The User

Nicole, a freelancecontent writer working with multiple clients, needs to write various blogs aweek on tight deadlines. Since Nicole works with numerous firms, her challenge is catering to different types of style and tone while being flexible enough to adjust to each client's expectations. While some clients provide detailed,standardized briefs, others give more vague topic ideas and expect the writer to create an outline, do the research, and deliver the content, often with quick turnarounds.

The Problem

A medium-sized organization wanted to prioritize its content generation, meaning that it needed more blogs more often. While the firm had topics in mind, they weren't specific about what keywords to prioritize and left the keyword research to the writers. They also wanted blogs to contain relevant statistics and timely data.

Both tracking down relevant statistics and conducting keyword research takes time - sometimes almost as many hours as writing the first draft of the blog itself. Nicole was seeking a way to get better and faster at research so she could deliver drafts faster.

Also, with a rather vague brief, she had to spend some time organizing the blog itself - plotting out headings and sub-headings, and organizing the content in a way that made sense. This, too, slowed down the pace of getting to a workable first draft.

The Solution

Nicole implemented Conextminds as a way to speed up research, create outlines, and build out a rough first draft that was high quality, contained keywords and key findings, and could be edited and adjusted quickly.

‍Faster Research

Contextminds extensively cut down the time spent on research (keywords, facts, and statistics).

"When it comes to blogging, generally research can take two to four hours, depending on thet opic," said Nicole. "With Contextminds, I was able to source articles and reports that helped me expand on my topic and support the company's point of view. Even better: once I click on an article that interests me, Contextminds immediately populates other related articles to help me zero in on the most applicable research to my blog's topics and sub-headings."

With Contextminds,Nicole cut research time by almost a third, spending less than one hour on work that might take three to four hours without the help of AI. Research stayed within the Contextminds map, so there wasn't a need to open multiple tabs. The likelihood of losing track of valuable research materials dissipated with everything easily centralized.

Also available within Contextminds was the ability to search keywords and add the most relevant options to the blog. "Contextminds allowed me to see a variety of keyword options, as well as general ranking information. This helped me easily add keywords right into the map. I didn't have to go and use outside tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest - the information was already there, and I could pull in what I needed."

Once the research was complete, Nicole could link her researched articles to the matching sub-headings on her map so that, when a draft was generated, the research details would show up in the blog section that made the most sense.

‍More Focused Outlines

With headings, research links, and keywords all in one map, it's easy to bring everything together and use the power of AI to create an in-depth outline that becomes the first step in building an SEO-optimized blog.

"With Contextminds, I can visualize all of my information, then simply ask the AI to organize it into a blog outline. In seconds, I can have a pretty in-depth outline that highlights headings, subheadings, keywords, research, and main points. I can simply send this to my editor for advice and approval, and use this brief to begin to craft the blog itself." 

First Drafts in Minutes, Not Hours

"Once I have my approved outline, I can go into Context Minds and refine it further - or I can begin to generate a draft. I found Contextminds and its ChatGPT-powered AI to be able to pull together a pretty great first draft. In seconds, it writes a draft. If I'm unhappy, need edits, or have questions, I can go back and forth with the AI to refine my draft further. Once I'm happy with the results, I can copy my draft with the click of a button and paste it into Grammarly or Hemingway. From there, I can do my edits and rewrites, adjust the sentence structure and language to better match my client's voice and tone, and get the copy to a workable first draft that's ready to submit for any additional notes and/or approvals."

Using Contextminds, and having a place that centralizes a lot of the early research (plus AI-backed draft generation) meant Nicole was able to cut down the time it took to generate a 1500-word blog by 35% to 40%.

"For me, the magic was in the amount of time it cut down on research and organization. I simply pulled in what I needed, organized everything visually, and asked the AI to make me a draft outline and draft copy. What took hours typically, I was able to do in much less time. Contextminds speeds up my turnover rate while allowing me to spend more time on refining copy and adding unique client insights that made the drafts much more original and informative."

Key Takeaways:

• Reduced research from 3-4 hours down to less than1 hour
• Cut time spent creating in-depth outline (with links and keywords) from 30 minutes to less than 2 minutes
• From rough brief to first draft, time spent on a single blog reduced by 40%

Contextminds: Key Features to Help Writers Write Faster

• All research (web, articles, keywords, brief, notes), all in one place
• Visualize your outline and layout before writing a sentence
• Reduces reliance on third-party apps and tools
• Leverage your map and AI to get to a first draft 4X faster