.
When you don’t do pre-writing, you are setting yourself up for inefficiency because you’re essentially forcing yourself to multitask. You’re asking your brain to switch from logical thinking (research, reading, organizing information) to creative thinking (writing) without giving either side of your brain enough space to really get in the groove.
When you pre-write, you’re able to organize, gather, and outline the information, giving your brain power and purpose. When you’ve thoroughly researched your topic and have read articles from industry experts before you begin writing, you’re able to use the wealth of knowledge you’ve accumulated to focus on your creative genius: turning thoughts into words.
Good pre-writing makes it so you can focus solely on creative content when it comes time to actually write and work in a way that helps you write at scale. It keeps you from redundancy and saves you from context shifting and all the other things that impede flow.
The more you pre-write, the faster you write. It’s that simple.
2. Create Templates!
As you become more experienced as a writer, you will accumulate a lot of templates.
If you are going to write a lot quickly and grow your business without losing your time, templates are necessary.
If there is any chance that I will have to write a type of collateral more than once, I create a template. This means that I have a lot of templates.
I know as creatives and artists in business, templates sound boring, generic, and lacking in luster. However, if you want to have more free time to be a creator or an artist, templates are a great way to get you there.
I have a template for social media posts, content calendars, content strategies, messaging guides, email funnels, web copy, wireframes, articles and blogs. Almost everything I write for clients starts as a template.
Templates will change the way you write because it will speed up the process and help you scale your business. By using templates you are able to:
Scale your content
Maintain consistency
Embed narrative arc into the structure. This is really helpful for articles, email funnels, and web copy.
Ensure balance. This is especially true for social media and content calendars.
Diminish redundancy
Manage time
To build a good template, it needs to be structured in a way that can be easily and thoughtlessly transferred to the final piece of collateral. If it doesn’t, then you are just wasting time.
Create your template by keeping the final deliverable in mind and work backwards. If it’s an email template, you’ll know you need a subject line, body copy, a CTA, and maybe a PS at the end.
Once you have the structure of your template, you can then put some purpose into it. What is the reason for this type of writing template?
Whatever the purpose, you should make that clear in the template. Don’t just create a template for emails, create different templates for sales emails, or nurturing emails, or thank you emails, or newsletter emails. The purpose often has an effect on the structure, so be willing to create multiple types of templates for different purposes.
3. Establish a Consistent Writing Process
As a writer, particularly in the creative space, I just love the free-flowing process of putting words on an empty page. It’s an excavation, a practice of digging and discovering that doesn’t want to be pre-defined and determined by an outside schedule or agenda.
There is a place for what I just described, though. And the truth is, almost all of my best writing has come as a surprise by just sitting down at my computer and hunting for the elusive words as they draw me into their secrets.
When you are writing as a copywriter, though, you have deadlines and you cannot leave your product up to that kind of inspiration-only process. In many ways, growing a business as a freelance writer is using a different muscle. It requires a different approach and mindset, and it’s important to make that distinction early on.
The art of writing and the business of writing, although they overlap, are two very different things. Doing each of them makes the other better, but if you keep trying to flex your artistic muscles to grow your business, you’re going to struggle to scale.
If you want to scale, you have to establish a consistent writing routine that works for you.
Showing up every single day to write is what makes you a writer. Finding the ways to make showing up a little easier, is what allows you to be a sustainable writer. You can’t leave it to your “in-the-mood” moment to determine how, when, and where you’ll write.
Establish your workflow and stick to it. This is what creates momentum and scalability.
Write more, faster!
As a writer and business owner, I understand what it’s like to want to grow and scale your business so that you can have more free time to do the things you love.
There is so much power in refining your craft and creative processes. Through creating more efficient processes and putting better systems in place, you’re able to spend less time on your business and more time on developing new creative talents, like playing the guitar.
It is my goal to teach other copywriters how to write a lot quickly and grow their volume without giving up more time.
At StoryWright, we try to stay as efficient as possible so that we can tell more stories for more clients and these are just some of the ways we make writing more efficient.
If you want to implement these three writing tips, but don’t know where to start, schedule a consultation with me today.
