How I wrote a blog in under 24 hours (Content Lab, Ep. 45)

Normally, we dedicate episodes of Content Lab to a broad topic or lesson about how the content sausage gets made in the digital sales and marketing world. 

This week, however, we're doing something a little bit different. We're going to take a fully dissect "how a bill became a law" (so to speak) with a specific piece of content, so we can share with you our favorite tips, tricks, and personal processes and philosophies of content creation. 

🔎 Related: The best planning worksheet for your next piece of content

And in this episode, I'm in the hot seat with a blog article I wrote and published for IMPACT on Tuesday about Google's new SERP feature... and I completed it in under 24 hours. 

(Whew.)

While I was excited to share my experience with John of how I pulled this piece together, it wasn't until the end of the conversation that I realized how illuminating and educational this kind of deep-dive into a single piece of content can be.

In this conversation we addressed the following questions:

• How did I choose what to write about?
• How did I develop the strategy for the piece?
• Do I make any assumptions about my audience, and how did that influence how I wrote the article?
• What was my drafting process like?
• How did I handle moments where I didn't have all the answers to the questions the audience might have about the topic I chose?
• How did I choose the imagery for the article?
• What are the behind-the-scenes choices I made for the meta description, social posts, and so on?

I also talk about how great sentences come together (like it did in this article), and how that's not always easy to do.

To illustrate this point, I shared the painfully ironic story of the melodramatic existential crisis I had earlier this week. I just couldn't get the right words on the page for an issue of THE LATEST I was writing at the exact same time I was writing that article, where the ideas seemed to come together so easily. 

Enjoy! 

Listen to the episode

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Related resources

• Free blog post template for content marketers
• Content planning grid for all content types
• Ultimate blogging tips guide (completely ungated, no form-fill required)

Until next week! 👋