Fast blogging is a result of optimizing your process for publishing posts. Time is a precious resource and when it comes to blogging, you need to spend it wisely, especially when you have several blogs to maintain. Let’s see how you can save some time and get more high quality content published.
The success of your blog depends on many factors, like writing for your readers. If you keep this in the back of your mind while writing it helps ensure you are giving them something to takeaway. On the other hand, not every post needs to be ground breaking information, so whatever you’re doing, just do it faster, better and more.
Some bloggers have no problem writing a new post every day, but it’s better to develop this pace naturally than to write something that doesn’t add value. I’ve also found that ideas can turn into sponges in a blog post, trying to absorb many more relevant ideas and the result can lose some of it’s impact on your readers.
High Performance Blogging
I’ve learned that sometimes its best to post as quickly as possible in order to avoid risking the chances for getting into a blogging slump.
So just how can you make changes that will produce high quality content, faster?
Simple, get your process dialed in. Be methodical about every step. And focus on a quantity that you feel can be accomplished in one day. It’s all in the preparation, so lets see what that means.
Prefab Your Blog Posts
Prefab is short for prefabrication, a term used typically in fast track construction projects where a company may decide to preassemble some of the materials at their shop to reduce man hours that it would take in the field to build the same thing. The shop has all the tools, materials, etc. and can usually be much more efficient with the process and store them until they are needed on site.
Blogging isn’t about mass production of content, but whenever you can simplify a process you should in order to better utilize your time (ie. go faster) on the creative process.
One way to get started is simply creating a list of steps needed in order to publish a new post. This will make the process simpler over time. Here is a quick list I put together to get you started on blogging faster:
1. I like to start with a title, though sometimes I have several good blogging topics come to mind and by jotting down the titles in a plain text file I can use them later.
One of the first steps I found to be limiting my publishing is title development. Since I know I’ll be publishing several posts per month, I like to have a selection of topics to choose from because it means I’ve already have the initial thought what the post would be about.
I simply open a blank document and on each line I write a brief title. Once I have about 10 to 15 titles I just save the document and close it.
Then I create a blank document for each of the titles, naming it the title of the post. I keep those files in a folder that I can easily access and open up one of them to write about.
2. Dragon Dictate – This is a software application that transcribes voice to text. It actually works quite well, especially if you need a break from typing. I highly recommend this for those interested in creating fast blog posts.
3. Bookmarks – I have sent up bookmark folders and within each folder I can quickly get to the blog, the admin panel, etc. Also set up a folder with links to relevant sites you might want to check for post ideas.
4. Scribefire – This is a great free plug-in for posting quickly from the browser without having to access your blog admin panel.
5. Linking – When writing a post I usually open another text file open so I can copy and paste links to things I want to reference from the article, as well as URLs for the images I’ve uploaded.
Once you have these steps you can determine which ones are the bottlenecks and isolate them so they don’t prevent you from completing and publishing a post. I have found that titles are tough so I’ll sometimes create a list of 20-30 of them ahead of time.
Do you have a tip for faster blogging, or saving time while blogging? Please share in the comments below.