Are you spending 3 hours for publishing a new blog post of 1500 words?

If your answer is yes, then this post is for you.

I will help you blog faster and triple your blogging speed.

Keep reading.

Writing fast helps you create more content in less time. If you learn the art of writing fast, it’ll be the ultimate edge you’ll have over your other competitors.

It’ll help you get more time to spend off-screen!

After reading this article, you will manage to write a quality blog post only in an hour or two.

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How to write blog posts faster?

These tips will help you quickly write high quality blog posts. These tips are proven again and again for me to save lots of time publishing blog posts.

Let’s dive in.

Finding effective blog topics fast

For most of the bloggers, finding effective ideas to blog about takes a lot of time. They start scratching their head thinking what to blog about, the moment they’re in the writing mode.

You need to research your blog topics beforehand.

If you ask me, I typically research an entire month’s worth of blog post ideas ahead of time.

Say for example I need to publish 10 blog posts this month. I will research those topics on one-fine day, for say like 2 hours.

This allows me to have a macro-view of my content strategy and help me reach my goals.

Here are some of the ways by which you can find good blog post ideas:

1. Dig into older blog posts for new blog topic ideas (Interlinking opportunities). This is what I do when I run out of ideas.
2. Make use of competitor research tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to find the blog post topics that are driving good traffic to your competitors.
3. Make use of tools like Buzzsumo to analyze the articles that have gone viral in your niche.
4. Use blog topic generators online.
5. Prepare a blog post on frequent questions asked in forums. Look up in Quora and other niche forums.
6. Analyze comments on your blog. It helps you look at other readers’ views on a particular subject. It helps you get new ideas.
7. Spend an hour a month to brainstorm month’s worth of blog topic ideas.

Once I prepare a rough list of ideas to blog about, I dump those ideas into my Notion bucket list.

Prepare blog outline

Writing a blog post without an outline is like preparing a dish without all the ingredients in place.

When I see people who do research collation and writing at the same time, I envision a person running to the store every time he needs an ingredient amidst preparing a dish.

Outlining is the biggest open secret of me able to churn out lengthy blog posts in a matter of 3-4 hours.

It’s very important to prepare the outline of the article before creating your blog post.

Initially, blog post outlining feels like you’re pouring in some extra work. But the extent to which it eases your writing process is worth it.

These are the things I do when it comes to outlines:

• I write the goal of the article, keywords to cover and also the headings/subheadings I need to discuss about.
• I also keep a list of resources I may need to refer while writing the actual blog post.
• I dump all my research work in my outline, and properly organize the arguments to prevent researching while writing.

When you have a proper outline in place, it prevents you going off-stream from the main topic.

While writing your blog posts, you may go on and on…and forget where you are! This is a big blunder you commit as an avid blogger.

Once the main points are written in the form of outline, you’ll have greater clarity, good hierarchy in place, tend to stay on-topic, and make sure the article is of high quality.

I make use of Dynalist for all my blog post outlining.

It helps you create your blog outline with unlimited indentations, so that you can really drill down the subtopics.

Added to this, each of these subtopic bullet points are clickable/zoomable giving you a macro-view of that subsection.

Writing your blog post with a outline is as easy as fill-in-the-blanks, you just need to expand upon the bullet points.

On the other hand, you should also not let the outline stunt your creativity. So, always remember that the outlines are elastic.

Once you have a thorough outline in mind, you’ll have a crystal-clear clarity of what the post will be about.

And.

CLARITY = POWER.

Set a deadline

Without a deadline, writing a blog post takes forever.

Put a deadline for your blog post. Within that time, you have to finish writing.

Make it compulsory.

This automatically makes you stay out of distractions.

This is one of the effective tips, I follow to speed up my blogging.

It also saves you time and makes you highly productive.

You can use tools like Orzeszek Timer, Timer for Mac. These tools help you track the time you took, and help you reach your goal. I use a tool called Be Focused Pro for Mac.

Writing an article without a deadline takes forever, sometimes even months!

Just tell me how many unfinished articles are there in your closet?

Ignore typos and grammatical mistakes

Remember that while blogging, you are not writing with a pen on paper. You can edit the post whenever you want.

So, just let it flow.

Correcting typos and mistakes in the middle of writing slows up the process and hinders your focus.

Rather than hovering back to the typo or grammatical mistakes in the middle of writing, keep the mistakes as they are.

