How to Write Blog Posts Faster

Learn How to Write Blog Posts Faster!

Yeah, you read that right. You can write blog posts faster and cut your content development process time in half with a few handy tricks, tips, and tools. Content development, mainly writing blog posts, is one of the most time-consuming aspects of content marketing for most people. I’ve spoken with people who take 2-3 days to write a blog post. I do most of mine in a few hours. How? It’s all about preparation. Creating your weekly content shouldn't feel like a chore; it should simply be a task on your to-do list. Let me share my streamlined process so you can learn how to write blog posts faster, and that, my friend, will help you get better results (that means more traffic, leads, and sales from your website). 

Learn How to Write Blog Posts Faster by Batching Your Content

The secret? It’s to batch your content! It’s that simple. But it works. It saves you so much time because you focus on one part of the process at a time. You do that same step for each blog post you want to create in the batch before moving on to the next step. 

Creating your batching process can help shave hours off your content production times. You can stay focused and work ahead by working on a handful of posts at a time. The key is to lay the foundation for your program ahead of time so you're all set when it’s time to write. The number of posts you batch at once is completely up to you. I teach my students to start with a batch of 4 pieces if they're creating content weekly. That allows them to create a month's content and then take a break. You can create more at once as you get more comfortable batching content. I often do 12 pieces at a time and enjoy the break. 

I’ll share my exact batching process. I use an Excel spreadsheet to map all my content topics and monthly content calendar. This process was developed and then refined numerous times over the years. I use it to manage content production workflows for multiple clients simultaneously. Keeping hundreds of pieces of content in the queue and moving on track was challenging—the organization was key to not missing anything. The organization is a big part of speeding up your process.

Writing Blog Posts Faster - Step 1 Content Planning – Topic Ideas

Keep a running content topic list. I have a note on my phone and add topic ideas to it as they arise when I’m out and about, talking to people. Many blog posts I write directly result from a client or prospect’s question about content marketing best practices, challenges, or issues they’re facing. I find writing the idea down immediately helps. If I don’t, I forget it. Anyone else?

You can use AI tools such as ChatGPT (which didn't exist when I originally wrote this blog post in 2017 but does now in 2023) to help with content ideas. Don't use it to write your content, but it's a great brainstorming tool. If you're curious about how to use ChatGPT to help with your content production and what not to do with it, check out this blog post. 

Marketing Pro Tip: Answer your customer’s questions with the content you develop. Don’t just try to push your agenda. Provide information they need and they’ll want to read what you write. They might even share it! And isn’t that the goal?

Planning and being organized help speed up the process in several ways.  If you keep a running list of ideas, it’s easy to have topics to work with when creating your content calendar. Creating a schedule is key to speeding up your process. You always know what needs to be written next.

Have you ever sat down, known you needed to write a post, but had NO IDEAS? What happens? You check Facebook, respond to emails, look at pictures or videos, and get no work done. An hour later, that blank Word doc or WordPress page still stares you in the face. And that stinks.

When I prepare to create a content calendar, I start with the master topic ideas tab and see which ones will work for the current content plan.

Step 2 Think about Where you will Publish the Content.

Before I start writing a word, I think about which posts I should write and where they should be shared.  I write for my website and industry sites. I note where the post will be shared in my monthly content calendar. You can skip this step if all your content is posted on your blog. It works for me but may not be necessary for you.

Since I write for multiple audiences on this blog, it’s essential to ensure we provide information that’s useful to all of them on a regular basis. Due to this, I also determine which content pillar each topic idea aligns with, ensuring there’s good coverage for each.  Some of my readers are small business owners; others are course creators, coaches, or Realtors. I've got multiple audiences to connect with each month, and you may too. Consider who will read the content as you plan it to ensure you have something for your different audiences. 

