A Six-Step Plan for Faster, Easier Writing

Posted: 03 Jun 2014 06:13 AM PDT

The faster you can write, the greater the results you'll see as a blogger.

Let's say you have six hours a week, and in those six hours, you normally manage to write three posts – averaging two hours per post.

You publish two of them on your blog and use one as a guest post.

That's not bad, but what if you could double your output and write six posts instead of three?

You might choose to publish slightly more on your blog (e.g. three posts not two), and you'd also be able to produce three guest posts every week.

So how can you double your writing speed? Just follow this step by step plan.

Step #1: Come Up With Lots of Ideas at Once

One of the biggest time-wasters for many bloggers is struggling to come up with an idea. You might find yourself sitting staring at the screen, doodling on a bit of paper, or starting off a post only to decide the idea wasn't great after all.

When you have a good idea, though, it's often really easy to race through your post – it almost seems to write itself.

There's a really simple solution here, and it's to come up with your ideas ahead of time. Set aside 30 minutes to come up with at least ten ideas, preferably more. You'll find that once you start jotting down your ideas, they come faster and faster.

Step #2: Give One Day a Theme

If you're posting more than once a week, choose a special theme for a particular day. E.g. some bloggers have Friday as a "roundup" day where they write about great posts from within their industry.

You might have noticed that we've recently started a "Bad SEO Practices" series on Mondays. This makes it easier for me to plan content – and though you might think it'd make it harder to come up with ideas, the truth is that when you give yourself constraints (like a specific topic to stick to), you'll find that you're more creative.

Your themes could be temporary and run for a few weeks, or they could be permanent and run consistently throughout the lifespan of your blog.

Step #3: Find the Right Time and Place to Write

Writing is a high-energy activity, and one that it's very easy to procrastinate over. It really helps to find out when in the day you're at your best. For me, it's generally mornings – you might be a night owl or an afternoon person, though.

As well as finding the right time, experiment with using different places to write. Perhaps you normally sit on the sofa to blog on your laptop – but you're often distracted by the TV, or by family members wanting to chat to you. Maybe getting out to a coffee shop, or writing in a bedroom with the door shut, could make all the difference.

Step #4: Stay Focused When You're Writing

One tempting but dangerous mistake is to get distracted while writing a blog post. I completely understand why this happens (it happens to me too!) – you might get stuck, or feel tired, and it's all too easy to flick open a browser and check Facebook or see what's new on BuzzFeed.

Alternatively, you might have Skype and your inbox open as you write your post, so you're distracted with messages from friends that you want to reply to quickly.

This can dramatically slow down your writing. Not just because you're spending time doing something else – but also because every time you switch your focus away from your writing, you make it hard to get back into the flow.

Most people can't focus for long periods of time, so try writing in short bursts of 20 – 45 minutes. (You might like to use the Pomodoro technique.) You'll probably surprise yourself with how much more productive you can be.

Step #5: Don't Edit and Write at the Same Time

As much as you can, avoid trying to edit while you're writing. Sure, you might need to backspace once in a while to fix a typo – but if you find yourself deleting and reworking whole sentences, you're slowing down your writing a lot.

Also, it's tough to see the big picture when you're still adding in all the details: once your post is finished, you'll have a much better sense of whether that sentence should stay or go. If you can, try to edit a day after drafting your post – you'll come to it fresh, you'll be more likely to spot mistakes, and you may well find that the post as a whole is better than you initially thought.

Step #6: Create a Personal Pre-Publication Checklist

There are often a bunch of little tasks to do when you're getting your post ready for publication, and if you find yourself struggling to remember these (or going back after publishing it to fix them), it can bog you down.

The easiest solution here is to create a personal checklist that includes anything you need to do once your post is written and edited. For instance, these are a few things you might include:

Add a "more" link so only the first few paragraphs show on the front page.
Put subheadings into the correct format.
Add bold text to pull out key points.
Include at least one link to a relevant post in the archives.
Check that there's a call to action at the end.

You don't have to master all these six steps at once – even if you can manage just two or three of them, you should see a clear improvement in your writing speed. If one of these worked especially well for you, or if you have a different step to add, just drop a comment below.

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Bad SEO Practices #2: Article Marketing Sites / Article Directories

Posted: 02 Jun 2014 08:35 AM PDT

In case you missed it, here’s the first post in this series: Bad SEO Practices #1: Buying and Selling Links.

Have you come across article marketing?

It means writing for sites like Ezine Articles, which are a repository of articles that anyone can republish – so long as they keep the author's bio box in place. (You might hear these called "article directories.")

Back in 2008 when I started blogging, I spent a bit of time writing ten or so articles. They sent me a bit of traffic, though nothing spectacular. More importantly, they helped me get links from other people's newsletters ("ezines") and websites.

The drawback to this was that many of the pieces on article marketing sites weren't particularly good … plus there's not much value for readers in the same article being repeated across multiple different websites.

Back in 2011, EzineArticles was hit hard by Google's algorithm update (along with plenty of other article directories). And over the past couple of years, SEO experts from sites like Search Engine Watch and Moz have spoken out against article marketing, saying that it might harm your search engine rankings.

Right now, you'll be wasting your time submitting to article marketing sites. There are plenty of better places to focus your efforts (like writing unique, value-packed guest posts for major sites in your niche).

Even worse, the links you get from article directories may actively harm your Google rankings. And of course, when anyone can reprint your work, you might find it popping up on spammy sites or even on your competitors' blogs. Do you really want that?

Article marketing may have worked six years ago, but it doesn't work today. If you're doing it, stop wasting your time. If it's something you've been thinking about, don't bother.

Wanna learn how to make more money with your website? Check the Online Profits training program!

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