#the rest are all willy nilly at whatever angle i so happened to do it at
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Learn from the Sky (1/1)
Summary: Technically, the first time Michael gets kidnapped after moving to Los Santos is at the hands of the Fakes.
AO3
Michael's minding his business driving home from work and some dickhead hops into the passenger seat because the power locks on his car don't work and Michael's an idiot.
The guy's got perfect hair and a pleasant smile on his face while he points the gun in his hand at Michael's.
“Oh, I hope I'm not interrupting,“ he says, bright and cheery when he realizes Michael's on speakerphone with his mom.
She's reading some news article she found somewhere talking about the incredibly high crime rate in Los Santos as a not-so-subtle hint for him to move back home for a bit.
“Gotta go mom,” Michael says, careful not to make sudden movements and keeping his hands where the guy can see them. “I'll call you back later.”
“She's right, you know,” the guy says, unnervingly cheerful and perky for someone with a gun. “There are just loads of criminals just running around all willy nilly here.”
What the actual fuck?
“Wow, really?” Michael says, hands tightening on his steering wheel, wondering if maybe his mom has a point after all. “I hadn't realized.”
The guy hums, something that Michael suspects is a bastardized version of a pop hit, and gestures at the intersection coming up.
“Take a right here, please.”
Michael does as he's told, following directions until they end up somewhere in the industrial district. Warehouses with boarded up windows quietly rusting away. Goddamned dogs barking somewhere in the distance and Michael finally catches a glimpse of one of the freight trains he always hears but never sees.
“Oh, this is it,” the guy says, still smiling as he gestures at a building.
Michael pulls over to the curb and turns the car off, handing the guy the keys when he makes a little gimme motion with his hand, and gets out with the guy when he clears his throat pointedly.
“You're going to need your little kit,” the guy says, tipping his chin to Michael's bag in the backseat. “Things are kind of...messy inside.”
Michael looks at the building, just like all the other warehouses around here. Slanted roof and faded lettering. Busted streetlight out front that may or may not be deliberate. Couple of cars he can just see parked around back.
Like something out of a movie, the kind where some idiot goes to check a strange noise and gets brutally murdered for his trouble.
And this is where the dickhead wanted Michael to drive them, all cheerful and perky and Jesus fucking Christ.
Michael's mom is going to be so fucking impossible when he gets killed here and she gets to be all, “I warned him, but did he listen to me? Not one fucking bit and just look what happened!”
“You want to tell me what I'm getting into here?” Michael asks, wishing he hadn't taken his jacket off for the drive home with the way the temperature's dropped since the sun went down.
The guy hums again, something strained to it as he gestures for Michael to go first with a little wave of his gun.
“A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” he says, and Michael bites back a sigh because that probably wouldn't be smart in this situation, now would it.
They head around back and Michael glances toward the cars. One of them looks like it's been rolled a few time, sitting low on its suspension, broken windows, mangled bumpers, and missing fender. Sees sees the shattered windshield on one, cracks spider-webbing outward from a single point.
“Sniper,” the guy says, when he sees Michael looking. “Not the best really, bless their heart, but they tried.”
Michael's eyebrows go up because the spot the bullet hit -
“You'll have to meet ours sometime,” the guy says, something sharp to it. “He's much, much better.”
Michael doesn't know what to say to that - the implication that he might leave here alive - but from the amused twist to the guy's mouth, he notices.
“If you can keep a secret, that is,” he adds, and Michael, okay, Michael is tired and more than a little annoyed.
“Cross my heart and hope to die?” he asks, some bite to it that has the guy outright grinning at him, something appraising to the look he gives Michael.
“Ooh, feisty. We like that.”
Christ.
Thankfully the guy doesn't have any other creepy, cryptic things to say when they reach the door. Shots Michael a look before angling his body to keep Michael from seeing whatever the code is when he punches it in.
Stepping inside, Michael realizes someone's put a lot money into the place. That it isn't just another rundown warehouse from a bankrupt company wasting away out here.
The place is sectioned off, mechanic bays and some sort of workshop at the back. Racks and cases with weapons and God only knows what off to their left and rows of desks with computers and other equipment nearby.
Off to their right -
“Jesus Christ,” Michael mutters.
Someone's cleared the area for the handful of injured people he can see. Various injuries from what looks like broken bones to gunshot wounds.
There's someone else seeing to the injured, movements brisk and efficient and exhausted. A familiar enough sight, really.
More so, when he looks up and Michael fucking recognizes him. Fucking Phil from work who's transferring out of Los Santos at the end of the month to be close to his parents or some bullshit.
Nice guy. Quiet, keeps to himself for the most part. Showed Michael the ropes the first week before he got his assignment and honestly seemed...not boring, okay, just. Sure as hell not fucking this.
“He needed another pair of hands,” the guy says. “Mentioned you by name, which is pretty high praise coming from him.”
Michel slides a look at him, sees the exhaustion he's doing a damn good job of hiding himself. Strain to the smile he's been wearing like a mask this whole time.
“Sure,” Michael says, already stepping towards Phil and the injured he's treating. Figures he won't get shot in the back for doing what the guy brought him here to do, because talk about being counterproductive. “Coming from a guy who has pictures of his plants in his wallet, that means a lot to me.”
He hears the guy laugh behind him, but tunes it out when he gets to Phil who fills him in on what's going on. Leads him over to a kid trying to keep their blood inside where it belongs and looking annoyed at having been shot. (Fucking relatable, actually.)
“Try not to kill them,” Phil says, deadly serious as he claps a hand on Michael's shoulder and heads back to the bickering idiots.
Michael looks down at the kid who looks back. So very young and stupid, and sighs.
“Tell me where it hurts,” he says just to be an asshole, and gets to work.
It's ugly and messy and none of the people he treats complains. Just sit there and do what he asks, this same little light in their eyes. Stubborn fuckers every single one of them and that sticks in his head as he moves from one patient to the next.
Phil leaves sometime around midnight. Gives Michael a look, before the guy shuts the door after him and Michael -
He's past tired, well into exhausted and that's not good really.
The injured are either sleeping or resting quietly and the others just watch when the guy takes Michael over to an office of sorts.
There are model rockets and framed blueprints on the walls. A little table tucked into a corner with a model of the solar system on it -
“That's my orrery,” the guy says, odd little smile on his face when he looks at Michael. “A friend got it for me.”
Okay?
“Nice,” Michael says, because really, what do you say to that?
The guy's acting like there aren't people a few rooms away with gunshot wounds and other injuries. Like they clearly aren't criminals- like he didn't kidnap Michael.
Fucking model rockets, what the fuck?
“Michael Jones,” the guy says, and Michael's attention snaps back to him because he hadn't addressed Michael by name before now.
