Maximize Your Time Writing a Blog
Blogging is a great way to show off your expertise, boost your search engine rankings, and entice readers to become paying clients. The difficulty a lot of business owners have, however, is finding the time to write those blogs.
I get it. Running a business takes a lot of work, and often you have the time to sit down and write, but your just don’t have the bandwidth to knock one of these suckers out of the park.
What if I told you that you don’t have to dedicate 5 or 6 hours to write that blog? Not even 2 hours. You can pound out a blog in less than an hour. I’ll teach you how to think of the blog when you’re not writing, so when you do sit down, it just flows right out of you.
By the way, I started a timer at the beginning of this blog, before I even typed a word. Let’s see how long this takes me.
Consider The Topic You’ll Write About
You most likely have a ton of topic ideas bouncing around in your head. One of the best ways you can speed up the blogging process is to get all of those topics written down. I have an excel spreadsheet on my computer that’s titled 365 Days of Blogs. Earlier this year I was going to try to write a blog every single day for an entire year. I lasted 23 days, then dropped that to 3 blogs per week. That also dropped to about once a week. I have the time, I just stopped making this a priority.
Lest I digress.
You have all of these topics and ideas, but one of the hardest parts of blogging (especially when you’ve been writing for a long time and you have hundreds upon hundreds of these things on your website) is figuring out what you’ll write about. Spending a little time once a year to figure out 50 to 100 topics shaves at least 10 to 20 minutes off the blogging time commitment.
Helpful Hint: Use ChatGPT and SpyFu to look at your competition and see what topics they’re writing about and ranking well for.
Figure Out how it Relates to Your Expertise
Topics are down, and now it’s time to flex your knowledge. Remember, you haven’t even started writing yet, because all of this can be done while you’re doing your day-to-day business activities.
Monday morning you look at your list of blog topics. If there’s something seasonal – say a Christmas special coming up – you focus on that. Otherwise, you simply choose the next one on the list. Maybe even write it on a sticky note so you don’t have to keep reminding yourself what it is.
Now, throughout Monday and Tuesday you think about that topic. You have insights, ideas, and how your personal story relates to the topic and how you’ve flexed your expertise in the past. Make mental notes of those things. Have a couple of minutes, jot them down so you don’t forget.
On Wednesday, blogging day, you sit down to write. But not yet, because there’s still a little more that you need to do so you get this thing done absolutely perfectly.
Answer the Questions you Think Readers Have
You might already have these questions, you might have to look them up. If you’re running a business, and you get the same questions over and over, you should have created an FAQ page. But those are usually just little answers; three or four sentences to quickly answer the questions.
You can expand those and turn them into full on blogs. You have the topic, you have the question the people ask, and you’ve been pondering some anecdotes that you can weave into your blog that shows how you solved a customer’s problem and all of their wildest dreams came true (Vote for Pedro!).
If you aren’t sure what people are actually asking, I have a helpful hint for you. There’s a website called Answer the Public. You type in the keyword or topic, and it tells you what people are asking about that keyword or topic. For instance, see below the results for when I type in “Blogging.”
It’s a great way to find out quickly what people are actually asking, and you can directly answer their questions.
Set the Stage, Show Authority, Solve the Problem
Okay, so we’re not counting that topic spreadsheet, or the pondering as you’re going through the day as part of the how to write a blog in under an hour. However, I will throw in the research for answering peoples’ questions. Because really, it takes about 3 minutes if you just dive right into it. Now you have the stage set and you have 57 more minutes to finish writing the blog. Let’s get after this.
Outline it. I outline every single blog because it speeds things up so much. I write the title/topic, then I write the introduction. Once that’s done, I write all of my subheadings to keep my flow and ideas on track. Once they’re all out, it’s merely a matter of filling in the information that I’ve been pondering all week already. If you can type, let’s say 50 words per minute, then it will take you 20 minutes to pound out a 1,000 word blog post.
Read more about outlining blogs and books.
In your intro, you set the stage. Open up with a bold claim, such as, how to write a blog in under an hour. Tell the people it’s possible, explain that they have been told incorrectly, and overall tease them in that intro so they want to at least skim the rest of the content you write.
Use the next two or three sections to show off your authority. Make a bold claim, or reference your expertise. Tell them you’ve done this a time or two. Then, tell a relatable story. For example, you can talk about how one of your clients, Zach Herbert, reached out on LinkedIn. He said he knows the power of blogging, and the importance of frequently updating the website, but he doesn’t have the time to do it. Then tell how you give them a quote, they say, “Let’s go!” and you start adding a relevant blog every week to ensure they’re ranking well, showing off authority, and bringing in more clients.
I set the stage, I showed authority, I told a personal story of how Herbert Law Group hired me several years ago to write a weekly blog, and how I solved the problem for them (the problem wasn’t the lack of experience or abilities; they can write their own blogs. The problem they needed solving was an issue with not having the time to get this done regularly).
Now you’re nearly done with the blog, it’s over 1,100 words long, and there’s still the CTA. Which is actually quite an easy thing to do.
Your Call to Action Goes Last but Could Go Sooner
Most of the time the call to action will go here, in the final paragraph. You can sum everything up succinctly, like, “You know the power of blogging, but you still don’t want to carve an hour out of your workday every week. Let me handle that for you. Schedule a time on my calendar and I’ll show you exactly what I can do.” Then link your calendar (or embed it like I do). No need to fill this section with unnecessary words.
Or, you can put your conclusion here. Tease them in the previous section, conclude it here, and call them to action. Make them make a choice.
Or, you can put your call to action at the beginning (and at the end, why not?). For example, when writing for personal injury lawyers, I’ll often put the CTA in the first paragraph. If people are on the site, reading the content, they already know they need a lawyer. They just need a quick click-to-call or click-to-email. They don’t need to read the 10 ways to stay safe on a roadtrip.
So, now it’s your choice.
Struggling with finding the time to write a blog? Struggling to get these things out regularly? Then we should talk. Find a time on my calendar, and we’ll come up with a plan.
By the way, I’m at 24 minutes, start to finish, right now. But I still need to proof, make an image, and upload. I’ll update when done.
EDIT: My laptop battery died while finishing things up, and the timer on the laptop kept running. By the time I got it back up and running it was a couple hours later – so I don’t have an exact time. I know I was at around 24 minutes when I started the post-writing work, let’s round that up to 30 minutes. Now my new timer is at just over 10 minutes.
Total time – 40 minutes give or take to write a 1,500 word blog. Well within my 1-hour time limit.