Sandcurves

It might depend on your style.  It certainly depends on your comfort with writing.  It also depends on your familiarity with a given topic.  But it can be done by any blogger. 

If you need to churn out a blog post fast, some background preparation can help you.  Lets see how we could do just that. 

There are many reasons why you may be wanting to write fast blog posts.  To react to something you read elsewhere, cover some breaking news, your boss is putting you under pressure, you were on holiday and haven't had time to prepare yourself, or you were simply plain old lazy (I've been there).  It doesn't matter.  If you have a system in place for dealing with it, planned out in advance, you'll be ready for these posts when they show up. 

Personally I often struggle to hold myself back and just spew out ideas and words, and I have often come to regret it later.  The techniques written here are part of my attempt to reign in those urges. 

Make some templates

The way to deal with these rushed posts is to create some templates.  My use of the word 'template' here is stretching conventional semantics a bit… you'll combine an outline and a workflow that goes with it. 

While you're setting this system up, keep in mind your own writing style and the topics or content you have to deal with.  Make it work for you. 

First off - do some homework.  Go ahead and read a couple of good blog posts; ones that use the topics you cover or the style you write with.  I do this part regularly with preparation for any writing, and find it helps me a lot. 

If you find a blog post that reads nicely, try to break it down into a generic outline, one that can be used regardless of the actual content you are working with.  Look for things like lead-in lines, introductions, where details are given and just how much of a story is being told in each section.  In other words, break down exactly how the blog post was written. 

Next you need to craft that into a simple outline, together with notes on how you'd work through it.  Think of it in the context of writing your own blog posts. 

Don't get carried away - all you want is a simple workflow that you can re-use for a number of blog posts. 

When the time comes to actually using this technique for churning out blog posts on a deadline, you'll need to do something along these lines:

This could be our outline - I'll assume yours has about double the complexity of this outline, and not to much more than that. 

• Title or Header
• Opening Line
• Body
• Conclusion

I know that seems to easy, but it's just to illustrate the workflow you could adopt. 

Headline

Have some simple headline ideas in place - your headline is crucial to actually getting your copy read.  I won't go into to much detail here - there is a lot written about it on the web.  The best example, or at least the best known example, comes from copyblogger.com with their Magnetic Headlines series. 

Once you've got a cracker headline, go straight to writing the body content. 

Body

I'll assume that in your outline the 'body' will have some structure already, but here's a way you could tackle writing the body. 

Keep the body short and to the point.  You may want to use lists - it's a good way to stay on topic while keeping the content short and readable.  It suits the way people read on the web very well. 

Resist the urge ~ and this is where I totally fall of the wagon regularly ~ resist the urge to write stuff just to create content.  Don't just write filler text because you feel that the post is too short - nobody wants to read your filler stuff. 

A good approach is to visualize your content - see the "bits" of your story almost as a series of pictures.  Now, with minimal effort, just write each bit, move from one "picture" to the next without adding in any "fluff".

Remember to do this writing fast.  After you have your body, it is quite natural to write the conclusion.  Keep it short - just wrap up the post, nothing more. 

On the web, especially, you don't want to make your point in the conclusion, a number of your readers will never read it.  Think of a blog post conclusion as quietly closing the door to your kids room when you've put them to bed, rather than a grand finale of a big band. 

By this time you should have churned out a brilliant header, quickly written the body, choosing the points well, and finally closed the post off naturally.  This should all have been quick and fluid. 

Opening Line

Now go back and write an opening line.  The header is what most likely brought your visitors to the page in the first place, but they could just a quickly leave.  The opening line is a big part of hooking them, turning visitors to readers. 

To do this, be sure you know what you said in your blog post - perhaps read it once or twice through.  Write your opening line in a way that really makes a visitor curios to read more.  You can use techniques to do this, such as making a promise, asking a question or taking an unusual prospective on the topic in that first line. 

Make sure your opening line is quick and short, however you may get a little creative here, more so than deeper in your post. 

Review and Clean Up

Hopefully having this structure in place allowed you to churn out the post quickly.  Now you'll want to use some of that saved time to review it in detail.  In review you want to do two very important things. 

Firstly, read your copy as a prospective reader.  As yourself "Were I not me, would I want to read this?"  If not, you'll need to do some cleaning and organizing of your thoughts. 

Secondly, you need to make sure that you find all the typos and spelling errors you may have missed while writing (this is one of my massive weaknesses and something I am trying hard to work on in my writing).  Also make sure that your logic is followed through the story.  Each paragraph must make sense. 

Once it's done, find your images (if you are going to use some), and post your blog.  Do this a couple times and I am sure you'll be churning out blog posts really fast when you need to.  Of course, this is never a replacement for good, well planned and structured posts, just a little crutch when you need it. 

I'll chat about writing for your readers in my next planned Sandcurves.com blog post.  We'll call it " What guiding taught me about blogging".  I'm aiming to post it on Thursday, but I'm not promising - perhaps Friday. 

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