Must have gotten it from Phil, sure, but until now -
“I trust you understand that if you tell anyone about all this, well. It wouldn't be the best idea, you know.”
No fucking shit.
“I figured, yeah,” Michael says.
Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out, and goddamn, he's so fucking tired to be thinking that.
“Can I go?” Michael asks, trying not to think about what happens if the guy says no.
Thinks Michael won't keep his mouth shut about this, might just run to the cops and spill what he knows – which, honestly isn't much, but he knows where this place is, and that -
“Yes,” the guy says, “but we'll be watching you.”
Michael stares at the guy for a long moment, and then snorts, because Jesus fucking Christ.
“You practice that in front of a mirror?” he asks, because what the hell, why not at this point really.
The guy stares at him for a beat, and then looks around as though there's anyone else in the damn office with them and asks, just above a whisper, “How did you know?”
Michael resists the urge to facepalm because no and lets the guy lead him back the way the way they came.
Stops Michael with a hand on his shoulder before he walks out of the building and hands him a fucking business card.
“Thank you,” he says, honest and sincere in a way that hurts to hear.
Michael swallows, eyes sliding away from his and shrugs.
“Yeah, well. Thanks for not killing me. Means a lot.”
The guy laughs and says, “Don't make me regret it!” and shuts the door in Michael's face.
Michael stares at the door, takes a few steps back and looks at the building. Rundown warehouse like all the others out here from the inside, whole lot of trouble on the inside.
========
Michael has no idea if Trevor ever told Ryan about kidnapping him way back when after B Team got a little fucked up dealing with a rival crew.
But the thing is, when they officially meet, Trevor gives no sign of ever having met Michael before, let along shoving a gun in his face, so -
You know, maybe not.
Maybe it's some unspoken rule with these idiots? A social faux pas to bring up the fact that the guy shaking your hand and telling you how nice it is to finally meet you once actually kidnapped you? Who the fuck even knows with them.
Still, Michael thinks about telling Ryan when the idiot's getting so worked up about about a little incident that happened earlier that day that he's pacing. Long strides, breathing a little rough because he's still fucking healing and Michael knows reminding him that oh, hey, Los Santos isn't the safest city around won't help.
Not with Ryan telling Michael to take his safety more seriously. That he can't just open his door to every Tom, Dick, and wanted criminal in the city just because they happen to be shot or stabbed or otherwise fucked up, fuck's sake, Michael -
“Alright, asshole,” Michael says, stepping in front of Ryan who seems hellbent on wearing a groove in the floor of Michael's place, look at how much better he's doing and everything. “First of all, I've never done that, second of all - “
Ryan's looking at him with these eyes, all worried and scared because someone grabbed Michael after work.
Pulled a gun on him, hands shaking and terrified and desperate, made Michael drive to some rundown office building slated for demolition and his buddy who'd gotten into a fight with people he probably shouldn't have.
Pale and bleeding and so, so small despite the fact he probably had a foot Michael.
Couple of no-name criminals in a city that spits on people like them, and what was Michael supposed to do?
“Second of all,” Michael continues, anger bleeding out of him because he gets it, alright? He does. “Second of all, who do we both know who broke into my place to bleed all over my furniture?”
Ryan blinks, like he'd forgotten that bit. Opens his mouth like he's going to defend himself, use some lame excuse because he's an idiot and a dork and just real dumb for someone so smart. Or maybe, and the odds are actually decent on this one, use that as a reason why Michael should take the Fakes' offer of finding him a new place to live.
Somewhere with better security and blahblahblah like Michael hasn't already said yes. Isn't waiting for the paperwork to go through at work for his new promotion and working with Jack and Gavin on finding a place he can afford with the pay raise when it kicks in that they can all agree on. That won't leave Michael feeling indebted to anyone, even if they won't see it that way.
“I don't know!” Ryan says, throwing his hands in the air like he's wracking his brain trying to remember if he's heard anything about some other asshole without a working understanding of personal boundaries and shit. Frowns, eyes narrowing. “Was it Gavin?”
That's actually a good guess. (Accurate as hell, too, but Michael promised Gavin not to rat him out to Ryan on that one, so.)
“I'm talking about you, you dumbass,” Michael says, lips twitching at the look of sudden realization on Ryan's face.
“...Oh.”
“Yeah, 'Oh',” Michael mimics, grinning at the annoyed huff Ryan gives him because Michael's never been kind when he does his impression of Ryan.
Ryan sighs, and something about it tugs at the little black lump that's Michael's heart because this idiot, okay. This idiot.
“He was scared,” Michael says, wanting Ryan to get this, to understand even though some part of him already does. Has to, because he's not that much of an idiot. “He was scared and did the only thing he could think of - “
“Michael - “
“ - and the safety was on the whole fucking time.”
Michael may not be a fan of people waving guns in his face - seriously, who the hell is? - but he's had the basics down for a while now. Knows how to tell when some idiot – or just a scared kid – leaves the safety of their gun on thanks to a couple of friends he grew up with who became cops. (There's a bit of irony in there somewhere, or maybe it's a metaphor. Michael doesn't really give a shit either way.)
Ryan's staring at him.
“What?”
“He wasn't going to shoot me,” Michael says, remembering the poor kid's stuttered apologies after Michael patched his friend up, so stupidly young both of them. “He just needed help.”
Something harder to come by in Los Santos than anywhere else Michael's been. Most people here only out for themselves, stepping on everyone on their way to wherever it is they think they're headed.
“Michael,” Ryan says, looking like he doesn't know what to do with Michael some days. “You - “
“I'll be careful,” Michael says, reaching out to put a hand on Ryan's shoulder, nudging him towards the couch because he's doing better sure, but he's not a hundred percent yet. Keeps pushing himself more than he should, and this isn't really helping.
“More careful,” he amends, when Ryan looks like he thinks Michael's just humoring him right now.
Which, he's not really.
Michael's very much aware things could have gone a different way earlier, that the kid could have been one of the stone-cold killers this city loves so much. Could have seen Michael as a useful enough tool, but something of a loose end, still. Could have put a bullet in his head the moment he was finished helping his friend.
And just because it hadn't, doesn't mean it won't some day.
Still, it's not like Michael can just say no when someone comes to him needing help like that kid. That he could have turned his back on Ryan when the asshole showed up at Michael's place all that time ago. That he's going to stop now just because the Fake AH Crew have put some kind of claim on him and people are bound to notice.
“I promise,” Michael says, because Ryan doesn't look like he believes him, which is bullshit because the fucker's being a major goddamned hypocrite but you don't see Michael calling him on it, now do you? “I'll be more careful if you are too, asshole.”
Oh, wait.
“I - “
“Yeah, yeah,” Michael says, because Ryan sees himself as the last (only) line of defense between his crew and anyone looking to touch one of them. Always throwing himself between them and trouble and ignoring the part where they've never asked that of him. “You're an idiot, I get that. Just. You know, fucking try, okay?”
