When you're trying to get your idea out there and part of your work is to craft new articles -- you're suddenly faced with a big task. Write, and write, and write until you get it all done.
What if I told you there was a way you could create your blog posts, landing pages, and any text content exceptionally fast so you can create more, and therefore be on your way to earning more, in a shorter amount of time.
While this particular strategy isn’t AI-based, the trick is using dictation -- something common on pretty much every mobile device now. Nothing fancy — Siri for Apple and Google Assistant for Android.
The speech recognition quality of these devices will help you become super efficient in creating blog content for your site. And that's what every blogger wants, right?
Well, that and a great user experience for your readers. And this helps with that since the body text of your articles will "sound" like you.
Nothing quite as satisfying as doing some keyword research, planning your search engine optimization (maybe even looking ahead for link building opportunities), and belting out the words to quickly bring your content strategy to life.
But more on that later, let's get into this.
Dictation will help create articles fast
When I say super efficient I mean being able to crank out 1,000 words in just 15 minutes or so — when you become accustomed to it (and the AI has learned to understand you better).
Using this technique, I can crank out a 1,500-word article, including edits, in roughly 30 minutes (not that page length matters that much).
But there is a gotcha that you need to be careful of. You can’t just speak all your words into a blog post and publish it. There’s more editing that you will need to do than if you typed it by hand.
Not only the small mistakes the tool makes when listening to your words, but also the grammar and capitalization mistakes it makes.
Heads up, if you combine dictation with this technique I discuss here it will be like you've been given content creation superpowers.
How to dictate an article
For me, it involves using my iPad, but you could do it with any system that has speech-to-text and a microphone.
In fact, one of the best ways to follow this technique is to use the Google Voice Assist in Google Docs (and Grammarly works pretty well in Google Docs compared to Gutenberg blocks).
Quick overview of the technique
- Start a new post ( or Google Doc)
- Then on my iPad, I tap the microphone icon
- you would start your microphone/software if different
- Start talking (aka teaching your content) and dictate until there's nothing left to say
- Edit later
"Write" it with your voice
Just lay it all out there, say it all – get it out into the document as fast as you can. Don’t stop to edit, just get it all out of your brain first.
It's going to be horrific and contain a lot of mistakes, but that's OK let them happen. You haven't published the article yet, and that's precisely why editing was invented.
Edit after you get it all out there
Once everything has been "written," it's time to go back through and make the simple edits. That means fixing capitalization and places where the speech to text tool got words wrong.
Make sure you go through every paragraph and ensure they make sense. You might be surprised by how badly the words get dictated sometimes — even simple terms that shouldn’t have been botched.
Don't just look for works misspelled or incomplete. Look at each word because sometimes it is a very similar sounding word when pronounced, but has a totally different meaning.
For example, Siri will sometimes write "a custom ..." instead of "accustomed." Each looks fine, each is grammatically correct, but totally different meanings.
Bonus, use Google Docs
This is also where it would be very helpful to do this into a Google document — as you get some added tools to help you edit.
Even collaboration tools where you could have an editor live edit as you’re dictating everything out with your voice.
Could you imagine how productive you would be as a team? You, the expert, laying down a content stream. The editor is right there in the Google Doc at the same time cleaning up.
Final pass and supporting content
Once everything is edited, make a quick pass again to make sure that everything looks right, is formatted well, and is ready for your reader.
Don’t forget to add things like images, tables, statistics, citations, and other things that support your content.
You'll create content very quickly.
It’s easy to see that you’ll get a lot of content out quickly — that’s the apparent win. But there is another beautiful thing about this technique.
By using your voice to write the content, you are writing in your voice. It will be less robotic, less refined, maybe, but it will be more “human.” Your readers will probably appreciate it more.
The extra efficiency you gain might also motivate you to blog more consistently too. And that's almost as important as getting started.
According to HubSpot, marketers who are consistent with blogging are 13 times more likely to get a positive ROI. (neilpatel.com)
But there is a catch
Of course, nothing like this is without its downsides. If you’re in a niche that uses a lot of strange words, or foreign words, you may run into problems where the speech to text tool doesn’t get enough right, and it’s not worth it because you’re editing too much.
But it gets better
Don’t give up because even though it could make mistakes now, over time, dictation like Siri or Google assistant learn from you and will get better, making fewer mistakes.
And that is when things start to get really fast for you.
Imagine being able to belt out a few lines to create paragraph after paragraph of content with very few mistakes because the dictation tool has learned your inflection and nuance.
Side benefit: automatic backups
Another reason I think it would be a great idea to use this technique into a Google document is for the back up aspect of it. Meaning, you will copy and paste the content from the Google document into WordPress, but the document is still there in the Google Docs in case something happens to your article later in the future.
You’ll be able to come back to Google documents and grab the article and restore it if you need to.
So I guess if you look at it like that, it’s kind of a win-win-win-win situation. You create new content very quickly, the reader can learn something new from you, collaborative editing is much easier, and you’re better prepared for problems in the future.
Summary
In summary, I went over a simple technique to use dictation to create content quickly for your blog. While there are some downsides to it, I think the winds are so big that you owe it to yourself to give this a try.
Especially if you’re using something like an Apple device or a Google device with built-in AI assistants.
These tools can really help you crank out content efficiently.