I teach my students to choose four content pillars or topic areas they will focus on each month. If you're writing a weekly blog post, this makes your content planning process pretty simple. You need one topic idea for each of your four pillars for the month, and you're done. Consider your ideal customer and niche to determine your content pillars or topic areas. How can you break your business down into four areas or topics? Maybe you're a Realtor, work with buyers, sellers, and investors, and have a specific farm community; those four areas might be your pillars or topic categories. If you're a health coach, you might have topic pillars that include healthy recipes, workouts, inspiration, and making time for yourself. If you haven't yet determined your pillars or content topic areas, do that before you start the batching process, and it will help you write your blog posts faster. 

Listen to the podcast episode here.

Think About Who you are Writing for and What They Need to Know.

Do you have an ideal customer? Have you figured out your niche? Have you created an ideal customer persona yet? They're fun to do and very helpful when creating content. 

What does a persona look like? Sometimes, companies have personas that include pictures, names, interests, etc. Some will print the personas off and keep them in the marketing office; others know who they are and refer to them when necessary. Some like to note which persona a specific piece of content will target. I don’t record the persona in the master content plan, but I note which content topic pillar it addresses (and those all align with my personas). My ideal customer is Jessica, and I think about her and what questions she has as I create my content plan each time. 

When I was in college, I interned at the local ABC affiliate station in my hometown; the summer before I graduated, we had a research team help us with our ideal customer profiles based on consumer research, and we had mock-up photos of them in the newsroom, and we had to answer why they would be interested in the story we were pitching. If they weren't going to care about the story, we didn't cover it because it wasn't newsworthy to our audience. 

If you're unsure who your Ideal Customer is or haven't truly figured out who they are, this blog post can help you get started. Take the time to figure it out now; it will make your content production process much easier and faster. 

Write Blog Posts Faster by Batching the Production Process

Now that we’ve got a list of ideas, audiences we’re addressing, and a sense of where our content will be published, it’s time to create the actual content calendar.  I like to keep each quarter on a separate tab within my Excel Workbook to ensure it’s easy to reference, answer questions, and double-check when necessary.

In the beginning, batch one month's content at a time. As you become more familiar with the process, you can increase the number of posts you batch. But you want to start in a way that feels manageable and easy. 

Start by deciding what you will write for each of your four posts. Choose one topic for each of your four pillars or content topic areas. If you have a handy brainstorming list, choose one from each section for this batch and start. If you don't have a list yet, that's OK. Do a quick brainstorming session, consider the topics that could be good for each of your content pillars this month, and choose one. Save the topics you didn't use this month so you can use them in the future. Again, make it faster for yourself next time. 

I recommend posting new content weekly. This is easy to implement if you break your content topics into four pillars. Most months have four weeks, meaning if you're using four content topic areas, you can connect with each of your audiences at least once a month. It keeps things simple, and that makes things faster. You don't have to think about how many posts you will write; you need to write four. 

Marketing ProTip: The right posting schedule is the one you can keep up with that works for your business. If you get enough leads with one post per month then maybe once per month is right for you. If you find 10 posts per month generates more leads for you, then maybe you need to post 10 times per month. There are best practices and guides but they’re just that…. Practices and guides, not real life data. Real life data should trump best practices in your decision making. Businesses that blog more often do get more leads but you need to do what you can manage consistently. 

Start filling out your posting schedule with the names of the blog topics you came up with earlier. By choosing one from each of your topic areas, you'll ensure you’re covering the content needs of all your audience members. 

SEO ProTip: Do your SEO keyword research now - don't choose final topics without verifying there's search demand for your idea. And choosing a keyword now lets you create a title and content that incorporates that keyword so it's easier to rank higher in Google's search results which will let your blog posts bring traffic to your website. If you're not sure how to do all of this  take my free class and I'll show you how to get started. 

 

Moving to Content Production And Doing it Quickly!

