Content Writing Do you use any outlines or templates for your articles?

When I write articles for blogs, I must confess that I use templates on a regular basis. Personally, I feel like this gives my audience a familiar structure to follow and expect from my sites.

But I was talking to a friend the other day who said that using templates is lazy and I should be coming up with unique articles for my site. The dude even said that using templates look like spam and that I'm adding to the spam problem on the internet.

He's being a dumbass as usual but I did start second guessing myself and wondered if using the same template for every article looks spammy on my sites. I have real visitors on these sites and regular readers, but now I'm wondering if this is what's been keeping my growth so slow.

Do any of you use templates for your articles?

I have a few prompts I use to help me find mistakes or ways to improve them.

What do you mean by template?

You mean you have a defined structure you follow?

t2van said:

What do you mean by template?

You mean you have a defined structure you follow?

Click to expand...

I guess he follows a consistent structure in every article, which he refers to as a template, like

1 Header
3 subheadings
Conclusion
FAQ

Leon Jamesh said:

I guess he follows a consistent structure in every article, which he refers to as a template, like

1 Header
3 subheadings
Conclusion
FAQ

Click to expand...

Haha... Then this should never be an issue

As long as the content itself does not look outright like an AI dump.

When I write social media posts, I usually use a template that includes examples of a few of my previous posts in the prompt to guide the structure and format I want

Leon Jamesh said:

I guess he follows a consistent structure in every article, which he refers to as a template, like

1 Header
3 subheadings
Conclusion
FAQ

Click to expand...

That's pretty much the pattern I follow for my sites and its always driven a lot of traffic. For the site I had that tanked big time, that was due to the HCU in September 2023 really fucking me over.

Sometimes I do. It largely depends on what I’m writing. You’ll see that with the newsletter I write here, I have a template that I made. However, for articles on my blog, I don’t tend to use a template, although I have a specific writing style that I use for articles that might make it seem like I do use one.

Outlines keep me focused
Templates speed things up
Both are different

No, and its not about laziness. Write the best content possible that answers search intent as soon as possible and then go on to answer secondary search intent (questions that pop up after the user got their answer).

Cool to see others using templates too and to see what others do with their content!