How to Blog Faster: Tips From Six Experts

One of the biggest complaints I hear from writers, authors and bloggers is this: Blogging takes too long. Sometimes writing and publishing a post can take a long time…but blogging doesn’t have to be a time-consuming process. You can blog faster.

That said, some successful bloggers choose to spend more time on their posts—and with good reason. Yet, they all have ways to increase their blogging productivity and speed.

To help you increase your blogging speed—and your effectiveness and output as a blogger—I asked six seasoned bloggers for their best advice on the topic. Their responses to three basic questions provide you with insight into their writing process and useful tips.

Some of these experts take more (or less) time to write a post. Some write more (or less) frequently. Some write longer (or shorter) posts. The reasons for each choice are valid as are all the advice, tools and tricks they offer.

Joel Friedlander: Prepare Well, Use Stock Photos, and Write with Markdown

How often do you blog, and how long are your posts?

This is an evolutionary question. As a beginning blogger, I posted an article to my blog six days a week in an attempt to get traction—and visitors—quickly. After two years, as the blog evolved, I cut my posting frequency to four times a week, then to three times a week since the six times a week schedule was quite challenging. Now, with a group of contributing writers, I only post an article of my own once a week. My posts usually run about 1,000 words.

How long does it take you to write a post and get it ready for publication (including revisions, editing, finding a photo, and design)?

This depends on preparation. I try to outline or mind map my posts, which makes it much faster and easier when it comes time to write them. I spend about 45 minutes writing a 1,000-word post, and another 20 to 30 minutes editing, doing on-page SEO and finding and preparing a photo to accompany the post.

What three things do you do, or what habits do you have, that help you cut down on your blogging time or produce your posts quickly and effectively?

1. Without a doubt, the number one time saver when it comes to writing posts is preparation. If I have an outline, a mind map or even a list of bullet points that I want to cover, the writing will be fairly quick. Without this preparation it takes much longer
2. I used to spend time searching photo sites like Flickr for Creative Commons-licensed images, and this could take quite a bit of time. Once my blog started producing income, I switch to stock photos, which cost about $1.00 each, and this has saved me quite a bit of time.]
3. Last year I started using the Markdown language to help format my blog articles since I had been using a lot of time putting in HTML codes through the posts. (I don’t like or use the WordPress Visual Editor.) Markdown has saved me considerable formatting time since I can easily write and format at the same time.

Kathleen Gage: Write When You Feel Inspired or are Most Productive

How often do you blog, and how long are your posts?

I try to blog a minimum of once per week. On occasion, I am on a run and will blog for days on end. My blog word count can vary, but, in general, they are 500 to 600 words long. Occasionally, when I am feeling compelled, they can exceed 1,000 words.

How long does it take you to write a post and get it ready for publication (including revisions, editing, finding a photo, and design)?

When I’m inspired, it can be as little as 30 minutes, but if I’m feeling pressure, it can take me a lot longer with stops and starts. Most of my posts are inspired by something that I want to share my perspective on, teach my readers or share insights on.

What do you do, or what habits do you have, that help you cut down on your blogging time or produce your posts quickly and effectively?

I find writing first thing in the morning is my most productive time. This is often when I am most inspired.

Denise Wakeman: Focus on Images, Post Less and Promote More

How often do you blog, and how long are your posts?

When I started blogging in 2004, I posted an average of three times per week. I also was blogging on three to four different blogs. Now, I post every seven to ten days. My posts range from 500 to 1,000 words, depending on the topic and whether or not there is video and/or audio included in the posts.

How long does it take you to write a post and get it ready for publication (including revisions, editing, finding a photo, and design)?

Usually two to three hours at this point, especially because images and other forms of media are so important now for helping your content stand out. I spend time looking for tweets, images, video, Facebook posts, or other rich media I can embed in the post in order to make it rich and interactive.

What three things do you do, or what habits do you have, that help you cut down on your blogging time or produce your posts quickly and effectively?

First, I repurpose content when I can. More specifically, I always post video and audio from my live video events (Hangouts on Air). The content was created during the event, so it’s fast and easy to create a blog post to feature my guest and get more visibility.

Second, I post less often now. If I’m going to spend three to four hours on a post, then after publication I spend even more time promoting the post.

Third, when inspiration strikes, I don’t worry about an editorial calendar. I write in the moment and go with the flow of my idea, so it gets out rather than gets lost in a sea of other ideas.

Rachel Thompson: Poll Readers for Topics, Share Stories an Use Plugins

How often do you blog, and how long are your posts?

I have two blogs—my author blog RachelintehOC.com and my business blog, BadRedheadMedia.com. I blog weekly (at the very least). I often have guests as well, and I also have staff writers. I set up an editorial calendar, so we are all clear on our topics. I often poll my social media for topics and questions, i.e., “What confuses you the most about (insert topic here)?” and write posts on that.

As for length, I find that longer posts do better, with regard to SEO as well as comments and shares. There’s plenty of evidence that longer posts (750 to 1,500 words) perform better as well, contrary to popular belief that shorter posts perform better.

How long does it take you to write a post and get it ready for publication (including revisions, editing, finding a photo, and design)?

I typically chew on an idea (aka, pre-write) for a day or so, so when I go to write the post, it takes me maybe 20 to 30 minutes, tops. I then add links, pictures, etc., and it’s done! I almost always post on Sundays (better day for comments) and then share on Mondays for #MondayBlogs, a hashtag meme I created in 2012 to share blog posts (not for book promo!) that now results in anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 tweets each week. Any blogger is welcome to join. I typically see four to five times the blog traffic on Mondays now.

What three things do you do, or what habits do you have, that help you cut down on your blogging time or produce your posts quickly and effectively?