Best anyone can do in this city really, and that's all either of them want.
========
The thing Gavin and Jeremy do from time to time doesn't really count as being kidnapped in Michael's opinion.
Not when one of them will randomly pop up and poke him in the back like they're holding a gun on him and say things like, “Hands in the air, this is a stick-up!” because it's a Sunday and Michael's at an ATM getting cash.
“Fucking hell, really?”
“That's what they say in the movies, isn't it?” Gavin asks, stepping back to let Michael turn around. “I've always wanted to say that.”
Michael squints at Gavin who is looking far too awake this early in the morning. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and disgusting, really.
Michael's getting to know Gavin and Jeremy a little better since the two of them seem keen on sticking their noses into Ryan's business. Making sure Michael's not the “love 'em and leave 'em sort” according to Jeremy, but really, they're just nosy bastards.
The way Ryan talks about them, fond exasperation and no little bit resignation, they've always been like that. Fearless little bastards with no sense of boundaries and protective as hell of their weird little family.
The thing about it, though, is that he's learning that Ryan's not the only idiot who doesn't look after himself the way he should. That that little trait seems to be a common thread with the Fakes as a whole, and Gavin's one of the worst offenders.
“Have you even been to sleep yet?”
Gavin shrugs, gaze wandering away from Michael's to land on that dumb little Blista he loves so much parked down the street.
“...Yes?” Gavin says, turning it into a question towards the end as though he's genuinely unsure of the answer but knows Michael's feelings on the matter.
“Right,” Michael says, running a hand through his hair as he watches Gavin.
Restless energy running through him that has him fidgeting a little where he stands, eyes flicking from spot to spot as he tries not to let Michael see how wired he is. Coffee and energy drinks that he might as well just inject into his veins when he's working on something, and goddamn this little idiot.
“I was headed to get some kolaches,” he says. “You want to come with me?”
Gavin perks up because he's mooched some off Michael before. Might as well take him to the source so he can pay for his own.
“They only take cash,” Michael warns.
It's a small shop, family-run, and usually Michael makes sure to have cash on him for his Sunday run down there.
Gavin cocks his head, and smirks before brandishing his “gun” at Michael.
“Gavin - “
“Michael, no,” he says, chastising tone to his voice. “You're doing it all wrong.”
Michael sighs as he holds his hands up, and lets Gavin prod him over to the Blista.
“Are you really kidnapping me for fucking kolaches?”
Gavin hums, bright grin on his face when he opens the passenger door for Michael, so polite for a kidnapper.
“They're very good kolaches, Michael,” he says by way of answer, and honestly, he’s not wrong, so.
“Fucking incredible,” Michael mutters, because really.
========
“Ooh, kolaches,” Ryan says, face lighting up as he catches sight of the box Michael's holding.
Gavin laughs around the one he has stuffed in his mouth and wanders off to do Gavin things with a little wave.
Michael rolls his eyes and fends Ryan off with his shoulder until he can set the damn box on the coffee table. He takes a seat on the couch and watches Ryan, something warm and stupidly fond in his chest because Ryan has standards when it comes to kolaches it seems. Muttering to himself as he roots through the box looking for an acceptable choice and honestly, this is the guy the city's so fucking scared of?
Still half sleep, hair this ungodly mess, and wearing some stupid shirt one of the others must have gotten him with a cartoonish version of the Vagabond cackling madly in front of an explosion. (At least Michael hopes that's the case, otherwise he's going to have to talk to Ryan about it.)
Ryan finally finds The One and turns back to Michael, chewing happily.
“I thought you had 'shit to do' today,” he says, words garbled but Michael can hear the air quotes just fine even so.
Michael shrugs, because he did, but getting kidnapped like this kind of makes the errands he was planning on taking care of seem unimportant. Things he can do another day, because this right here isn't so bad.
“Eh,” he says, smile tugging at his mouth. “It can wait.”
========
Jeremy's just a horrible human being all around.
Will do things like break into Michael's place even thought they've talked about that shit, and shakes him awake somewhere around four in the morning.
“The fuck do you want?”
Jeremy's smiling. All pent up energy like that stupid lapdog one of Michael's aunts had when he was a kid. Tiny and loud and annoying.
Watching Jeremy babbling about Geoff and some new cars he got while he all but bounces around Michael's place, Michael can't help but notice the similarities.
“Jeremy.”
“We're going for a ride!” he says, and Michael's brain stumbles.
“...What?”
“Come on, come on, Michael Jones. Get dressed, Gav's got everything set up, we're going to be late!”
Michael stares at Jeremy for a long, long moment, certain he's dreaming this whole thing up because what the fuck?
But no, because Jeremy sighs and starts pushing Michael towards his bedroom, hands warm and real on his shoulders as he shoves Michael along.
“Hurry u,. Who knows what Gavin might do if he gets bored.”
That -
It's a legitimate concern, and dream or not, Michael doesn't want to find out the hard way. He gets dressed and meets Jeremy back in his living room and lets the little bastard guide him downstairs to the horrific thing he calls a car.
Might as well have vandalized that sweet little X80 of his with its new paint job.
“Jesus, put the poor thing out of its misery already, I can't stand to see it suffer like this.”
Jeremy makes an annoyed sound because he thinks orange and purple actually look good together, and hell, why not throw in some yellow while he's at it?
“Shut up, she's beautiful,” Jeremy says, running a hand over the X80's hood before hopping into the drive's seat. “Also get in.”
Michael sighs, looking over his shoulder at his building and the bed he left behind.
Jeremy honks the horn, and Michael sighs, Hating himself just a little as he slides into the passenger seat, because why. Why does he do these things?
Jeremy doesn't seem to notice Michael's train of thought as he turns on the radio and starts singing along to whatever song is playing as they head out of the city.
North-ish from the look of things, sky lightening as the miles go by and the scenery goes from big city to the suburbs to scrub country.
“The hell are we going?”
Jeremy grins as they blow past a group of eighteen-wheelers traveling in a convoy.
“There's an old airfield out here,” he says, and pats the X80's steering wheel fondly. “Plenty of room to open her up, let her run.”
That's nice, but Michael doesn't see what it has to do with him, really.
At least not until they reach the airfield and Jeremy stops beside Gavin who's waiting for them and leaning against an Adder.
Not the fastest car around anymore, maybe, but Michael's always appreciated the way it looks. Muscle to it for something as fast as it is, and supposedly handles like a dream.
“Michael boi!” Gavin calls, a little too smug when he sees the way Michael's looking at the damn Adder. “Care to go for a test drive?”
Michael looks at Gavin, all sunshine and sweetness like he didn't steal one of Geoff's new cars. Looks to Jeremy, who's just annoyingly smug, like he's not Gavin's accomplice and Michael's erstwhile kidnapper.