I break my content planning and production into two separate parts to make my focus easier. You can do whatever works best for you. I’ve found it easier to stay in a creative mindset this way. I block time out on the calendar to focus on the tasks without disruption. Setting aside a block of 2-4 hours is the most beneficial. It gives me enough time to focus on writing blog posts and not having to stop for meetings or school pickup or whatever in the middle. Choose your time block based on the best time for you. If you're most creative in the early morning, you probably want to write early rather than trying to do it from 3-5 pm. I like to write all my blog posts one day and be done for the month. If writing isn't fast for you, you might want to start with writing two of them one day and then set another session a day or two later to write the other two. Again, do what works best for you. 

You'll edit your blog posts at a different time. You don't need to worry about that when you write. Just write your blog posts, and the next time you work on content, you edit. If you're a great editor, awesome. If you're like me and a really good writer but not-so-good editor, use a tool like Grammarly to help you. I had a college professor tell me to stop worrying about editing and focus on writing because I was never going to be employed as an editor, but I could write better than most  (this was in journalism school 🤣), and today, thanks to Grammarly my editing isn't half bad either. 

Marketing ProTip: Physically block out time in your calendar for both content planning and writing your posts. It will help speed up the process by allowing you uninterrupted time to focus on the projects. Do them on two separate days so you can focus on the calendar one day and writing & editing another.

I keep all of my content in folders and subfolders on my computer. For example, my file structure is - Content, Blog, Quarter, Month, and everything I'm working on for the month is in that folder. On my master spreadsheet, I note what stages things are at: idea, draft, edited, uploaded, scheduled, etc. It makes it easy always to know where things stand for the upcoming month. I'm also a bit Type A, so if that's too much structure for you - do what works for you, my friend. 

Remember to do SEO on Your Blog Posts so they get Traffic from Google!

The final step before you publish your new content is to ensure it's optimized for Google. If you followed the process I taught you in this post, you chose your keywords before you started writing. Now, you will go back through and optimize your page for that keyword. Choose one most important keyword for this page and use it in your title tag, meta description, image file name, image ALT text, and copy. If you're not sure what any of those elements are or what the rules for SEO include, be sure to click on the terms and read the corresponding blog posts. Then, request a copy of my free Beginner's SEO Guide right here - it's got everything you need to know to get started with SEO on your website. 

Write Blog Posts Faster - with AI Tools 

You can write blog posts faster by using AI tools to help with your brainstorming and being very organized and focused. Writing a blog post is easier if you have everything you need to start when you sit down. Spend time focusing on the research and organization part of the process ahead of time, and you’ll be able to write much faster. Don't use AI tools to write your content for you. They don't create the quality content that Google wants to rank high in the search results; there tends to be incorrect information, and they're simply resharing something else that's already out there; it's not new information. Use AI tools to help you brainstorm, but do not use them to write for you. 

Podcast Episode Transcript

Hi, and welcome to the Simple SEO podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Lindteigen. And I'm so glad that you are here with me. Today is a fun day. So, I had a discussion with my students recently about creating blog posts and content and the amount of time that it can take for some of them to create the content.

It made me realize that I bet you would benefit, too, from a quick lesson on batching content and how I make my content development a really easy process. And it's part of how I keep things going on a regular basis, and has enabled me to create that weekly content and do the SEO so that I get thousands of visits to the website each month from SEO.

So, how in the world do you do it, and what do you do to make it faster? So here's the thing. This is a process that I've worked on and perfected over the last decade. So you get lots of learnings in today's lesson. So the first thing that I do, I love to do is brainstorm. Just content development and brainstorming. Do it however you want. Grab your whiteboard, or open a Google doc. If you're kind of old school like me, grab a notepad. There's something about legal pads. I have them all over my office, and I like to just sit and write the ideas, turn on my favorite music, and just think. There are no good ideas. There are no bad ideas. These are just ideas. What questions do you get asked all the time? What questions are you sick and tired of answering about your business? Because those, my friends, are going to be really good content, topic ideas, potentially. So you want to think about that? The questions you get asked, the questions you wish they would ask.

