8 Ways to Be a More Productive Blog Writer

Here are eight helpful ways to cultivate good habits to be at your most productive as a blog writer.

If you want to be a successful blog writer it’s vital you find ways to become more productive. Especially if you’re trying to write every day. It’s really easy to get frustrated when you can’t think of another article idea, or when you get halfway through a new article not knowing where it’s going or how to end it.

The trick to finding success is writing great blog entries that help lots of people and promoting your work well enough that it can be discovered in the first place.

But first and foremost, if you want to maintain longevity as a blog writer, it’s vital you learn how to be more productive. To use every free minute you have to produce plenty of excellent content.

Here are eight tools for you to become a more productive writer.

Plan Ahead

One of the easiest ways to fail as a blog writer, and certainly one of the easiest ways to lose your productivity, is to not plan ahead. The more you plan ahead, the more successful you’ll be.

Every Sunday I take about ten minutes to write down in a notebook all the articles I want to write and publish on my blog between the following Monday through Sunday.

I learned this trick in graduate school, when to be productive there I needed to plan ahead every week in order to get my papers written, classes prepped, and so forth.

I mostly write about fiction writing, so I think about what ideas I want to explore in this area. Sometimes it’s drafting, sometimes it’s revising, sometimes it’s publishing. I try to mix it up every week.

Whatever your area of expertise is, come up with your topics a week in advance and figure out what days you want to publish your pieces, and then you’ll be ahead of the game!

Write Your Articles Early

There’s little that’s worse for your productivity than pushing your writing later and later, all the way until the end of the day when all you want to do is make dinner and watch TV and not go even near your laptop.

This has definitely happened to me before. I didn’t plan well and therefore had nothing to show for my blog, and most of the time I had to pull pieces from the archive because I had no time (or energy) to write something new.

Pieces from the archive are fine once in a while, but it’s also important to keep your readers interested by offering them new content. To always keep your readers engaged with your latest material.

So try to find time earlier in the day to write your latest article if you can. Get it out of the way so you don’t procrastinate or worse, never get to writing it at all. Write in the morning, and you’ll find yourself producing lots more content every week, I guarantee it.

Give Yourself Time

When I first started to write I never gave myself enough time to write. This caused me to fail time and time again.

I wasn’t writing the right kind of articles, which played a major role, but what also hurt me was always writing and publishing my latest blog entries the same day.

Writing your newest articles a day early helps in many ways…

• You don’t feel rushed.
• You can write on your own time and not feel obligated to write everything early in the day if you don’t want to.
• Your stories rest for a few hours so that by the time you return to them the following day you can revise them with fresh eyes and figure out how to make them shine their brightest.
• You can focus on the design of the story, like headlines, photos, bolded titles, italics, and so on, at a later time, not all at once.

You essentially get the chance to write the articles twice, once when you write them the first time, and second when you revise, design, and proofread before you hit the Publish button.

Doing so makes you look better and makes your stories read better, always.

Write the First Draft Fast

It’s so easy as a blog writer to focus on the design of an article rather than the article itself. To spend ten minutes figuring out your headline and another fifteen minutes finding the perfect photo.

These are all important aspects of the blog writing process, of course, but what I have found maximizes my productivity every day is not caring about any of these things at first… and just writing the first draft of the article fast, no questions asked.

This is another great reason why you need to write your blog entries a day early. Because you can focus on the other stuff tomorrow. For today, just write the article. You can give it a temporary title if you’d like, one you can change later if need be.

But then get started, and write the piece as fast as you can. Don’t stop. Don’t let distractions take over. Just write.

I’ve written many of my most successful blog entries in fifteen minutes or less, even some of the longer ones. You can absolutely do so, too!

Design and Revision Last

As I said before, the design and revision of your newest blog entry are important, and you must put some time into both.

But do it later. Do it later that night, or preferably the following morning. Once you’ve stepped away from the article for long enough, you’ll be refreshed and ready for the second step.

First, take the necessary time to slowly read through the first draft of your article and make the necessary changes and edits. This is everything from completely rewriting a middle passage to fixing typos and spelling errors.

Then get to work on the design. You need a headline that makes readers click on your piece. You need photos that show you’re a professional. And you need some occasional bold and italics and maybe even quotes throughout your article to guide your readers along.

Too much text will turn readers off even if what you’re saying is entertaining, informative, inspirational. Use design to your benefit!

One Article at a Time

You might be compelled to write pieces of different blog entries all at once, especially if you like to publish more than one a day.

Do. Not. Do. This.

It might seem like you’re being more productive when actually you’ll get far less done. You’ll write a piece here and a piece there and you’ll likely get confused enough to not remember what you wanted to say in each new article. You might return to an article you started earlier and not know how to end it!

So write one article at a time. If you have one hour to devote to new blog writing every day, use that time to write two really good pieces, thirty minutes or less devoted to each. I’ve written as many as four blog entries in a single day, but usually by the third piece I’m spent.

One new article a day is great. Two is better if you can manage it. But three or more might burn you out really, really fast, and it’s better to publish one great new article a day than to suddenly go a month writing nothing because you got frustrated or exhausted.

Write the first draft of one new piece, and then, if you have the energy, write one more. After that, take a break.

If you want to, come back later in the day to write more, but it’s not necessary if you feel like you’ve done enough good work. Two new articles a day is super productive, remember that.

Schedule Your Articles

The truth of the matter is this — you will have more productive days than others. You will find a day where you have two or three hours to devote to your blog writing rather than the typical one.

On days when you have more time, feel free to write as much as you want, and once you find yourself with multiple articles, schedule one or two of them to be published the next day… and then maybe schedule two more for later in the week!

This process is helpful when you have days with no time to write, or you’re traveling, or you’re suddenly inundated with work, or whatever it may be.

This is why I suggest planning ahead, preferably the weekend before your long week. If you realize you won’t have any time to write any new blog entries between Thursday and Saturday, then write more earlier in the week… and schedule your articles for later.

Take Breaks

Finally, breaks are essential no matter what kind of work you do, no matter how productive you want to be.

When it comes to blog writing, you have to allow yourself the occasional break, both small and big. A small break can be something as short as a five-minute snack break between writing the next first drafts of one of your articles. It can be taking the afternoon off to restore your own batteries.

A large break can be a day or longer you take away from writing. Many of us simply can’t write, write, write day after day, week after week, month after month. Again, it’s better to take daily breaks to keep yourself productive rather than try to push through and ultimately step away from blog writing indefinitely.

Your health is important. So is your sanity, too. You know yourself better than anyone else. Find a rhythm, a writing schedule, that works best for you, and take all the breaks you need.

You might think you’re wasting your time by doing so… but breaks will actually add to your productivity in the long run.

Use What Works Best

And the last thing that needs to be said? Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t always meet your productivity goals.

Life happens. You’ll make mistakes. You might not write the number of articles for the week you wanted to. It’s okay.

The trick is to try to do a little better when it comes to productivity each passing week. Try to find ways that can help you get more done in a timely fashion and increase your success as a blog writer as much as possible.