How to write blog posts - fast
Episode 166 • 14th June 2022 • The Courageous CEO • Janet Murray
00:00:00 00:12:37

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IMPORTANT: THIS TRANSCRIPT IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED. WE GIVE IT A QUICK CHECK THROUGH BUT WE DON’T CORRECT EVERYTHING AS IT’S INTENDED TO HELP YOU FIND PARTS YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO AGAIN - NOT AS AN EXACT TRANSCRIPT. SO THERE MIGHT BE A FEW QUIRKY WORDS/PHRASES HERE!

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Do you find it hard to write blog posts? Maybe you procrastinate about writing them because you're not sure how to get started, or maybe you find it easy to get started. It just takes you ages to write a full blog post I'm Janet Murray I'm content and online business strategies. And in this episode of the courageous content podcast, I'll share my magic strategy for writing blog posts fast.

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What I share in this session is so simple. It might just blow your mind, even if it doesn't, it will definitely make it much easier for you to write blog posts and keep listening to the end, because I'll let you know how you can get your hands on the blog post templates. I talk about in this episode, before I share my magic strategy and what to share,

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the three most common reasons people get stuck with blog posts, writing as I'm sharing them. Do have a think about which ones affect you or have them in the past. So, reason one, you don't have a plan. If you haven't made a plan for your blog posts. If you don't know what you're going to put in each section or paragraph,

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well, as a bit like setting off on a car journey without is that nev you are going to get lost without a sat nav or a map. Getting lost is just inevitable reason to you. Haven't set a deadline. You may have heard about Parkinson's laws. So this is a theory that any task will expand to fit the time available for completion. So if you say I'm going to write a blog post this afternoon,

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then you'll probably delay it. You'll probably procrastinate. And when you eventually get started with no fixed deadline, it could take you hours. When you say, I know a blog post takes me typically around 60 minutes to write or 90 minutes to write. And once you start using the process, I'm going to share in this session, you should be able to do that.

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You will be able to set yourself a goal or a deadline, which means you're far less likely to spend hours on something that you could have done in an hour. Reason, three you're editing as you go, if you spend 20 minutes perfecting your first sentence, and if you stop to correct every error or every word or phrase, you're not sure, but if you like,

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of course, it's going to take you hours to write a blog post. So this solution actually is really simple. There's just three things you need to know or do. So, number one, you need to know exactly what you want to write about. Number two, you need to know the order. You're going to write it in and have that planned out and written down.

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And finally, this one is crucial. You need to draft without editing for want of a better phrase. You just need to vomit it all out onto the page you need just to write in a stream of consciousness. And what you don't want to do is stop to correct spellings or change words, because it's much easier to edit a draft than it is to start from scratch.

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So now onto my magic solution, before I share it, I want to ask you a question. Do you know how to make a list? If I asked you for example, to create shopping list, to create a packing list for when you're going somewhere and you need to pack your suitcase. If I was to ask you to create a to-do list of things you needed to get done today,

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or this week, or this month, would you be able to do that? Of course you would. And if you know how to make a list, you can learn how to plan and draft a blog post super quick, because writing blog posts for your business is simply about making less that's all blog posts are, they are just lists of information, less of instructions,

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lists of steps you need to take, regardless of the topic, it's all a less, regardless of whether a blog post header sounds like a less. So it's something like seven ways to, or five ideas, four, it's still a list. Let me explain with an example. I'm going to use one of the templates from my courageous blog content kit.

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I'll tell you about it in more detail at the end of this episode. So let me give you an example that will illustrate what I mean. And I'm going to use one of the templates from my courageous blog content kit, which basically sets out exactly what you're going to include in your blog post from the title, filling the gaps, title to the introduction,

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to the main body of your blog, to the conclusion and the conclusion isn't ever inclusion. You don't actually need a conclusion, but we'll get to that in just a sec. So let's say you want to write a blog post on how to get motivated when you don't feel like writing a blog post, which is a bit better, but let's go with it.

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If I was to ask you to give me a list of things you could do to get motivated, I'm pretty sure you could do it, even though you may not be an expert in either productivity or blogging. Now I am definitely no expert in productivity, but I'm still going to give it a go using one of the templates for my courageous blog content kit.

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I'm going to plan out that exact blog post with you now. So it's a blog post on how to get motivated when you don't feel like writing a blog. So my courageous blog content kit contains a hundred fill in the gaps, titles for blog posts. And the one I'm using here is how to insert desired outcome when insert what is preventing desired outcome.

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And I always put a word count. This one is 15 to 25 words. So that's really easy to turn into a blog post title. So how's it get motivated to write blog posts when you don't feel like it done? I can easily adapt that fill in the gaps title for a whole host of other topics. So if I was a piano teacher,

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I might do how to improve your piano playing even when you don't feel like practicing. If I coached people in public speaking, I might write a blog on how to give a great public speaking performance. Even when you've got a cold. If I had a product based business, selling gloves specifically for people who have Raynaud's disease. And if you haven't heard of that,

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it's a condition that basically affects the circulation and your fingers and toes and makes your fingers go all and horrible than causes chilblains and all sorts. It's horrible with that type of business. I might take that fill in the gaps title and turn it into how to find winter gloves. When you suffer from Raynaud's disease or how to find the best gloves for poor circulation.

