5 Effective Ways To Save Time While Writing Blog Posts

Blogging has already become indispensable for any successful marketing campaign. Meanwhile, people responsible for it are struggling to complete the ever-increasing number of tasks. With the way of living becoming more hectic with each day, the issue becomes even more topical. Hence, comes a logical question: how to do more in a limited amount of time?

Of course, writing shorter content may be a way out. However, in the age of rising value of long-reads, it’s no longer an option. You can also outsource some tasks to freelancers. Take editing or proofreading as an example. Though it will mean additional costs, your time properly spent may be a lot more valuable. As an alternative allow guest posting on your website. Not only is it free, it can potentially drive more traffic to your website, especially if you invite opinion leaders to contribute.

Nevertheless, if you don’t consider outside help an option, there are some tips on how to increase your writing productivity without sacrificing the quality of your texts. Here are some of the most important ones:

1. Conduct a research before getting down to writing

You’ve probably noticed that writing itself takes only a fraction of the time you spend on preparing a blog post. What’s more, a preparatory stage of writing content may sometimes take more time than actually writing it. Think for a moment how much time you spend in general on choosing the idea and doing primary research. I bet it’s quite time-consuming, especially when you don’t know a thing about the subject and start writing with a blank mind.

To overcome the issue and save your time, draft a content plan beforehand and search for additional resources on the matter.  This will give you a better understanding of the subject so that you have ideas in your hand even before starting the actual writing. Consequently, you will spend less time shifting different activities and focus more on writing.

2. Get rid of the distractions

It may seem pretty obvious to you, yet we know how easy it is to neglect this rule. Writing with various distractions results in shorter concentration span. It essentially means that you need more time to focus on what you were writing about after a short break to check your Twitter profile. So close any unnecessary tabs in your browser, turn on an airplane mode on your phone, and get down to writing. You will see the difference straight away.

Music, on the contrary, can help you concentrate on your work. According to The Guardian, our attention has two parts: conscious and unconscious. While the former is focused on your main activity (in this case, writing), the latter doesn’t simply shut down, it remains active, looking for any sensory distractions. When you’re trying to concentrate on work, this unconscious attention becomes even more powerful. Hence, it’s so easy to distract you during work. Pleasant music can calm down your unconscious attention, making it easier for you to stay focused on the main activity.

3. Plan the blog post first

Planning is the key to the successful organization of the working process. If you lay down main points of the article beforehand, you’ll reach several goals:

• Your writing will be coherent, with ideas arising from each other logically
• You’ll not deviate from the main subject
• You’ll spend less time thinking of what to write next since the structure of the text will be right at hand
• You will be more productive focusing solely on writing
• You’ll spend less time writing a conclusion because all main ideas are already mentioned

If you are not sure what points to include in the plan, create a mindmap of all ideas that spring to mind when you think about the blog post subject. After this, you might end up with a lot of ideas, some of which will be too remote to be covered in one post. Therefore, connect related ideas and cross all the odd ones out.

If you’re still unsure how to organize a blog post initially, here’s an article outlining 5 creative ideas.

4. Manage your time

Procrastination is your biggest enemy when it comes to working. We know how difficult it is to start doing anything. However, if you set a certain time frame for a task, you’ll save time while writing and can even finish the task sooner than needed. How is that possible? When you set your personal deadline, you feel obliged to meet it. Hence, higher productivity. Besides, it’s a great way to overcome writer’s block, since you don’t pay attention to unimportant matters.

Apart from that, try to divide preparing content into several stages and allocate an appropriate amount of time to each of them. This way, you’ll see what takes you the most of the time and where you tend to stumble. Check out this article to learn how Buffer bloggers manage to write blog posts in less than 3 hours.

5. Write introduction last

While not everyone may agree on this, I strongly recommend getting down to introduction only after you’ve finished the main body of your article. The reason therefor is simple. When you expand your initial points into separate paragraphs, the structure may be modified as well. According to the much acclaimed “inverted pyramid” principle of content writing, the most intriguing information should come first. That’s why you should always write an intro to your post in a way that would make your readers want to scroll below the fold.

To present a bigger idea in the first few paragraphs, you need to know what will be in the article in the end. This way, you’ll manage to gather the most important ideas and present them in a teaser-like way so that the visitors would be compelled to read further. Besides, writing introduction at the end will save you a lot of time on thinking what exactly you are going to write while keeping it more coherent.

Wrapping up

As you can see, there’s no rocket science behind boosting your productivity when it comes to writing. The above-mentioned ideas are a great way to write more in the same amount of time. Apart from saving time while writing, you will improve the quality of your texts as the mentioned methods will add a lot more logic and coherence to the entire blogging process.

In any case, the effectiveness of your writing may also depend on your interest in the subject, so make sure you can somehow relate to it before starting the work. This simple step will ensure that you won’t face a writer’s block in the middle of writing.

Sophia Clark

Sophia Clark graduated from the University in the City of New York with B.A. in Journalism, 2011. She is a creative writer from New York who loves to share her thoughts with readers, now she writes for Prowriterscenter.com In her free time she enjoys writing fiction as well as reading it. Her big dream is to publish a novel one day. Connect with her on Twitter and Google +.