The X80's far and away the fastest thing out there these days, will absolutely leave the Adder in the dust, but Michael's not interested in winning any races at the moment. Would give a hell of a lot to be behind the wheel of that Adder.
“I mean, sure,” he says, catching the keys Gavin tosses to him. “Might as well, right?”
========
Ryan sidles up to Michael.
Eyes sliding left, sliding right, to make sure they're alone, and leans down to whisper, “I have a Zentorno.”
Michael looks at him, sees the smile on his face. Like some kid with a secret he wants to share, all excited and shit.
“In your pants? And here I thought you were happy to see me.”
“No! Yes?” Ryan frowns, because he's an idiot. “Wait, I mean. I don't have a Zentorno in my pants, but I am happy to see you?”
Goddamn, the man's an idiot.
Loves his bikes from that shiny little nerd bike he has from that shitty sci-fi movie sequel to the stupid thing with the skulls on it “for the aesthetic”, sure. But he's he's got a special spot in his heart for his Zentorno.
Fast little car Michael's seen on the news during a high-speed chase, all sharp and sleek like a shark zipping through the streets of Los Santos or some shit.
“Good for you,” Michael says, because he's not about to make this easy for Ryan.
And Ryan, he sighs. Face in his hands and clearly despairing of his life choices, which you know, only fair really.
“Michael,” he says, voice muffled by his hands and horrible life choices.
“Yes, Ryan?”
Another sigh, familiar blue peeking through Ryan's fingers from where he's sneaking a look at Michael.
“Why are you like this?” he asks, like it's not his own fucking fault.
Michael takes pity on Ryan because the guy's just kind of sad like this. Pathetic, even.
Pats his shoulder and leans in to whisper, “Sure, I'll look at your etchings,” and cackles at the defeated sigh from Ryan.
========
Yeah, no.
The thing Gavin and Jeremy do from time to time have nothing on shit like this, that's for damn sure.
Michael's arms are bound behind his back and his shoulders ache.
“A million dollars, but - “ Gavin's saying, flat on his back and staring up at the ceiling above them like this is just another one of his little games.
Like he didn't get shot earlier, the makeshift bandage Michael had slapped on him before the goons grabbed both of them stained red.
Michael regrets, a little, letting Gavin snatch him up off the street to play with another one of Geoff's cars at the airfield. Jeremy already waiting when they pulled up, something about coming off a job for the Fakes and needing time to wind down, so why not race unbelievably expensive cars around an old airfield?
Michael clenches his hands, focusing on the way his wrists sting – torn skin from the rough handling these guys seem to specialize in.
Tries real hard not to think about Jeremy taking a bullet to the chest before Gavin pulled Michael to cover. Gavin's frantically hissed, “Vest, Michael, he's still wearing his vest!” keeping Michael from doing something stupid when these fuckers showed up out of nowhere, guns blazing.
The door to the room they were thrown in opens and a pair of the goons from earlier walk in.
Idiots, really.
Walking around like they own the damn city. Shiny little guns and mean eyes and so fucking small in the grand scheme of things.
The goon in front walks over to Gavin, looming over him because that's what guys like him do. Play-act at being big and tough when hey have the upper hand, let whoever they think they have under their heel squirm.
“Free,” he says, something satisfied to his voice that Michael's not a fan of, honestly. “Boss wants to talk to you.”
Gavin looks at the guy, gives him a lazy once-over, and smirks.
“So you're the errand boy today then, Ricky?” he asks, and of course the little shit knows these guys, of course he does.
The guy scowls, hand going to the gun at his waist like he's going to finish the job, just fucking kill Gavin right then and there, but doesn't.
Breathes hard through his nose, eyes moving to Michael, this look in them Michael doesn't like.
“Keep talking like that, your friend pays for it,” he says, a bully through and through. “You want that, Free?”
Gavin raises an eyebrow.
“Who, him?” he asks, like he has no damn idea who good old Ricky's talking about. “We're not friends, Ricky. Barely know the bastard.”
Oh, well okay then.
Michael raises his eyebrows when Ricky looks at him, this little scowl on his face like he thinks Gavin's lying to him.
“What? I can't fuckin' stand the asshole.”
Ricky gets this suspicious look to him, head cocked to the side. Michael stares back because he's not lying just as much as Gavin is.
They're not friends, exactly, and God knows Michael hasn't gone and shared his life story with the little shit. There are definitely times Michael cannot fucking stand Gavin and the shit he pulls, all wide smiles and cocky grin and no goddamned common sense.
“Then why - “
“I patch those fuckers up,” Michael says, tossing in a sneer just for the hell of it. “You think they keep me around for my sparkling personality?”
...And now Ricky's looking at Michael thoughtfully, gaze flicking towards Gavin for a moment. Maybe thinking he can get the poor idiot civilian in over his head here to flip on Gavin and the Fakes if he plays his cards right. (Or, you know, forces the issue.)
“Oi!”
Ricky snorts, looking over his shoulder where a pair of goons are lurking and waiting for orders.
“Get him up,” he snaps. Glances at Michael as the goons pass by like he doesn't quite buy what he and Gavin are selling him, but hey, he has all the time in the world to figure it out since no one knows where they are and all.
Michael waits for a bit until he's sure he doesn't hear anything outside, and then a bit long just in case these guys are even a little bit smart.
There's no actual moment when he goes A-ha, now is the perfect time for this bullshit! when he sets to getting out of the zip ties because of course they sprang for the heavy-duty ones. He's not as flexible as he was when he was a kid, hell even a few years ago, but he's not such a piece of shit he can't get out of this mess.
Just, you know. It might take a few minutes.
========
Tweedledee and Tweedledum bring Gavin back a few hours later. Toss him in and loom when Gavin pushes himself into a sitting position, wall at his back.
There's more blood on him – from exacerbating his injury or something new, Michael can't tell just yet.
“Boss wants answers, Free,” Tweedledee says, derisive little sneer on his face. “Give 'em to him, or your buddy here goes next.”
The smart thing to do here would probably be to keep his mouth shut. Just sit there and look like the helpless civilian he's supposed to be. All meek and and shit.
But then Tweedledum smirks when he looks over at Michael. Trying to act big, tough, when all it does is show how much of an asshole he is.
“I'm from Jersey, you fucks. You think two-bit shitbags like you compare to what we have there?”
Michael isn't even talking about the criminals, is the thing.
Tweedledum scowls, makes like he's going remind Michael who's in charge here, but Tweedledee barks out his name, calls him to heel.
“We'll be back,” Tweedledee says, mouth twisting a little when he looks at Michael. “Hope your memory improves before then, Free.”