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When you have Raynaud's disease, you could literally take that and adapt it for any type of business or industry. So that's your title. Let's talk about introductions. The good news is your introduction needs to be about a fraction of what you're probably writing. Now, if you're already blogging, most people just waffle through the introduction of their blog post. They just write a load of stuff at the beginning.

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That doesn't actually say anything. When I was an editor working on newspapers, I worked mainly for the guardian. I would often just cut people's first sentence because it was often just waffle. And that was even professional, who you would regard as professional writers, the templates that I've created for my courageous blog content cap only allow you to have two sentences in your introduction.

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The first sentence is what I often refer to as the establishing sentence. So it really does need to nail the problem that your blog post solves and the second summarizes what will be covered in the blog post. So if I was writing a blog post on how to get motivated, when you don't feel like writing a blog post, I would simply write something like sentence one,

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cause a blog post, right? But don't feel motivated. So that's my establishing sentence. Here's some practical ideas to get you in the mood for writing your blog. So in that second sentence, I'm simply saying what's going to be in this blog is quite similar to the title. That's not necessarily a problem, but it's very clear what this blog is going to be about and what I'm going to be talking about.

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I don't need to say any more than that. And because blog posts are just less, even though I'm not an expert in productivity, I could still have a go at listing out five strategies that you could use to get yourself motivated. So these are the ideas I wrote down. Idea one, listen to some music you'd have to get in the mood idea to give yourself a reward.

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Afterwards, for example, 15 minutes of tick, tock idea, three, set a timer and waste the clock to get your blog draft finished idea for chunk it down, make a list of the points you'll cover with a word count for each idea. Five, remind yourself of how writing the blog will benefit you and your business. Now, if I was an expert on productivity and this was the kind of thing I was helping people with every day,

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I would have no problem in fleshing. Each of those ideas out into a paragraph of about a hundred to 150 words and adding a conclusion, and actually you don't need to add a conclusion to a blog post. You just need to add a call to action. Your call to action is what you want people to do next. So do you want them to read another blog post?

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Do you want them to click on a link to find out more about related product or service, but you don't need a waffly conclusion that says, you know, like an essay writing at school to conclude, these are really great ways that you can get motivated. You don't need that. Just tell people what they need to do next. No conclusion, just cut it.

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It's often just waffle and fluff. Now at this stage, you might be wondering, well, how long does a business blog need to be? And it's one of those. How long is a piece of string questions? Because it really does come down to quality rather than quantity. They used to be this myth flying around when I first got online and started to get interested in things like SEO and finding out how to get my own blogs ranking in Google.

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And this myth was that a blog posts had to be at least I think it was a thousand words in order to rank in Google. And it's just ridiculous. If you have a look at your own Google search history and look at what came up top in your searches, you will almost certainly find that there are some really long in-depth blog posts or piece of content that are thousands of words long.

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And there's also some three to 500 words, maybe even less, in fact. And that's because Google's aim is to serve up the best piece of content on a specific topic. So if you find that you're pushing yourself to write 800 a thousand words on a particular topic, that's probably an indicator that you haven't chosen the right topic. It's better to write 500 words of really good copy.

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That's really helpful to people and then give a clear call to action to whatever the next step is that you want to take then to waffle your way through, just to get to a thousand words, it's really not going to help. And actually following my blog post writing strategy can help you avoid ending up in that situation, which I've seen so many business owners end up in where you get halfway through a blog post and you think,

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oh, actually I don't think I have enough to say on this. If you start with the template, if you start by mapping out what you're gonna say in your introduction and just making that list of the five things or seven things that you're going to cover in your blog post, you will very quickly, you become aware if you don't think you could write a hundred,

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250 words on each of those things. Similarly, if you don't think you could say what you needed to say in a hundred, 150 words that is too long for a blog post, that could be an indicator that you need to take that idea you've got for a blog post and maybe split it into three or four. And it's much better to discover that actually the idea you had for one blog post would actually make for at the early stages when you're just planning then to get partway through and realize you've messed up because layout is really important when it comes to blog content,

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you shouldn't have any more than about a hundred, 150 words without some kind of layout device. It could be bullet points, pictures, infographics, big blocks of texts. Aren't going to put leaders off. So again, you're avoiding people getting bored with your writing, even in the planning process. So I hope that has demystified the blog writing process for you.

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I hope you found that useful. And if you'd like to save time on creating blog content for your business, you should absolutely consider investing in my courageous blog content care. It contains a hundred filling the gaps, blog post titles, 24, fill in the gaps, blog, post templates, the four different types of blog posts. I recommend all business owners create to find out more about that.

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Listen to my podcast on the four types of book content, every business owner needs to create. I'll link to it in the show notes my Courageous blog content kit also contains templates for social media posts, email newsletters, and other content that will help you to promote your blog content. And yes, you do need to promote your blog content. I linked to my Courageous blog content kit in the show notes.

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