It's hard to fit time in your day to sit down at the computer and write a blog post. Not only do you have a dozen other things that seem just as important, but you don't have a content plan, or at least one that gets you excited.

Thinking about sitting at a blank page and trying to develop a 1,200-word post about a vague topic like "write about the progress you made in your SaaS company" produces an ugh field, so your mind searches for an urgent task that you know will feel good when you've taken it off your to-do list.

Enter freetalking.

With freetalking, you just express your ideas without pausing to edit or structure them. Let the words flow. Use it to explore new concepts, untangle a hairy problem, or respond to a burning question your audience has been asking.

You can sit in silence and keep your thoughts to yourself, allowing your customer to see only the polished outcome of your effort. Or you can open a window to your business and give prospects a view of your craft.

Just like restaurants can let curious passersby watch as the chef expertly prepares a mouth-watering pizza, you can entice your readers with a glimpse into your process and product as it takes form.

How to Freetalk to Attract Your Customer Avatar

• Block out a time when you won't be interrupted. While doing this, you can perform a boring chore or take a walk along a wooded path, but keep social interaction minimal.
• Start your transcription app or voice recorder, then talk about what's on your mind. You can start out with a preselected topic or just wing it (my favorite approach).
• Don't worry about completing sentences, grammar, or even coherence. Keep talking.
• Occasionally ask "How might this interest my potential customer?"
• Can't think of an answer to that? Talk about why you can't think of an answer to that.
• If a topic you’re freetalking about relates to a problem your avatar has, riff on a potential solution. Keep alert for opportunities to mention your SaaS product as a solution to their problem.
• At the end of the session, transcribe your recording into text and extract parts that might be useful in a blog post.
• Organize the snippets into sequences of arguments and inferential chains supporting a thesis, then develop them. One session can produce 3 or more blog posts, each on a unique topic.

After a few months of doing this, you'll have a solid army of blog posts advancing your brand. Once they're getting some traffic, review your analytics to see which topics resonate with your target audience. Which ones lead to the most email list signups or SaaS subscriptions? Then write more posts about those topics.

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Further Reading

Burns, Rebecca West, Freewrite on Freetalking and Dialoguing as Research Methods, https://www.rebeccawestburns.com/my-blog-3/reflection/freewrite-on-freetalking-and-dialoguing-as-research-methods.

Goldberg, Natalie, The True Secret of Writing, Atria Books, 2013.

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