1. Asking my readers what they want to know helps me always have topics at the ready.
2. Sharing personal “real-life” experiences—stories—always resonate better than graphs and charts. Sure, back up your assertions with facts, but remember the universal truths; they come easily.
3. Use WordPress.org, and take advantage of their plug-ins. They do a lot for you and save you time so you don’t have to add the same info to every post. I does it for you. Besides, WordPress has the best themes and SEO.

Barry Feldman: Be Organized and Repurpose

How often do you blog, and how long are your posts?

At Feldman Creative, I blog weekly. However, I’m also a professional blogger, so if you factor in the various websites I write for, I deliver two to three blog posts each week.

A short blog post for me is roughly 1,000 words, but I often write posts in the 2,000-word range. Recently, I wrote a how-to on guest blogging that ran close to 3,000.

I often say, “Don’t count characters; make your characters count.” The point being, a short post can be just as impactful as a long one. That said, search engines are rewarding the beefier pages, so if you have a lot of useful things to say on a subject, you should.

How long does it take you to write a post and get it ready for publication (including revisions, editing, finding a photo, and design)?

The time I put into a post varies, and I have never actually clocked the process, but I’m guessing four hours is a minimum. I’ve written many blog posts that I’m sure took twelve or more hours.

For me, it’s rarely a start-to-finish task that occurs in a single sitting. I stash ideas as I come up with them. At that time, I may work on headlines an outline and/or do some research. In subsequent steps, I’ll write a first draft and edit it at least once. Also, I never publish my posts immediately. I let them incubate between revs.

Then there are the processes of creating links, images, Calls to Action (CTAs), and optimizing the article for search. I’m fussy as hell. I’d like to think the best bloggers have high standards and put more time into their work.

What three things do you do, or what habits do you have, that help you cut down on your blogging time or produce your posts quickly and effectively?

I don’t produce them quickly, so I won’t be helpful giving tips for how to do so. However, I’m fairly organized and my process enables me to almost always have a post or two in the queue. Some of the things that make this possible include:

1. I keep a very organized swipe file of content I’ve discovered and like, which I’ll cite in my posts.
2. I have numerous posts in an idea stage waiting their turn. Generally, in the doc I’ve captured the main idea and several supporting ideas. Often, I’ll knock out some headlines and paragraphs right when the idea strikes.
3. For all my guest posting—paid and contributed—the publisher must grant me permission to republish my writing. In other words, I own the content, so my queue is usually full and though I don’t republish guest posts soon after they first appear, I get them up eventually.

Frances Caballo: Create a Regular Feature or Roundup

How often do you blog, and how long are your posts?

I blog twice a week for my own blog and write guest posts. All of my posts are at least 750 words, and sometimes longer. When I write for www.TheBookDesigner.com, I write at least 1,000 words because I know Joel Friedlander prefers more detailed posts.

How long does it take you to write a post and get it ready for publication (including revisions, editing, finding a photo, and design)?

The process is involved for me. I read the blogosphere relative to my niche quite thoroughly. When I learn about new applications or when changes in social media occur, I know I’ll want to use that information in a blog post, provided it’s relevant to Indie Authors.

Sometimes I’ll base a blog post on a hangout I listened to or something I read in a social media marketing book.

Writing takes a minimum of one hour, sometimes two to four. Then I go through the following steps:

• Submit my post to Grammarly.com to check the grammar and syntax.
• Create two images.
• Upload the post to my self-hosted blog.
• Add tags.
• Work on my post’s SEO with the SEO by Yoast plugin.
• Add images and text to Social Warfare, a social share plugin I use.
• Prepare recurring tweets on SocialOomph.

In all, it can take me up to four hours to prepare each blog post. Granted, that’s a lot of time, but we’re in the era of content marketing, and I think it’s time well spent.

What do you do, or what habits do you have, that help you cut down on your blogging time or produce your posts quickly and effectively?

Once a week, I feature a Friday Roundup. I write a short social media tip and then include links to other blog posts I found during the week that I thought were important for my readers to see. This cuts my time in half.

What about me? I publish posts on my four blogs six to seven times per week. Three of my blogs are on a twice-per-week schedule and the other is sporadic (no schedule). I also guest post for two sites on a regular basis and write an occasional guest post for other sites as well. (Phew!)

With this in mind, you’ll understand that I have to keep my blogging time short!

A post like this might take me several hours to produce because it requires sending out emails, gathering the information and compiling it all. And, it’s long! Normally, however, my posts take between 45 minutes and 90 minutes, and I keep them to about 300 to 750 words. A fair amount of time might be spent on finding a good image to go with each post and tweaking the SEO, including the title, first paragraph and subheadings, and then adding tags and categories.

My three top time-saving tips are:

1. Write in markdown, or mult-markdown as it is also called. As Joel mentioned, this cuts down on formatting time. Markdown is not hard to learn and takes almost no extra time once you know how to use it.
2. Use Grammarly.com to reduce proofreading and revising time (especially if you are a sole operator). Write, revise, put your post through Grammarly’s editor (and revise as you do), then drop into WordPress, proof on screen using the preview function (once or twice), and hit “publish.”
3. Write about what you know, what interests you and the things about which you feel passionate. This reduces the struggle to find words.

Here’s a bonus tip: Have a blog plan. Knowing what you will write about from day to day saves tons of time! A plan means you won’t ever stare at the computer screen and wonder what to write or make false starts and have to begin again. (If you need support creating a blog plan (or figuring out what to blog about), I can help!) I use monthly, quarterly and sometimes even yearly blog plans. I create them using mind maps.

What did you learn from this post? Are you taking an overly long time to write your posts? Can you shorten your blogging time? Tell me in a comment.

Photo courtesy of RTimages