There’s a mistaken belief in blogging circles that the key to exploding your readership is simply in writing more great content. Now, it’s true that blogs with infrequent updates won’t be taken seriously by readers, but you don’t necessarily need an endless stream of content to attract an audience.
Blog readers actually tend to prefer shorter posts unless the blogger is very established, a celebrity, or an expert. So the key to getting recognition isn’t packing your blog or a post with content. The most important thing is promoting the solid content you have. Instead of spending a huge amount of time on post production, focus more time and energy on promotion of what you’ve already produced.
Give Yourself More Promotion Time by Streamlining Your Writing Process
Plan Ahead
Need help coming up with ideas? Try consulting our past Building Blocks on writing great posts fast… or our FREE Ultimate Blogging Binder!
We all like publishing great posts right after we’ve written them, but that’s not the key to steady readership growth. Posting consistently is what’ll keep your readers returning. If someone visits your blog only to find the last post was a month ago, they’ll stop coming back.
The best way to create that consistency is through putting together a monthly blogging schedule by:
- Setting aside some time to come up with blog post ideas, and
- Entering them in a calendar. You can use Google, a physical calendar, or an app, etc, to do this (at Blogger Babes, our editor, Heba, is fond of the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin).
Then either write your posts in batches and pre-schedule them OR work on them for the day that you’ve scheduled—whatever feels most comfortable, as long as you have a game plan in place. Have guest posts scheduled and set in advance, though.
Save Writing Time
The more simply you state something, the less you’ll have to explain. A 250-word blog post that opens a door will have greater impact on a reader that a complex article that’s four times as long.
Still, if you prefer longer posts, go for it. If you know your chosen subject well, longer posts won’t steal significant time from your schedule (research takes up a good amount of time otherwise). We choose to do a combination of both shorter and longer posts on all of our blogs.
Here are our general tips for saving time:
- Ideal blog post length varies with audience and topic, but generally posts with 350-500 words are the most successful. Remember, today’s audience has a much shorter attention span.
- Use subheads and bullet points. These are often what convince readers to stop and read your post, so give them cues and break up blocks of text.
- Write your introduction, conclusion, and CTA first. Then fill in the body.
- Be personal. Write like you’re speaking to your reader over a cup of coffee. Speak in the first person and address them as “you” to come across as friendly and engaging.
- Be practical. Share relevant information with real life examples.
- Stay focused. The more you stay on topic, the less you’ll have to edit. If you find you’re going off on a tangent, remove it and use it for another new blog post. You’ll be surprised how much content you can get from one idea when you stay strict to this rule!
- Use a timer. Whether it be while researching or writing the post itself, use a timer to hold yourself accountable to a certain amount or slot of time. Experiment with this—you’ll find that it either stresses you out or helps you stay focused. And you don’t want to be stressed!
Ultimately, you’ll have to decide what calendar and posting process works for you.
My final advice for the day? Don’t procrastinate—just do it!
Do you have any tips for writing superbly, speedily? Share with us below!
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