How to Write Blog Posts Faster Without Sacrificing Quality

How to Write Blog Posts Faster Without Sacrificing Quality

I write a ton of blog posts. With all my in-depth and informative guides backed up with good research, people assume it takes me 10 hours to write one post. Blogging is like anything else. Since their content is already published, you can make your posts even better and more informative than theirs. When you do this work ahead of time, you’ll make your writing process much easier. If you’ve got eight subheadings in your outline, you know that each section needs to be roughly 250 words to meet that 2,000-word minimum. Using an outline will help you not only write faster but also produce better quality and longer blog posts, which will be great for SEO purposes. Here’s a look at the average time people take to write a blog post to give you a better idea of how long it should take you: You can aim to spend 3.5 hours writing a post, but you can write even faster than that. Even if this is the first time you’re reading one of my blogs, you can see I’ve used research throughout this post to illustrate my points. By the time you get those notes back, the topic is no longer fresh in your mind.

Try This System to Manage Your Blog Comments Faster (and with Less Stress)
Finalists: Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2017
10 Outdated (But Commonly Used) Social Media Tactics You Need To Ditch

I write a ton of blog posts.

By the end of 2018, I’ll have published over 150 posts on Quick Sprout alone. Once you factor in the posts on my other websites and my guest posts, that number roughly doubles.

People ask me all the time how I manage to produce such a large amount of quality content.

With all my in-depth and informative guides backed up with good research, people assume it takes me 10 hours to write one post. That’s not the case.

It takes me significantly less than half of that time to do so.

Blogging is like anything else. The more you do something, the better you get at it.

That said, there is definitely a formula behind producing effective blog content.

As a business owner, you recognize the benefits of blogging in terms of SEO, driving traffic to your website, and increasing conversions.

traffic

This graph clearly shows there is a direct correlation between publishing frequency and website traffic. That’s why you can scale lead generation through blogging.

You know you want to publish more content. But there are only so many hours in the day, and you have a business to run.

It’s a common problem I see in my consulting work.

As a result, businesses usually resort to one of two solutions. They either don’t blog as often as they should be, or they rush through writing to meet a certain benchmark. But neither of these approaches are effective.

You need to learn how to write more posts faster without sacrificing the quality of your work.

Use this guide as a blueprint for producing quality content for your blogs. Here’s what you need to do.

Have your blog topics ready

When you sit down to write a post, you shouldn’t be asking yourself what you’ll be writing about that day. This is not an efficient use of your time.

I like to have lists of topics ready for me to choose from.

Spend 30 minutes to an hour once a month coming up with a long list of titles, depending on your publishing frequency.

I usually have lists with 20 or 30 topics at a minimum. Once I start running low, I go through this process again.

Coming up with this many subjects is easier than you think.

I recommend looking at some of your competitors’ sites to see what they’re blogging about. You can use their posts as an inspiration for your own.

You’ll have a big advantage here. Since their content is already published, you can make your posts even better and more informative than theirs.

Take advantage of online tools that will help you come up with new titles to write about, such as the blog ideas generator from HubSpot:

hubspot
Write posts that tell a story about a personal experience.

Look through comments on social media and your previously published posts for inspiration for new ones. Turn other content you’ve already created into a post. Here are some examples of content you can repurpose:

  • YouTube videos
  • podcasts
  • ebooks
  • webinars
  • slideshows

There are tons of opportunities here.

If you’re having trouble coming up with a list of blog topics, refer to my guide on the best ways to come up with new content ideas.

When you do this work ahead of time, you’ll make your writing process much easier. Rather than wasting 15 minutes on brainstorming, you can pull a topic from your list and get straight to work.

Always start with an outline

Starting to write with a blank page, trying to go from beginning to end without a plan, will hurt your quality and productivity.

All too often I see new writers skip the outline process because they think it’s extra work. But the outline will save you time in the long run.

Your outline will give you an idea of the flow of your post.

At a minimum, you should have all your subheaders determined with some notes for each section. But you don’t have to stop there.

The more detailed your outline is, the faster you’ll be able to write.

I like to jot down my thoughts in short bullet points for each section. I can expand on those notes when I’m writing the final copy.

Outlining will also make it easier for you to reach your desired word count. Here’s a look at the average content length for the top results of a Google search:

content length

As you can see from this graph, longer posts have higher rankings. On average, all the top ten posts are over 2,000 words.

You should have a word length range for each post you write.

Obviously, this won’t be exact every time. By nature, some posts will be longer than others, depending on the subject matter.

But let’s say you want all your posts to be a minimum…

COMMENTS

WORDPRESS: 0
DISQUS: 0