How to Write a Blog in 30 Minutes or Less
Blogs have become a common addition to many websites across a large array of different and diverse industry types – and for good reason. Maintaining and operating a blog is an excellent way to provide useful information to your visitors/customers, improve traffic to your website, and increase brand recognition.
As the Internet continues to increase in speed, meeting deadlines become more critical. For online entrepreneurs this means learning to generate new content rapidly. For these reasons, it is important to learn to write a blog post quickly and professionally.
Deciding on the Title for Your Blog Post
Before you start your stopwatch, make sure you have a title for your article. If you are a freelance blogger without the luxury of someone to give you a topic, creating a title is an important first step. If you do not have a topic in mind, try reading some news articles for ideas. Current events always make good blog topics.
Improve Your Typing Speed
The most important skill to have, and probably the hardest to acquire, is typing speed. If you are still using the “hunt-and-peck” technique, then you are not very likely to write more than a paragraph in thirty minutes.
The best way to develop a faster words-per-minute rate is practice. It may not sound like fun, but enough typing, while consciously trying to increase speed and accuracy, will help you develop the motor skills necessary to write 1200 words per hour.
You may find that teaching yourself to type faster is a bit difficult. In this case, check any number of the online speed-typing websites for tips. Most will offer you helpful hints about posture and movement techniques that may help you increase your wpm.
Learn to Research Efficiently
Search engines are a blogger’s best friends. With the right search criteria, you can find all the information you need for a 600-word blog. There may even be several sites that have pages similar to your article. Try typing in your decided-upon title into a search bar or use key words or phrases that may be related to your subject. The more specific your criteria, the better your results will be.
Try scanning other blog posts or online encyclopedias for basic information on your subject. You can usually find some fairly relevant information presented in a readable and understandable way. Make sure you check the article’s sources before including any information in your own article. Though the information is usually helpful and accurate, the content may be user-generated. If it does not have citations try to find another reliable source that does.
Write More Frequently
Though writing more will help your typing speed, it will also help you mentally construct your articles more easily. As you write more, you will recognize patterns in your blogs, and as you get accustomed to them you will be able to create blog content more quickly.
Some of your content may overlap, so as you learn more on a certain subject you will have to do less research as you write. With some blogs, research may take the bulk of your time. Decreasing the time you spend on research will increase the time you can spend creating content.
Writing more will also help you reduce time you spend editing your content. As you edit your own material, you should be able to learn which common mistakes you make. If you take note of these mistakes, you may be able to minimize them during the writing process.
Stay Productive, Focused and Engaged
Coming up with fresh and unique content is not always easy and staring at a blank computer screen will not rid you of writer’s block. Try surfing the web for ideas. Having background noise with music or TV may be helpful to some, but keep them off if you find yourself being distracted. Once you determine what works best for you, those tight deadlines will not seem quite so unreasonable.
