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At OverGo we have weekly “Blog Blocks” where 5 of us close our emails, don’t answer phone calls, close out of Facebook and blog on that particular week’s topic. We used to only blog 2-3 times a week and now with this system in place we manage to pump out 5 blogs a week and have also increased our website traffic due to this. Our “Blog Blocks” are actually 2 hours long but some of us have mastered finishing our blog in an hour depending on the topic and how much research it takes.
I’m going to lay out how I tend to write my blog posts. As a preface to my schedule I’ll let you know that I create the blog titles for the team and I try to give people titles on the topic that they have the best knowledge on. Knowing what you’re talking about cuts down on time you need to do research and also helps the blog flow better if you can type from experience instead of solely research.
10 minutes: Research and Outline
I don’t care who you are in the company, how much you know about a topic, or how little time you have to write… research is a must. It helps you with ideas of what to write about, gives you statistics and facts to support what you’re saying, and gives you a direction to take the article in. I also create a quick outline of the main points I want to hit which helps move things along quickly.
20 minutes: Intro
I spend a lot of time on the intro because if your intro isn’t compelling, nobody is going to finish reading the article thus making the hour of your life that you spent writing the article useless. I try to relate to the reader by addressing a pain point with the topic or relate it to what we do in our business. If people can relate to what you’re saying they gain a connection to you as a writer and want to read more about what you have to say.
30-40 minutes: Body
I take the main points of the article that I laid out earlier and make them section headings. Under those headings is where I make my points and use my research. Depending on how many things I want to talk about I keep these sections to 1-2 paragraphs. I try to keep in mind that while blogs are all about educating your audience people also don’t want to sit there and just read a bunch of text. It needs to be laid out well with images and sub headings. Keeping that in mind while you write will cut down time while you’re trying to post it on your website. Now because I did all the research in the beginning, writing the actual body of the blog doesn’t take more than 20 minutes.
50 minutes: Editing and proofreading
Never ever send a blog to be posted without reading through it first. My team sends me their blogs and I edit and post them on our site. I can tell within the first paragraph if someone just sent me their blog and didn’t read through it after they wrote it. It’s my job to edit the blog anyways but it just leaves more opportunities for me to miss things that need to be changed if they don’t take the time to pre-edit it.
So that’s how we do it folks! That’s my intro to the hour long “Blog Block.” I hope you have as much success as we do!
