The One Move You Can Make To Turbocharge Your Digital Marketing

Not long ago I was at the gym in the middle of something called a “team training workout.”

This type of class combines vigorous cardio with a multitude of weights and resistance training. I love it. However, about six weeks ago something wretched happened during the team training.

The instructor had me do a specific type of exercise lifting weights above my shoulder, and — in the blink of an eye — something just didn’t feel right in both shoulders. Something got tweaked, and one month later it still wasn’t getting better.

What’s more, it actually hurt quite a bit when I worked on a computer for anything more than 30 minutes. This is what is technically what is known as “a very bad thing” since I spend a lot of time on the computer both as an investor and as a writer.

But There’s A Silver Lining In Every Cloud, Right?

The scary thing was that I realized that part of the reason my shoulder was struggling to heal — after a month of taking it easy at the gym — was that my posture while working at a computer and the overall massive hours logged at a computer were not allowing the shoulder to heal.

That brings us to this post. I made one change, as a consequence of the shoulder injury, that radically improved my content creation.

What’s that change? Well I’m doing it right now as you read this — or I should say as I create this blog post. I’m using voice dictation. And by using voice dictation, I spend way less time hunched over a keyboard — allowing my shoulder time to heal.

Using speech to text dictation software is pretty simple these days, and you can do it for free. (I use Google Docs voice dictation, which is free on Chrome to anyone with a gmail address.)

Voice Dictation – A Radical Game Changer

There are two reasons why using voice to text technology is a huge game changer if you are marketing online.  

You Produce Content A lot Faster

First, with voice dictation, you can produce content much more quickly than when you use the keyboard directly–if you’re an expert typist. In particular, when you dictate your content you get a rough draft spinted out in dramatically less time. Dramatically.

Your Tone Shifts To A More Conversational Style

Second, I write very differently when I’m dictating voice to text rather than typing. It somehow brings out a more conversational side of my personality as opposed to the more formal writing that we learned at school, college, and on the job.

For me this is particularly important because I spent 13 years writing as a diplomat for internal consumption within the United States government. Let’s face it – such writing is insanely dry.

It’s not been easy for me to throw off that “diplomat’s voice” as I build multiple online businesses. Speech-to-text has really helped that, especially as it is simpler to get into more of a storytelling, casual, conversational tone.

Turbocharge Your Productivity With Speech To Text Technology

Because of these two advantages, speed and a more conversational tone, I find myself producing double or triple the content I did before. It is just faster and less burdensome.

I have a friend name Miles Beckler who publishes a popular YouTube channel focused on internet entrepreneurship and marketing. He creates everything as videos on YouTube because he feels much more comfortable in that format than writing as a blogger. But what I’ve noticed is that he can crank out content like nobody’s business. I mean the guy pushes out three videos week no problem. He just records and posts. Boom. And part of this is because he can speak (in a video) a lot faster than he can type.

So I’m experimenting now with dictating blog posts with the aim of creating content on a weekly basis at a volume similar to what Miles manages. Voice dictation will prove crucial to pulling that off.

Give Voice Dictation A Try – It’s Free And Just Might Turbocharge Entrepreneurial Life

But what about you? Have you tried voice dictation? Do you like it? Has it increased your productivity like it has mine? If not, you might give it a shot. It’s free in Google Docs. Just give it a whirl, and see what happens.

Tom “voice dictation is my new friend” Johnston

P.S. In case you were wondering, I did eventually go to a physical therapist about my shoulder injury. She diagnosed my problem as rotator cuff tendonitis. She showed me a bunch of great exercises to get my shoulder back into shape. I should be back in fighting form soon enough.