The idiots slam the door behind them, like everything they know about being a big-shot comes from the movies. All dramatic posing and cliché threats and fucking toddlers throwing tantrums shit.
“Christ,” Michael mutters, shifting around to look at Gavin, who's looking back at him with this little grin on his face.
“That wasn't very smart, Michael,” he chides, like he has any room to talk.
Michael rolls his eyes and makes his way over to Gavin. “Shut the fuck up.”
Gavin looks like shit, which.
You know.
Not too far from the way he normally does because he's an idiot who acts like he's invincible half the time. Doesn't need to bother with things mere mortals do like sleep and food.
Gavin's eyes light up when he realizes Michael's hands are free, zip ties little more than shitty bracelets at the moment.
“Michael.”
“You owe me new shoelaces, asshole,” Michael says, checking Gavin over, angry at the bruises he finds, but grateful there's nothing worse.
Gavin hums, leaning on him a bit as he plots.
“They're not very smart,” Gavin says, looking at Michael. “And I am injured.”
Michael frowns, confused by the upwards lilt to Gavin's voice – the little eyebrow waggle he throws in when he sees Michael's frown.
“There's no way that's going to work,” he says when realization hits because no one's that dumb outside of movies.
“Oh, I wouldn't say that,” he says. “They're really not that smart.”
========
Michael is starting to think there's something in the water in Los Santos.
There's really no explanation as to why these idiots fall for Gavin's stupid plan.
Practically come running when Michael kicks up a fuss about Gavin dying, spouting medical bullshit from medical dramas on television he's suffered through in the past.
Look like they're panicking at the thought of having a dead Fake on their hands even though they were so goddamned keen to make that happen themselves not that long ago.
Makes it real easy for Michael and Gavin to get one over on them, little practical application of fists to faces and down they go.
No one else around, and Gavin takes the lead. Little smile on his face as he tells Michael to stay low and follow him and they'll be out of this place in no time.
The worst thing about it all is that he's right.
There aren't a lot of people around to start with, so that helps.
Just Ricky and the Tweedles and a few others, including this Boss Michael never saw.
“Oh, that's just rude of them,” Gavin says, when they come across Geoff's car these guys took as a reward.
Looks like someone took affront to the Fake AH Logo on the hood and went at it with spray paint.
The rest of the car looks to be in one piece, though, which is the important part. Michael leaves Gavin to fuss over the car while Michael takes care of the others parked nearby. Uses a knife he took off one of the Tweedles and slashes tires here and there and everywhere.
Gives Gavin a look when he makes his way back to him and shrugs. “Jersey, remember?”
Gavin snorts because he knows Michael's hardly from one of the more crime-riddled parts of Jersey. That people tend to forget Jersey's a fucking state, but you know. Why remind them when you ca let them think whatever they want? Let them come to their own damn conclusions and play off of that.
“Let's get out of here, yeah?”
========
They run into a goddamn fleet of cars half a mile out. Fake AH Crew logos on half of them, and a sleek black Zentorno at the front of the pack.
“God's sake,” Gavin laughs, because there's another hideous purple and orange car flanking it.
Michael doesn't look over at Gavin, no, because that laugh's a little too loud, wild, and it's been a hell of a day for them.
Michael watches the cars ahead of him. Sees Ryan get out of his Zentorno, Jeremy a beat behind him.
Gavin makes this little noise in his throat, eyes glued to Jeremy keeping pace with Ryan. (Michael doesn't say anything about that either.)
Jeremy might have been wearing body armor when he got hit, but that shit fails sometimes. Defects in the manufacturing process you don't know about until it's too late or maybe something else goes wrong and you don't shrug off that bullet the way you think you can.
And Gavin, okay.
Gavin's been acting this whole time like he knew without a doubt Jeremy was fine. That the fucking vest had done its job, kept him safe and alive, but the fact of the matter is that he didn't.
Neither of them did, and Jeremy hadn't gotten up after he'd been hit. Had just laid there on the ground while Gavin did his best to protect Michael until there was no choice left but to go with Ricky and the Tweedles.
“Hey,” Michael says, because Gavin's just watching Ryan and Jeremy get closer, makes no move of his own to get out and meet them. “You guys ever think about holding an intervention for Jeremy about this whole 'Rimmy Tim' bullshit?”
Gavin snorts, fucking chokes on his laughter. Gives Michael an attempt at a reproving look, but it's Gavin so it's nowhere as effective as he thinks it is.
“Didn't take,” he says, like that's just how it is with Jeremy, and honestly, Michael didn't expect anything else. “He's a stubborn bastard.”
Like that's a bad thing to be in a city like this.
========
“For the record,” Michael says, preemptive on his part even though he knows it won't do any good, “they didn't show up at my place, so you can save the part of the lecture about how shit the security is there, if it's all the same to you.”
Ryan looks a little like he wants to throttle Michael, which you know. Fair, really.
“Also - “
Ryan's hand flashes out, and Michael holds still when he feels fingers wrap around his forearm, careful, gentle.
“Ryan - “
“Your security's still shit,” Ryan says, absently, almost like a reflex as he examines the marks on Michael's wrists, red and raw and stinging like a motherfucker even now. “But I get your point.”
There's no such thing as a safe place in Los Santos – anywhere, really – so you do what you can to minimize potential risks. Play it safe, smart, and hope like hell that's going to be enough.
There's something in the way Ryan looks at him that has Michael's eyes narrowing.
“Whatever you're thinking, knock it off.”
Ryan sighs, and releases his hold on Michael.
“They didn't know who you are this time,” he says, weight to his words like he knows how this goes. “That's going to change.”
The Fakes have made a lot of enemies over the years to get where they are. Michael's heard about a few of them, stories one of them will tell, offhand comments about some incident. Michael not being a complete idiot and doing a little research into them, Los Santos back when all of this started.
It's...sweet that Ryan's trying to warn Michael off like this. Let him know that hey, he's in pretty deep with these idiots and that probably wasn't the smartest move on Michael's part. That maybe he should be thinking of cutting his losses while he can and all that bullshit, you know? Be smart about things.
Problem is, if Michael was smart he never would have stayed in Los Santos. Would have gone back home to Jersey, sucked it up and gotten his old job back. Toed the line and played it safe and been the most miserable piece of shit on the planet.
“No shit,” Michael says, because fucking really.
Ryan looks...confused, as though this little talk he had planned isn't really going the way he expected.
“Look,” Michael says, tries to use small words because Ryan looks like he needs them right now. “You think I don't know that? You think I didn't consider it after that first time you broke into my place?”
Only an idiot wouldn't have, getting some fucker like the Vagabond in their face and this unspoken understanding that if anyone found out it was the last thing they'd do?
Yeah.
Michael knew back then, saw it in the way Ryan watched everything he did like a hawk. This bit of steel in his eyes even when he was being an arrogant prick, expecting his reputation to spook Michael into playing nice for him.
