It’s one thing to know how to write a blog post – it’s another thing to know how to write a blog post FAST. The faster you write (without sacrificing quality), the more time you can free up to work on other parts of your business! This post will walk you through the 5-step process I use to speed write my blog posts. Along the way, I’ll share some of my best tips for making the process easier and more enjoyable.
Step 1: Pick your topic
When picking a topic, you should be crystal clear on what you want to write. Understand who you are writing it for and what question or problem you are solving for the reader. Make sure that you’re focusing on the big picture as far as your content strategy. You don’t want to write a blog post just to write a blog post, but these tips are strategies for how to write blog posts faster.
Along with picking a topic, you should be thinking about how it will benefit your site and how you can promote it. Things to consider:
- Can you link in one or more affiliate products to this topic? You always want to have a way to earn money off any post you add to your site if you can.
- Can you build in links to other posts or other services you offer on your site? Internal links are always a good strategy.
- What keywords will you use and how will you work them into your post and your social media? SEO is so terribly important you don’t want to leave it until the last thing you think about.
- Backlinks are also important. Are there posts from reputable sites you can link to? This will add authority to your post.
The topic should be strategic and should fit in whatever your bigger blog or business goals are. Once you’re very clear on what the blog post is about and who you are writing it for, then it’s time to create your outline.
Step 2: Outline your post
You don’t even have to create your headline at this point. When you speed write blog posts, just create a very rough outline and figure out the points you want to cover. Keep it super simple. Eventually, these will be the headings and subheadings for your post. Go ahead and jot down a few messy notes under those headings. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar or sentence structure at this point as it would only waste your time. Remember that this outline should just be a very rough starting point for where you’re going to take your blog post.
For example, if you speed write a blog post that’s going to be about five easy tips to train your dog, you’re probably going to want each of those five tips as a header in your blog post.
- Get a dog
- Figure out what you want him to do
- Buy some treats to reward him
- Get the dog to do the trick
- Give the dog the treats – good doggy!
Then you might jot down some notes under each header about things that you want to remember to include later on when you do the bulk of the writing. Once you have your rough outline, go ahead and start gathering the resources you will need to write your post.
Pro Tip: Put your SEO keywords at the top of your word doc and look for opportunities to work them into your post. Again, do worry about making a beautiful word document at this point. It is for your eyes only. Don’t be a perfectionist. Quick and sloppy is perfectly fine at this stage.
Step 3: Speed write a shitty first draft
Now it’s time to just write using your outline as a guide. Do not proofread nor self-edit. When you speed write blog posts, just focus on getting your ideas out there as quickly as possible. You can even put time limits on yourself if that helps you. Shut off your phone and set a timer for 30 minutes. If needed, take a quick break and do another 30 minute session. That way, you break up the writing process and you won’t get so fatigued and burnt out from writing so much.
Another tip while you’re doing this, to make it seem less daunting, is to view each heading as a mini blog post (this is mostly if you’re writing a long-form blog post). For example, if you’re writing a 2000-word blog post and you have 4 headers, just see each of those headers as its own 500 word blog post. That’s not taking the introduction and conclusion into account, but you get the picture. Breaking it up this way makes the whole task seem a lot easier to manage.
When you write your shitty first draft, I also suggest writing all the body content first, and then at the end going back to writing the introduction and conclusion. Keep in mind that you don’t want a boring conclusion if your readers have stuck it out to the end. Save a few good points for your conclusion.
Step 4: NOW Work on Your Headline
The write headline can make or break a post, so spend a little time on this one. Co-Schedule has a terrific Headline Analyzer tool that you can use for FREE (You do have to sign up for it). But it will help you craft a great headline for your post. Be sure to work in your keywords for good SEO karma.
Step 5: Edit ruthlessly
This is the time to do things like removing any fluff, adding in any content when necessary, refining sentence structure, fixing flow problems, adding in statistics, images, extra data to back up your points, or even adding in your personality into your blog post. You might want to add some humor or change the way you talk about something. Of course, you’ll want to do some basic proofreading and checking of spelling, grammar or tense.
Pro tip: if you’re like me, and you hate editing and proofreading your work, just use an app like Grammarly – it’s really brilliant! That way, you don’t spend hours obsessing over every minor detail. It will check your spelling, word usage, grammar, and it’s super easy to use. This will help you write blog posts faster.
When you’re done editing or proofreading, read your post out loud one last time before you hit publish. This is a really good way to spot those last-minute typos and errors. Also, this will really help make sure you’ve written your blog post in a conversational way as it’s going to be engaging for other people to read, and not in some weird robotic tone that no one else is going to be able to relate to. Once you’re done proofreading, add in your graphics (don’t forget a Pinterest pin with a fabulous description) hit publish and you are good to go!
Step 5A: Promote the shit out of it.
It always amazes me that people can spend hours or even days writing a blog post, but then they skimp on promoting it. They write a one-sentence description for their Pinterest pin – WHY??? You have 500 characters – use them! They don’t promote it on their Facebook page or mention it in their Instagram stories. This is YOUR BABY. You should spend 5 times as much effort promoting your content as you do writing it. This is a very popular post I’ve got about Ways to Repurpose Your Best Content. Seriously – read it. Super helpful.
Conclusion
Learning to speed write does take some practice, especially if you are a huge perfectionist. My motto is loosen your bone, Wilma! You aren’t writing classic literature here, you’re just trying to help out a few folks with some new ideas. Loosen up and have some fun with it.
But keep working at it and pretty soon you’ll find that the writing tasks that used to take days will soon just take hours. Then you can spend your time doing the promotion and SEO activities I mentioned and those are super important too. Otherwise only you and your mom are going to read the fabulous words you’ve just written. #sad But I believe in you – a little promo combined with these handy tips on how to speed write your posts and you’ll do great!
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