Then, you can do something like go over to Google and use Google's suggested search, and you can start searching and seeing what someone is searching for related to your business. So start by putting in a couple of keywords in the search bar and see what else Google pops up there that it's suggesting because that's often information that people are interested in. You can also look at the people also ask section to look at the related queries; all of that information in your Google search results page itself can be fantastic content topic ideas now. You're going to need to take a class and have a good understanding of how you determine which of these ideas is the best. For my particular business, where do I have the best chance of ranking? What keyword can I find to align with it? All of that will deal with later. For right now, you're just looking for ideas. So turn on some music, grab a pen or your keyboard or your whiteboard marker, whatever you want. And just brainstorm, set a timer for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, however long you want to give it. And just put a bunch of ideas out.

 That's step one. I like to keep a living, breathing content calendar. I keep one that goes for the year. I plan a quarter at a time. I have a tab on that calendar with all the ideas I've thought about that I have not yet created that I might want to create in the future. The other thing you can do is listen to other podcasts like yours, like in your niche, or check out other blogs or see what's happening on Pinterest. Don't ever copy anyone. Don't ever plagiarize.

You can also use a tool like chat GPT. To give you ideas as to the type of content that you might want to create. You know, let, let your GPT engine know who your audience is and what questions they might have and ask for blog topic ideas. There. Again, don't just use something verbatim out of there, but it might be able to give you some ideas. I do that. And I keep that living, breathing document. I update it. When new ideas come to me. And when I'm ready, then the next time that's usually the first session. So just do that.

Then, when you're ready to actually start doing your content development for the month, you know that I teach you, the same as pretty much every other online marketing person, one piece of content each week, one unique piece, whether it's a blog post, a podcast, a YouTube video. It really doesn't matter. Now, if you are doing a podcast or a YouTube video, we do want to have a blog post style item along with it, if you're wanting to get website traffic from Google. So, just having that podcast episode or that YouTube video is not going to be enough for Google. So, you will want to create a content piece that can be optimized. That can also showcase that video or audio piece. Just make sure that we're all on the same page. There. Now it's only going to take you maybe an hour a week extra to do the actual SEO on this. So don't even worry about that.

So, we're going to start by batching. We've got our ideas, we've got our calendar. We know we're going to create content for one month. We're just going to make this easy. You're going to grab your calendar, and you're going to; if you're a student in Simple SEO Content, you already have your calendar template, just go ahead and open it. If you're not one of my students and you don't have one, then you need to just start a document. Look at the upcoming month, which day of the week do you send your content and get that scheduled out and choose from your topic areas, your pillars. One post for each of your pillars for the month. Then, you're going to want to start writing your posts. If you're able to write all four posts in one setting. Awesome. Go ahead and do that. Great. If you can't, if you're not a strong writer, you don't enjoy it. It takes you a long time. Then don't worry about it. Create one. Then, the next time, set some time on your calendar for the next day and create the next one. You don't have to kill yourself. You don't have to be frustrated and stressed out trying to do this. Play to your strengths. If it's easier for you, you're more creative. First thing in the morning. Cool. Make sure you set aside time on your calendar and block it out. I personally put my computer and phone on, do not disturb. I like to try to do that content development, or like I'm recording podcasts right now. The house is empty. I don't want interruptions when I'm trying to create my content. I am batching my content for the podcast right now because this is the third episode that I've recorded today. So. It works. It makes it so much easier for you. So go ahead and write one, post two posts, four posts, whatever it is, and get through what you can today. And then if you did not get through all four of them, go ahead and set time on the calendar. Again, to be able to do it in the future. 

Now we've written. The next thing you're going to do is edit. Now it's up to you. If you're a really strong editor. Cool, great. You do the editing yourself. If you're more like me and a better writer than editor. Just use a tool. I use Grammarly. I also know people really like Hemingway. Just use a tool; let it help you. Let it tell you where to put the commas in the semi-colons and all the other stuff to make sure that you're good to go. So, the next time, you're going to edit it all. I would ideally recommend that you just set aside an hour or so, especially if you're using a tool; it doesn't take that long to edit it. Um, set aside an hour or so to edit all four posts. And then be done. 

