You already know blogging is an effective marketing channel,
but how do you find the time to write a blog post?
When I started blogging 7 years ago, it used to take me 4 to 5 hours to write a post. Since then, not only have I figured out how to write 1000 to 2000 word blog posts in under 2 hours, but I’ve figured out how to also improve the quality of my posts.
Here is the process you can use to write a post in less than 2 hours.
Blog on your passion
Blogging can be a chore,
unless you are passionate about the topic. So first and foremost, pick a topic you are passionate about.
And don’t just pick a topic that you “think” you are passionate about. Pick one that you definitely know you’ll love. It has to be a topic that you love so much, that you constantly are trying to learn more about it.
Create a list
Now that you have a topic that you’re passionate about, create a list of all of the popular blogs in that space. You can easily do this by searching Technorati. If there aren’t too many popular blogs in your space, list out all of the blogs that are somewhat in your space and are popular.
Now that you have a list of all of the popular blogs, make sure you browse them once a week. When browsing them, look out for social buttons on each post that shows how many people either “tweeted” or “liked” the post.
The higher the number the better.
Take the posts that have over 50 or 100 social shares and list them out in a spreadsheet. This whole process shouldn’t take you longer than 10 minutes. If it does, you are spending too much time on it.
Spin the title
The hardest part about blogging is coming up with a topic to blog about. But you don’t have to worry about this problem anymore.
Browse through your spreadsheet and continue to tweak around the headlines until you come up with a topic idea that you would want to blog on.
For example, in my spreadsheet, was this headline:
A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week
I found that headline on Copyblogger and it had over 1400 tweets. Because the Quick Sprout audience also likes topics about “blogging” and I myself am passionate about blogging, I thought I could spin that title. Here were my variations:
- A Simple Plan for Writing One Blog Post per Week
- A Simple Plan for Writing One Blog Post per Week in Less Than Two Hours
- A Simple Plan for Writing a Blog Post in Less Than Two Hours
- A Simple Plan for Writing a Powerful Blog Post in Less Than 2 Hours
As you can see, I kept on modifying the headline until I was happy with a variation. The fourth and last variation is one I liked, so I decided to go with it.
The process of spinning headlines shouldn’t take you longer than 10 minutes. You should be able to spin a headline at least once every 30 seconds. So over a course of 10 minutes, you should have at least 20 headlines.
Outline your post
Before you write your post, you should outline it. List out the main points you want to cover in your introduction, body and conclusion.
Once you have the main points you want to talk about in the body section, break them down into sub headings. In this post the sub headings are:
- Blog on your passion
- Create a list
- Spin the title
- Outline your post
- Fill in the details
- Edit, tweak, and massage
- Post and share
- Conclusion
Make sure you sub headings clearly describe what you are going to write about.
This section shouldn’t take you longer than 10 minutes. I know you may miss some details by being efficient with your time, but that’s ok. No blog post is ever perfect, so whatever points you have in your outline, just run with it.
Fill in the details
Now this is the longest section, but probably the easiest. Over the next 60 minutes you should be writing out what you want to talk about.
Don’t worry about making things perfect, or using correct spelling or grammar,
just write. And if you happen to have writers block in one of the outlined sections, skip it and go back to it.
The key to “filling in the details” is to type as fast as possible, don’t fluff things up, and don’t correct any errors when you make mistakes while typing. And most importantly, don’t worry about trying to sound sophisticated through the use of fancy words…
blog as if a 5th grader was reading it.
Edit, tweak and massage
Now that you have your blog post, it’s time for you to polish it up.
- Add or remove points – you want your blog posts to hit hard, so add any points that you feel will strengthen your post. And remove any points that aren’t too strong.
- Add facts – with a few quick Google searches you should be able to back up the points you are making. Find some sites to link to that back up what you have to say. This will boost your credibility and help brand you as an expert in your space.
- Improve the flow – if something isn’t easy to read, people won’t want to continue to read it. Make sure your blog posts are easy to read by using transitions.
- Correct grammar and spelling errors – although this sounds like a useless step, it actually is really important. Errors can affect your credibility in a negative way. If you aren’t good at fixing your errors like me, have someone else proof read your blog posts. If you can’t find someone, read your post aloud as it will help you find the errors.
Editing, tweaking, and massaging, shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes.
Post and share
If you wrote your post within your blogging platform,
great! If not, just copy and paste it over. Most blogging platforms have a “what you see is what you get editor”, so if you copy and paste your blog post over, it should keep all of your formatting.
But before you post your blog post, you need to add an image. You can find a creative commons image from Flickr.
Once your post is up, share it on your social accounts. Twitter and Facebook are two great places to start.
This process shouldn’t take you longer than 10 minutes
Conclusion
There you have it…
you now are able to write a blog post in under 2 hours.
At first you probably won’t be able to do everything I mentioned above in 2 hours, but after you first few tries, you should be able to easily write a post within that time frame.
Do you know of any other ways to speed up the blog writing process?
