Every online business provides content to the audience and most times, this content comes as written content. So most online entrepreneurs are writing content and develop methods for more effective writing. Written content (as you read in this post) is one of the most efficient ways for an internet entrepreneur to connect to his audience. But is it necessary, that writing consumes a lot of time? Definitive NOT! Now I’m going to show you three methods, that I use for more effective writing.

1. Cut off distractions

This is a classic methods. A lot people struggle with their writing because of distractions.

Distractions can be TV, browsing the web, cleaning up and of course social platform like Facebook, Twitter and so on. GET RID OF THOSE! Every distraction is a kind of procrastination, it’s an excuse for not being as productive as you could be and so not having to write. I’m sorry, but you’re just lying to yourself and shooting yourself in the foot. It’s ok to procrastinate sometimes but it must not turn into a habit of yours. Don’t use distractions as excuse for not doing what you’re supposed to do.

If you procrastinate because of TV, just turn it off. You’ll feel a lot more relaxed, when you’re watching TV after you’ve finished your task. Of you can’t stop yourself from surfing through social media, use software to restrict yourself for a limit time. For Mac users there is Concentrate. This tool let’s you define rules and enables you do lock yourself out of distracting websites for a limited time. Just start writing and you’ll see, that it flows just from the keyboard to your screen.

2. Don’t edit or research while writing

When I’m writing, I just focus on writing. I don’t correct spelling or grammar mistakes nor do I research. Of course I recognize, when I made a mistake (at least I hope so). But I don’t come back to the point to correct. And when I have do look something up, I set a mark. These actions would stop the flow of writing, so just do them, when your finished. You are a lot more productive, when you just write and don’t think too much about this simple tasks. Instead of on-the-fly editing, just do it at the end. Then you’ll switch from „writing mode“ in „editing and research mode“ and focus on this tasks.

A great way to save yourself from researching and editing is to use minimal editors for writing. This post is written in iA Writer, which shows just a white screen and dark text. On Windows you could use FocusWriter, which is an alternative to iA Writer. But if you are on Mac, I definitely recommend iA Writer! This great interface (which is responsive, just resize it) helps me to focus on the text and not on the editing text. Switching to bold headlines, choosing a font, fontsize or font color is limiting your productivity! These are actions to be done after your writing has finished. And it’s fairly simple. When you edit the appearence of your text, when you’re still writing, you can’t edit the full text. So your appearence won’t be complete and you still need to make changes when the text is finished. So just do the work once, do it at the end!

3. Plan your writing and organize

Plan before you write. Which topic do you focus on? Which keyword will your new blogpost target? Who’s your audience and what expactations do they have? Organize your content upfront and you’ll be able to focus on the writing. You won’t think too much about your content, because you did the thinking upfront. You can just go from step to step and become more efficient in writing. Effective writing is not distracted from anything, regardless what it is. I use mindmaps on iPad and Mac. For the Mac I’m using Xmind, which is a great free tool. On the iPad I’m using iThoughts HD. These tools sync together via Google Docs and work perfectly together. Mostly I’m organizing my content in mindmaps, which are structured specific for each topic or keyword I want to write about. I really love about mindmapping, that you are flexible in structuring the content. While creating the first version of a mindmap it’s important not to edit the content while writing it down. This is similar to my second method mentioned above. You want to come in a flow of thinking and writing, so you don’t want to interrupt yourself with simple tasks.