And maybe he should be more concerned about this, all the ties with the Fakes he has now. Not just this thing between him and Ryan but the way Gavin and Jeremy have of butting into his life. Jack and Geoff and even fucking Trevor and Lindsay from time to time. The members of B Team who give him secretive little smiles that drive Ryan nuts because there's no way any of them should have met Michael before. Should be worried about how it's all going to bite him in the ass one day, but he isn't.
Or, okay, that's a fucking lie, because he is, just -
You do what you can to minimize the risk sure, but you don't turn your back on something good because there's a possibility it might go bad on you if you want to live a life worth living. Don't let it become a regret to take with you when all's said and done.
“You're an idiot,” Michael says, because those are small words Ryan's familiar with coming from him. Should be able to get through that thick skull of his, understand on some level. “But I knew that going into this, so I guess that makes me just as bad.”
Ryan's looking at Michael like he still doesn't get why Michael hasn't done the smart thing and left. Fucking cannot comprehend what possible reason Michael has for staying here and making a target of himself the longer he does.
Asshole breaks Michael's heart when he gets like this, because there's a reason for it. Same one that had Gavin and Jeremy goddamned stalking him at the beginning of this. Doing their best to protect Ryan from getting in too deep with Michael - getting hurt – before they realized there was really only one way to do that.
“Yeah, we're real dumb,” Ryan says, like he's still expecting Michael to come to his senses one day and so damn guilty that he hasn't, taking what he thinks he can get and grateful for it and so fucking stupid. “Like. Unbelievably so.”
Michael smiles, crooked little thing, because Ryan's killing him with this bullshit. So clueless and breaking his heart all over again.
“Shut the fuck up,” Michael says, and drags Ryan down for a kiss because maybe one day Ryan will fucking understand why Michael refuses to give this up so easily.
Steady As You Go
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Hey, I got to see Avengers: Infinity War on company time ‘cause my job was nice enough to buy the staff tickets. This movie has given me... feelings. Major spoilers ahead, so hit the jump below to read my thoughts on the matter.
Man, what a boring disappointment of a movie.
I’ve really been digging the last handful of Marvel films for their overall quality, especially where the characterization and banter are concerned. Both Captain America movies? Dug ‘em. All the Thor movies? Man, I could watch Hemsworth doing prat-falls getting hit by cars all day long and never tire of it. First Guardians of the Galaxy was great, though number two had missteps. Ant-Man was a fucking delight from start to finish. Spider-Man: Homecoming was pitch perfect. Black Panther has the best villain of the entire MCU thus far. On the other hand, the Avengers movies were a bit clunky by comparison but were overall enjoyable with some great character moments. They served to temper expectations about what big group-event films in the MCU are like. So my gripes on Infinity War is not out of some kind of beef with Marvel/Disney, nor is it out of overblown hype.
With that in mind, Infinity War was incredibly dull as a film. The bulk of the movie is divided into fight scene after fight scene (to the point that they actually cut away from one massive fight to peek in on another concurrent massive fight), introducing characters to one another (generally via fight scene), or Thanos getting “character building scenes” (immediately before or directly in the middle of a fight scene).
One thing I love most about the Marvel movies is the character interaction. It’s why these cinematic versions are so beloved by the fandom, why there’s so much creativity spawned around them - they have chemistry and interesting relationships with each other. A:IW has precious little of that at all. The lion’s share of character interaction goes to Vision/Wanda and Thanos/The Scenery, and not in a good way. Each of these two relationship elements are only present to build up a false sense of drama that falls flat in the end. Though there is one particular scene between Rocket Racoon and Thor (yeah, who saw that one coming?) where the two have a heartfelt conversation that Hemsworth just knocks out of the park. That moment of Thor recounting just how much he’s lost and it being clear how much agony it’s causing him behind a cocky grin is the kind of characterization I adore in these movies. Vision and Wanda being melodramatic about a plot point that is clearly never going to go anywhere in the film is not appealing at all. Their entire story thread from start to finish across the film is Vision wanting Wanda to destroy the Mind Gem (and thus kill him) to prevent Thanos from getting it, and the emotional roller coaster that entails since the two are now in love. Except that entire concept is a total non-starter, doesn’t go anywhere, and ultimately amounts to nothing at all. It’s just a waste of time that eats up writing and screen time that could have been put to better use elsewhere.
Onto the villain: I could not give two flying flips about Thanos. I will fully admit that a part of this is that I personally loathe the cliche “nature is out of balance, I must purge life to restore it” villain trope. That does play a big part in my dislike here. But setting that aside, he’s just a terribly dull character with feeble motivations and justifications for his actions. There’s a major dissonance between what he does and how it’s presented to the audience. While the movie does give a one-line bit of lip service to him being insane and misguided, it’s never fully addressed as a defining aspect of his character throughout the movie. The comics put a major emphasis on the fact that Thanos, for all his scheming and intelligence, is coo-coo bananas. He’s called the “Mad Titan” for a reason. The movie fails to put a light on that fact and it makes Thanos feel like a flat character since all we really get is him just blankly marching toward his end goal the entire film. He has no arc or development and is wholly unsympathetic no matter how many times the movie takes us aside with him in solitary, artsy moments and yells “LOOK AT ALL THIS PATHOS” in our faces.
Thanos’ entire villain scheme is that he wants to destroy 50% of all intelligent life forms in existence in order to bring a balance to the universe. He directly states that the universe’ resources are finite and that life allowed to grow unchecked will snuff itself out by over-consuming these precious few resources. So his solution - which he has been practicing on a planet-to-planet basis for decades by the point the movie takes place - is to divide a world’s population in half. 50% is murdered on the spot while the other 50% lives, purely based on whoever happens to be standing on the left or right. It is explicitly described by Thanos as being totally random who lives and who dies so as to be “fair”. His win-scenario is that the species of whatever world he 50% Genocides thrives in the wake of the purge because they now have a more controllable population size - nothing else beyond that.
So... I mean, right out the gate, that’s the stupidest damn thing possible. It’s not like he’s going to each of these worlds and carefully examining the state of conditions, then deciding they need to be culled because of their abuse of their resources. He’s just doing it willy nilly without any justification as to whether such a culling is actually necessary or whether it would even be beneficial to the world in question. I mean, hey, how can openly slaughtering 50% of a world’s population at random possibly be a bad thing? Surely that won’t throw their entire society and culture into a death spiral, right? It’s how he picked up his adopted children - Gamora in particular. While he was busy murdering 50% of her world, he just sort of kidnaps her because... uh... because he wants to, I guess. He literally just walks up to her in the middle of wrecking her world and decides he arbitrarily wants to take this one tiny green girl with him for no apparent reason whatsoever. So, hey, way to undercut your own practice there, Thanos. 50% of the population dies with it being completely random and fair... unless I happen to fancy taking a souvenir, apparently.