It may initially be irresistible to avoid correcting typos while writing your blog posts, but it’s not impossible.

Your flow of ideas will be stuck when you stop and edit the mistakes. It is the real time sucker. It may be very hard to put back the same flow.

Don’t let your mistakes steal your ideas. Make a way for ideas to flow freely.

Writing and proofreading are two different processes, don’t mix them up like a filthy cocktail!

Write what hits your mind first

You should not let your fingers lift out of the keyboard. Write whatever strikes to your mind.

You should not set your mind like:

• I should write the introduction first.
• I should write the conclusion last.

When you start writing, write whatever you find easy.

Do you like writing the damn conclusion first?

Write it!

Following a particular pattern while writing blog posts, limits your creativity and sporadic flow of ideas.

Write whatever strikes.

Don’t worry about structuring while writing. Structuring is a process of proofreading; not writing.

Consider voice to text

Why not make use of voice to text and just let your writing run?

Voice to text software like Nuance Dragon (Windows), Dictation (Mac), can do the job for you.

Use a microphone (preferably headset) specifically designed for voice to text purpose.

These softwares train themselves to your accent using their machine learning algorithms. So, it’s a matter of patience.

Using these softwares may be annoying initially. They will become cleverer incrementally as you use them.

Make sure you amp up your PC configs like RAM for better performance and UX.

You also need to make use of good mics like Blue Yeti, Snowball or any Sennheiser PC headsets.

Here’s an excellent video guide on using speech-to-text for blogging by Jon Morrow.

Be relevant

Learn to convey what you exactly want to convey.

Cut redundancy.

Support your post with some examples, case studies, resources and even white papers.

Keep it to the point. No more, no less.

If you are writing a post on “bad effects of gluten”, you don’t need to answer “what is gluten”? Because readers already know what it is, before clicking on your post title.

By cutting out writing some generic content, you can save a lot of time blogging.

Keep away all distractions

Smartphone ringing, LED blinking, email notifications, WhatsApp messages, Facebook chats, Tweets, dear ones calling, that too while blogging!

Keep away all these things.

Put them in your cupboard and lock them.

According to Travis Bradberry, you will be less productive and efficient in blogging when multitasking is done.

And it’s common sense too that, human beings are not meant for multi-tasking. Computers are good at it.

Devote your complete mind to blogging.

Only one task at a time.

Keep a checklist

You often forget to insert links, tags, category or sometimes to even insert images. You will struggle to do these tasks every time.

Rather than wasting time on what to do, prepare a checklist of things to do while blogging or after blogging.

You can make the task easier by using WordPress plugins like Good Writer Checkify.

It lets you create a checklist of things to do while blogging.

You can free up your mind space, by not thinking what to do – rather doing what you want to do.

I have several checklists and SOPs that help me get a clarity about things to do in blogging.

Beautify the post in the end

Do all these text formatting things in the end.

While writing you can use some dots or asterisks like (… or **) to mark the things.

What I do is I put asterisks in front of the texts that need linking or reconsideration.

While proofreading, I can search (cmd + f) for those asterisks.

I also enclose important paragraphs in square brackets, so that while publishing my content manager will be able to add in content boxes to them.

They serve as speed hacks in the time of final formatting.

It’s as simple as that.

Get a content manager

Do you ever feel like you’re not tapping into your creative juices all the time when blogging?

It’s because you try to do everything.

You gotta do what you are good at, and delegate/outsource rest of the work.

If you’re doing outlining, writing, editing, proofreading, and publishing yourself, you won’t simply get enough time.

If you are publishing at least 10 blog posts every week in total for all your blogs, you need to consider getting a content manager.

A content manager’s role would be to:

• Prepare the blog outlines
• Proofread and edit the posts
• SEO optimize
• Format and structurize the post
• Publish on WordPress

As you can see with a content manager in place, it gets you rid of doing these things and focus on getting more content created.

You can get a remote content manager or an in-house. With an in-house content manager you’ll have more flexibility and you can assign tasks on-demand.

When it comes to VAs, you may need to look for Filipino or Indian content managers who are good at communication. They can work at $5 – $7 an hour.

However, I prefer to assign them tasks in bulk and pay them on per-project basis.

Or have a salaried VA to save costs on hourly price.

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How to blog faster on WordPress?