And then the next session, that's where you would go in and you would do your optimization. So, hopefully, here, if you're doing it the way that I teach you, you've already done your SEO keyword research before you started writing anything. So you've already got your keyword. If you didn't, make sure you do that next time. Okay. We start with our keyword research. So we know what we're writing about. So go ahead and do your optimization. You will need to write a title tag and a meta description for each of them. That's it; make sure you're using header tags, make sure that your keywords are in your headers and your keywords in your copy, but your keyword should already be in your copy because your post should be about your keyword. So that's your optimization. If you have enough time left, if you're getting pretty quick at your optimization, you've been doing this for a while.

You can go ahead and also make your images at this point. I personally use Canva. I pay for the paid account just because it's easier. It allows me to keep that template in my account, so when I go to make my blog images, it's like five minutes: grab a photo, change a few names, and update the color. If I need on the backdrop of the color on mine. And export them. Now, if you're using Canva and you're exporting four of them at a time, I do that. I create them in a batch. It's going to save them as files 1, 2, 3, and four. I do want you to remember that you need to go back then before you upload them. Rename those files in your file folder. And use your keyword. So keyword dash, the one that looks like the minus sign keyword. And then include your business name because your photos can be searched in Google Images. And having your business name there gives you better chances to show up not only for that keyword but for your business name as well. So then you can shut down and set some time on your calendar for the next session. And that's when you would go ahead and go ahead and log those into, or schedule them into your blog platform. So copy and paste, update your title, tag, your meta description, and upload your images. Do all of that. And go ahead and schedule your blog post. And my friend, that's it. That's the end. Of your actual blog production now.

 If you're repurposing your content, you should be because it makes it easier and it gives you more reach with the content that you're creating. You're also going to want to then go into your email service provider, and you're going to want to batch emails for each of those four blog posts, podcasts, or YouTube videos, and you want to include the links to your content and encourage people to go read that. So go ahead and do that and get those scheduled so that they go out the correct week that's associated with that piece of content.

And then the other thing, if you're on social, which most of you are, go ahead and create your social content using your blog podcast or YouTube video as your base. So, say you have a blog post that's three ideas or three steps to do X, well each of those three steps could be a reel, you could have a carousel, that's all three steps. You could have an image post individually for each of those three steps. There's so much that you can do to repurpose your content. Work smarter, not harder. You can do this.

And. Your content development, your SEO, all of this does not have to be a really super involved process to get results. If you want to learn exactly how to do this step-by-step with pictures and guides and all of that, I have an entire module or an entire lesson in simple SEO content, all about the content that we need to create for our website and our blog and how to batch our content and how to find content, ideas, and keyword ideas and all of that. So, if you're interested, just join me in Simple SEO Content. And I'll walk you through it and that's completely updated and revised class it streamlined. Five modules, my friend, five modules. Each module is a little under an hour. So you're going to get through that whole class. You can watch the entire class in a weekend and then get to work and start implementing. And like I said, your SEO is going to take you about an hour a week. It is so minimal. The amount of time it takes you once you understand, just let me teach you how to do it so that it's a lot easier for you.

All right, my friend, if you have any questions, you can find me um, email me info at etched marketing, or DM me on Instagram. Be sure. And visit the freebies tab. Grab the Beginner's SEO Guide; take SEO 101, the free class. And then, most importantly, join me in Simple SEO Content so that I can show you how to do this and make this all so much easier for you. Let's get some free website traffic coming in. Let's streamline this process, get you ranking on Google, get some website traffic, and start reusing the content that you're creating for your blog for all your other channels. Let me show you how to make this so much easier. All right. My friends, I will see you back here next week.

*Updated May, August, November 2023, and July 2024 by Rachel