The movie beats us over the head with the idea that Thanos is in turmoil because of his mission to balance the universe. That it is a massive strain on his soul, that only he has the willpower to endure what he sees as a necessary culling. Not a “necessary evil”, mind you - he never views his actions as being morally wrong. Just difficult. But, y’know... it’s kind of hard for me to sympathize with a character introduced to us as being an omnicidal maniac who has built a fanatical cult of personality around himself and callously murders literally trillions of people. Especially so since, as cannot be overlooked: HE’S DOING IT ALL BY HIS OWN CHOICE. The whole universal culling this is entirely his idea and pet project, so he is completely responsible for whatever so-called internal suffering the movie is trying to make us feel for him.
This whole affair becomes especially annoying when Thanos acquires the Soul Gem. There’s a little test he has to perform to get it - he must sacrifice the one thing he loves most. It turns out this is Gamora, aforementioned adopted/kidnapped daughter. He has a moment of realization, cries stoic tears, and murders her by throwing her off a several-hundred foot tall cliff to that he can get the gem. He then spends the rest of the film with the fact that his choice is emotionally wrecking him inside, that he’s grieving and saddened, that his quest has taken everything from him and--
Y’KNOW, YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO THROW HER OFF THE DAMN CLIFF, RIGHT? NOBODY WAS FORCING YOU TO DO THAT.
Gah, this entire character angle just pisses me off because of how inane it is. “You must give up the thing you love”. Thanos, you smug bitch, you kidnapped a girl at random while in the process of murdering everyone she knows and loves, then spent the next 20 years putting her through an endless array of physical, mental, and emotional abuse to try and shape her into one of your fanatical Thanos-worshipping minions. IN THIS VERY SAME MOVIE you tricked Gamora into thinking she brutally killed you just to see if she’d feel bad about it afterward, then literally dismembered her sister before her eyes to force information out of her. Then, y’know, you murdered Gamora herself.
YOU DON’T FUCKIN’ LOVE HER. THAT IS NOT LOVE. I don’t care how many melodramatic “single tear down the cheek” moments you have - there is absolutely nothing about this character or his established, presented backstory that gives even the slightest hint he cared about Gamora beyond her ability to serve him as a tool. If the Soul Gem was really supposed to be using this “sacrifice your love” test as a measure of who gets to take it, then Thanos should have just failed flat-out. Even if one tries to argue something like “Oh, well, it was genuine love in Thanos’ twisted perspective”, that doesn’t matter. The Infinity Gems - especially the Soul Gem - are presented as being semi-aware and capable of making decisions as to who they want to serve. So it’s not Thanos’ call as to whether or not Gamora is the thing he loves, but the Soul Gem’s. But it works because we need to get to the next fight scene but quick, so off we go!
The final climax point of the movie is right after Thanos finally gets all the gems and snaps his fingers. He wins. In that instant, 50% of all intelligent beings in the universe just sort of go away. They don’t really die, per say, but rather just poof out existence. Effectively dead but maybe not specifically so? It isn’t explained. So we get this lengthy montage of main characters going poof into particle-effect clouds one by one, with how abrupt or extended the disintegration is depending on whether or not the writers wanted to give them a dramatic final speech. Oh, how sad. How very sad. Boo hoo. My eye-rolling on this point isn’t because of the meta-awareness of me knowing Marvel isn’t going to purge its main character roster because money. Rather, it’s because the movie itself takes a moment to pull us aside and assure us that literally NONE OF THIS MATTERS AT ALL.
During an earlier point in the film. Dr. Strange takes a moment of meditation and uses the Time Gem to peer into the future. He looks at millions of potential futures and says that they only beat Thanos and win the day in one of those probabilities. It’s done in a way that seems to impress upon the audience just how hopeless this whole effort seems, but it’s a blatant Chekhov’s Gun moment since Dr. Strange acts extremely out of character with his decisions from that point on. He surrenders to Thanos and, right before dying himself, looks at Tony (and almost directly into the camera) to assure everyone that “this is the only way”. Whiiiiiiich very blatantly means that his out of character decisions were actually intentionally made to set up the one lone “we somehow manage to win” future he saw. Because HE SAW HOW TO DO IT BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE TIME GEM DOES so literally NOTHING that happens beyond that midway point in the film matters because it’s all predetermined to end up well for the heroes. Which, right along with the “kill everyone to restore balance” trope, is another of my hated cliches because IT’S SO DAMN LAZY.
That’s really what this boils down to for me. A:IW is lazy. It’s all flash and fluff without anything really satisfying under all the sparkly varnish. There’s no genuine substance to it. Just a few faux plot concepts that are dressed up to look like they’ve got weight, but just end up being hollow.
Also... Thanos? Buddy? If your whole bit is that the universe has finite resources and there’s too many mouths to feed, why not just use your newly-acquired phenomenal cosmic powers to make more resources? I mean, if you can literally snap your fingers and cause an unimaginable volume of matter (ie, people across the universe) to just spontaneously stop existing, why not just make the universe bigger and fuller for everyone’s benefit? That maybe might go over better with the crowds, y’know?
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A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article (update: you can find it here), we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
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A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article (update: you can find it here), we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
The post A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series appeared first on ProBlogger.
A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
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A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article (update: you can find it here), we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
The post A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series appeared first on ProBlogger.
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A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article (update: you can find it here), we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
The post A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series appeared first on ProBlogger.
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Text
A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article (update: you can find it here), we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
The post A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series appeared first on ProBlogger.
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A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article, we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
The post A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series appeared first on ProBlogger.
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A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article, we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
The post A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series appeared first on ProBlogger.
A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
#Richard Roberts IM Success Mix#A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela
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A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article, we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
The post A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series appeared first on ProBlogger.
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A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series
This five-part series is a guest contribution from Pamela Wilson of Big Brand System.
Content marketing works — you know that. It’s one big reason you read ProBlogger! You like the content here and you want to learn more about how to create it yourself.
It’s all well and good to talk about how to write content effectively, of course.
But at some point, you’ve got to actually do it. Regularly.
Content marketing works best when it’s done consistently over time.
One single piece of well-written content won’t turn your business around. It’s the act of creating and publishing useful content over time that creates business results. Prospects and customers begin to trust you when you show up and are helpful week after week. You become like a wise friend who’s always there to lend a hand.
Which, of course, can seem like an incredibly daunting task and an overwhelming commitment. But it doesn’t have to be.
In this post, I’m going to make the case for creating less content, but better content. And I’ll begin to share my system for publishing high-quality content consistently. It’s a system I’ve used for years, and it made content creation faster, easier, and more fun.