In this section, let me give you some of the best productivity strategies that I’m using when it comes to publishing content on WordPress.

Let’s get started.

Import Docx to WordPress

If you write your blog post directly in WordPress, you may need to reconsider.

In WordPress, it may be harder to collaborate with your proofreader or content manager and it also has some serious limitations when compared to other document editors.

I use Google Docs to create all my blog posts.

In Google Docs, I just start writing the blog post.

Whenever I need to include any image in my article, all I need to do is copy the image as a screenshot (CMD+Ctrl+4), and then just paste it in Google Docs.

With this, I don’t need to download the image, resize it and then upload it.

When I complete the blog post, the names of the images will be added using Google Docs’ Alt text functionality.

This text will be used as file names by WordPress while uploading.

Once I complete the article, I download it as docx file.

Now, I’ll import the Docx file to WordPress using the Mammoth Docx Converter plugin.

I’ll choose the Docx file I downloaded and click upload button. The plugin uploads all the content along with images to WordPress. It may take few minutes if there are many images to upload.

After the upload is complete, if you are using WordPress block editor, you may want to click on “convert to blocks”.

Now, you may need to add in some internal links, do the SEO and your blog post is all set to be published.

Automate images

Earlier in my blogging career, I used to manually resize and compress the images. I also used to manually add alt texts to the images.

For resizing and compressing the images, I do make use of a plugin called ShortPixel. I’ve tried dozens of plugins in my career, and none of the them came close to ShortPixel when it comes to compression and efficiency.

I have it installed on my WordPress blog and here are the settings.

If the screenshots I take a on my retina 27-inch Mac blows the resolutions out, ShortPixel does a good job of resizing it too.

And the best is that I can exclude some images from being optimized based on some patterns.

If I think for some images (especially JPGs), ShortPixel blows out the quality, I can exclude them by including the word – “raw” in the filename.

I also make use of Format Media Titles plugin to auto-create alt texts for me based on the file names.

With this, it’s often necessary for you to ensure that the image name is descriptive enough to be used as an alt text.

This workflow is a huge-time-saver for me, and encourage me to use more and more images in my blog posts.

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Apps for blogging faster

I’ll mention you some of the apps that help me everyday speed up my blogging workflow.

If you use these tools in your workflow, you’ll be far more ahead of your competitors, who won’t bother using these.

Clipboard manager

I use Copy’em Paste app for my Mac machines. This is an ultimate clipboard manager for Mac.

If you’re into Windows, you can make use of Ditto – Clipboard manager, which has been updated recently with awesome features.

This clipboard helps you get more things done. It remembers the text you copied, weeks or months ago.

Anytime you’re pasting something, you can search your clipboard. The clipboard managers can hold text, formatted text, images, any format of files, and even your video editor clips!

These were some of the data in my clipboard manager at the time of writing this paragraph. I can copy multiple images, and paste them in one go in Google Docs, while creating blog posts.

I wonder why this crucial feature is still not part of the MacOS or Windows natively.

Text expander

I use aText, a text expander app for Mac. If you are on Windows, you have PhraseExpress.

Using these text expanders helps you save repeated keystrokes in various circumstances.

For example, if you see the above screenshot, everytime I enter the keyword/abbreviation #hex and hit my delimiter (set as Tab), it’ll expand my blog’s color HEX code for me.

You can also make it write a complete sentence or a paragraph. There are many options like you can make the cursor appear at any place of the text while expanding.

Or you can enable quick login to your favorite sites by adding the keypress of “Tab” in the middle.

There are various advanced options to play with.

These are the two apps I feel are very important. I also use many apps for Mac and also for Windows, you can refer them below.

• 25 Best Mac Apps for Bloggers (I Can’t Live Without Them!)
• Top 21 Free Windows Programs Every Blogger Should Have

Final words

Make sure that your speed blogging does not kill the quality of the article.

You can observe that in the above points, I have not mentioned any points that sacrifice quality of the content. The above points increase productivity.

You can churn out 3 blog posts in place of a single blog post.

You also need to remember that writing is a practice. You need to cultivate the habit of writing daily.

Write at least 700 words on anything and everything daily.

Because, without it you won’t get an endless stream of clear thoughts for you to pen down. You need to train and workout your brain muscles.

Hope you found this article on how to blog faster and get more done in less time.