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Communicating with your target audience – whether through your website or blog posts or social media – can generate leads and increase conversions for your nurse-owned business. And, sure, you can hire a professional writer to do this content creation for you, but many nurse entrepreneurs don’t have the budget for that early in the life of their business.
If you’re a nurse entrepreneur who falls into the DIY-content-creation camp, I’d like to share three skills that can help you write content quickly and painlessly.
1. Outlining
If this brings up horrible memories of freshman English class, relax. Outlines do not have to be formal documents that involve the use of Roman numerals.
When I say “outlining,” I’m really talking about sketching out your composition on paper before you start writing. Let’s say you’re going to write a blog post. You’ll be a more efficient writer if you take five minutes and jot down these points:
I went through this process before I began writing this very article. I decided to write on the topic of “writing skills every nurse entrepreneur should master.” Then I determined this article would benefit from a “list” format (hence: “three writing skills…”). Then I considered what my main point should be: “help nurse entrepreneurs write content quickly and painlessly.” Lastly, I decided I would not include any sub-points, because the three skills in the list can stand on their own.
That wasn’t too painful, was it?
2. Pre-writing
Once you’ve outlined your composition, take a moment to consider what research you need to conduct before you start writing. Using the example of a blog post, what pre-writing activities should you perform to support your point(s)?
Pre-writing activities include things like:
By taking time to perform these types of pre-writing activities before you sit down at the keyboard, you’ll enjoy a smoother, uninterrupted writing process because you won’t have to stop periodically to look up a statistic or source to validate some point you’re making. Plus, your first draft will be much stronger and require less editing.
3. Lousy first drafts
I work with nurses who are pursuing freelance writing careers, and some of them get very uptight about achieving perfection in the first draft of an article, blog post or whatever. That’s a sure way to reinforce the idea that writing is a painful, torturous activity.
To counter this, I recommend taking the reverse approach: aim for a really lousy first draft.
This advice comes from Anne Lamott, and I’ve employed it successfully throughout my career.
Basically, use the first draft as a means to quickly get your thoughts down on paper, following the outline you originally created. Don’t worry about the elegance of your prose or whether you used too much passive voice or if you nailed the grammar. Instead, focus on simply getting the idea down.
On the second (or third or fourth…) pass, you can smooth out the grammar and transitions, convert some of the passive voice to active and generally clean everything up into something you can be proud to publish.
If you’re a nurse entrepreneur who creates her own business content, my hat’s off to you! I hope these tips will help you become a more efficient and confident writer moving forward.
About Elizabeth Hanes, BSN, RN
I'm an RN but make my living as a freelance writer. I produce health articles, patient information, web pages, blog posts, video scripts - and so much more - on behalf of clients like hospitals, health systems, insurers and digital magazines. I work from home, set my own hours and find plenty of time to care for my elderly mother, go to the gym, take vacation, fill my house with antiques....
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