This is the first of a five post series! It’s has been customized for ProBlogger readers and is an excerpt from my new book, Master Content Marketing: A Simple Way to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience.
Why Creating Your Content Over Several Days is a Genius Move
Some people reading this post will be part of a team that creates content, and that team may include an editor. Lucky you.
Most of us, though, create our content without the benefit of input from an editor or other team members. For most of us, content creation is a solo act.
That’s how it is for me with my content on Big Brand System. I write it myself without any feedback from an editor. And early on, I discovered a way to create that content that allowed my “inner editor” to come to the forefront and improve the articles I was writing.
It all starts by spreading the content creation process out over several days. Doing this gives you a chance to:
Think about your content even when you’re not actively writing it. You’ll find yourself coming up with a new idea or a different angle when you’re working on something unrelated, or even when you’re doing something during your off time: watching a television show; washing dishes; taking a walk.
See your content with fresh eyes. Creative “blindness” happens when you’ve been staring at the same project for too long. It doesn’t allow you to see what a piece needs, or notice the errors you’ve made. Spreading out your content creation process allows you to develop “fresh eyes” again — eyes that can see mistakes. After you’ve stepped away and done something else, you’ll return to your article and notice what’s missing or what needs to be changed.
Create content in a stress-free manner. Looming deadlines can be incredibly stressful, and that stress doesn’t allow us to do our best work. By starting on the content creation process well in advance and doing it one small step at a time, you give yourself a stress-free environment in which to create. This will support your work and help your ideas to flourish.
The process I’ll outline here can be adapted to whatever publishing schedule you use. You may find it interesting to know that even though on Copyblogger we publish a new piece of content four to five days a week, no single author writes more than once a week.
So when I recommend one strong piece of content per week (as I will below), this advice can apply even to sites that publish more frequently than that.
Why You Should Focus on Creating Less Content — But Better Content
It’s true — there’s a lot of content on the web already. More is added each day. You may wonder how yours will ever get found and consumed.
How can you make your content stand out from the rest?
The answer is to focus on creating content that gets noticed because it’s written with the highest standards of quality.
There’s already plenty of badly-written, clumsy content out there.
But high-quality content that’s written thoughtfully and presented in a way that makes it easy to read and consume? It’s rare. Quality content stands out.
Great content — well-planned, masterfully written, easy-to-read content — always rises to the top.
High-quality content works, too. It gets read and acted on. It gets passed around and bookmarked. It gets reader comments and people actually remember it — sometimes for years to come.
If you are working alone and you’re creating several pieces of content each week, consider putting all that effort into creating one ultra-high-quality piece of content that’s published on the same day each week. The rest of the week can be spent promoting that piece of content and driving people to read it. And once your content is published, you can re-start the system and begin creating the high-quality content you’ll publish the next week.
Introducing the 4-Day Content Creation System
When I first started my Big Brand System website, I was running my marketing and design business full time, plus I had two children in high school who were still living at home, and I was keeping a household running. I didn’t have a lot of time to spare for content creation, and I certainly didn’t have a five-hour (or more) block free to use to create content every week.
At the same time, I knew that publishing content on a consistent basis was the most effective way to get both people and search engines to notice my site. It was how I’d build the audience I wanted to develop for my business.
So I made a commitment to publish one new piece of content once a week. I knew this was a sustainable schedule that I could stick to consistently. And I suspected that fresh content once a week would be enough.
It was. Over the years, my audience grew, slowly but surely. When I first drew back the curtains on my website, there weren’t many people out there watching. But that changed quickly as I began consistently publishing helpful, useful, easy-to-read content.
Because I didn’t have big chunks of time available to write content, I developed a system that entailed spreading the content creation process over a period of days rather than creating content from start to finish in one sitting.
It turns out, this adaptive behavior was a highly efficient way to create quality content week after week.
In this series, I’m going to present my system for creating content over a period of four days:
Day 1: Build Your Article Backbone.
Day 2: Fill in the Details.
Day 3: Polish and Prepare to Publish.
Day 4: Publish, Promote, and Propagate.
Out of sheer necessity, I developed my strange system for getting content created.
And, as often happens when inventions are born from necessity, I hit on something that worked even better than sitting down and trying to write an epic piece of content in one single session.
In May 2012, a little over two years after I started my online business, I wrote about my weird little content creation system in what has turned into one of the more popular posts on Copyblogger: A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.
The positive response that post received is one of the reasons I wrote my book, Master Content Marketing. It gave me the confidence to think that maybe I could actually teach people how to write content — even though I had just learned myself.
I’m going to share it with you here with some additional details that will help you put it into practice. It all starts with deciding which day you want to publish, and working backward from there.
What Day Should You Publish Your Weekly Post?
This system starts with finding a consistent day every week when you’ll publish your content. A few considerations for choosing your publishing day:
Think about a convenient day for your reader, not for you. It’s tempting to say, “I want to publish on ___day, because that day works best with my schedule. But it’s not about you, is it? You’re publishing content because you want to reach an audience. Think about what will work best for them, and work your schedule around that. Read on for more about this.
If your content is time-sensitive, publish it on the day it will be most useful. Let’s say your website features information about the latest happenings for antiques lovers in your region. You talk about sales, events, workshops, and new stores that have opened up in your area. You know that your readers do most of their antiquing on the weekend. When are they making their weekend plans? Probably on Thursday — or Friday morning at the latest.
Publish your content on the day it’s most likely to be useful to your readers. Think about how they’ll apply the information you’re sharing and when during the week they most need it.
Look for a traffic pattern in your site analytics. If your publishing schedule has been willy-nilly or non-existent, take a look at your site analytics. Is there a consistent spike in visits to your site on a specific day of the week? If so, make the most of existing traffic patterns by publishing a new piece of content that day.
In the end, you may find that none of the guidance above helps you choose a publishing day. In that case, it’s time to make an educated guess. Think about your audience first, and choose a day you expect will work for them. Plan to review your traffic after a few months to see if it spikes on the day you publish (that’s a good sign). You can even do a short audience survey to ask your readers what day they prefer to see new content from you and then look for a pattern in their answers.
With your publishing day chosen, work backward three business days. If you’re publishing on Friday, you’ll start your four-day process on Tuesday. If you’re publishing on Tuesday, you’ll start your four-day process on Thursday of the week before (take the weekend off!).
In the rest of this series, we’ll talk about what to do on each of your three publishing days. For now, choose the day you want to publish. In the next article, we’ll talk about what to do on Day 1.
Pamela Wilson is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the author of Master Content Marketing: A Simple Strategy to Cure the Blank Page Blues and Attract a Profitable Audience. Find more from Pamela at Big Brand System.
*Dislosure: This post contains affiliate links.
The post A System for Easily Publishing Consistently Great Content – A Pamela Wilson Series appeared first on ProBlogger.
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