“We are all writers now.”

I was in Austin, Texas last weekend, exploring the city with a friend. Turns out, we were there the week before S x SW, a massive and uber-hip music and film festival.

Couple moments of note:

Instead of staying in a hotel, we used airbnb.com, a free online service that hooks you up with folks renting out their back shacks, vacation properties, and apartments around the world. For $90 a night, we stayed in an adorable residential neighborhood within walking distance of everything (including the Alamo Draft House, with a yard and full kitchen. Awesome!

We got to talking to the woman renting the house (who stopped by with her 4 year old daughter to wish us a safe trip home and pull weeds in the herb garden). She’s a photographer. When she heard what I did, she said, “I have to keep a blog now too, to promote my business. We’re all writers now… whether we like it or not.”

My mind immediately started brainstorming: what would make writing a blog more enjoyable for her—so she would do it more regularly, and really shine?

But I don’t want to lose her point. If you are a service professional, and you want to win more business through online channels, you have a bunch of writing to do.

For starters: your website. LinkedIn bio. Facebook page. Your weekly newsletter (if that makes you want to stay in bed, try once a month or every two weeks until you get your rhythm down). Promotional emails. And, if you’re really going to win at the online marketing game, sales pages, opt-in pages, and more emails.

In that vein, I was flipping through an insert in the Austin Chronicle was a panel talk called “Branded Content: We’re All Publishers Now” (See: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/9996). This is the crux—and the thorn in the side of so many service professionals—the branded content strategy. In addition to providing your actual service, it’s become best practice to write and share about “how the sausage is made.” As if you don’t already have plenty of work to do already!

To pull off all this writing, you have to get all ninja on the task. I teach my students to block out a regular time to park their butts in their chairs and write.

But even that’s not going to work if you are miserable about WHAT you are writing about.

I’m hearing more about how agonizing it is to write about the work you do.

And I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t need to be like that. Something is off there.

When I sit down to write my weekly article and letter to my subscribers, I feel pumped. I know I can get it done in less than an hour. I love sharing what I know. And I find myself hoping that something I write is just the thing one of my regular readers will need to plug a hole or bust through some block in her own business.

And it’s also where I hammer out my new thinking on stuff. Where my business is headed. What I get on my soap box about. What people keep asking me about.

So, my gentle and highly attractive reader, my hope for you is that you have more fun creating your content. Because we are all writers now. And as most novelists and playwrights will tell you, it’s not about “feeling inspired” or “being creative.” It’s about showing up and doing the writing, come hell or high water.

Mighty thanks to donovanbeesons’s Flickr photostream for the women writing.