How many times have you found yourself stressing out because a blog post was due and you didn’t have anything ready?
Over the past 10 months, writing consistent, value based content has been a game changer in my business and writing blog posts has been a huge part of it.
Blogging is a very powerful part of a cohesive content marketing strategy. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your website, showcase your expertise and promote content upgrades such as workbooks, cheat sheets or checklists to collect email addresses.
But blogging is also a very time-consuming process.
Creating great content takes time and energy. And not everyone has the time to create content on a regular basis, especially when we get busier and have 86402 other things on our plate.
But I have good news for you!
I’ve created a system that helps me plan and write content in advance so I’m not waiting for inspiration to strike and brilliant ideas to flood in.
By following a bulletproof system for creating content for your blog, the entire process becomes less overwhelming.
Follow my simple five step system and bang out content like a pro!
Step 1: Planning & Organizing Blog Post Ideas
Are you struggling with writing blog posts at the very last minute because you are stressing out about coming up with ideas for blog posts? Likely, you don’t have a “system” in place for brainstorming and storing those ideas.
Before we dig into how to plan and organize your blog post ideas, I highly recommend you to come up with three to five core themes. You want to be known as an expert in your industry and not as Wikipedia. In my case, these themes are “Systems and Processes”, “Technology and Automation” and “Team and Delegating”.
Now, we need a place to store your ideas. I love to have a central hub to store all my business projects and To Do’s. I personally use Asana but you can use any other project management tool or even a file sharing platform.
I’m not a big fan of having too many different projects/boards in Asana, so I try to keep all my marketing related tasks and projects in my editorial calendar board. I use the first column of the board as a parking lot for ideas and to store all my blog post ideas in one task, categorized into themes. Each idea then becomes a subtask that includes notes to subheadings, steps, or references.
Then, every time I have to write a new blog post (see Step 2), I open my Asana project and choose on of the ideas listed there and follow the rough structure that I’ve already outlined in the task notes.
Step 2: Writing Your Blog Posts
Do you have a hard time writing your content straight after planning out a launch or doing your tax report?
Depending on the nature of the task we use specific parts of our brain. For analytical and methodical tasks we’re mostly using the left side of the brain. For creative or artistic task, we’re using the right side. I like to use this theory to create my schedule and organize my tasks depending on which part of the brain I use.
Set a time aside in your week and establish routines that get you into writing mode – whether that’s going for a walk, listening to a podcast or reading a book.
I highly recommend you to batch your blog post writing. You’ll notice that once you completed your first piece of content that you feel like the words are flowing and you’re having one of those ‘good’ writing days. Your brain needs time to switch and refocus between different tasks. With batching your blog post writing you stay focused on the task and work becomes easier as you get “in the zone”.
Step 3: Uploading & Publishing
Create a checklist to capture the step-by-step process of how you format, upload and publish your blog post. Add this checklist as a template to your project management tool and copy it for each blog post that you have to write. Rename the checklist according to the title of the blog post and assign due dates.
Once you have a Virtual Assistant on board, you can share this checklist with them and delegate this part of the process.
An example checklist for the whole process could look like the following.
- Create Outline For Blog Post
- Write Blog Post
- Create Graphics
- Proofread Blog Post
- Create Blog Post in WordPress
- Follow formatting guidelines
- Update Key Phrase & Meta Description
- Add Graphic
- Make sure the format of the graphic follows guidelines
- Update Graphic Title with Keyphrase
- Add Alt Text
- Schedule Blog Post
Step 4: Sharing Your Posts
It’s important that you share your blog posts on all your social channels. I recommend that this step is part of your checklist so it can be easily handed over to someone else.
A sample checklist could be:
- Schedule blog post on FB
- Schedule blog post on Planoly
- Schedule blog post on LinkedIn
- Pin Facebook Post to Top of Page
- Add Link to LinkTree or Instagram bio
Step 5: Repurposing
We all know that time is a precious resource and that’s why repurposing your existing content and sharing it with a new audience is so valuable.
Repurposing content is all about getting the content you already have in the hands of more people.
Technically, you can repurpose any of your old blog posts, but I recommend starting with the ones that have performed best (check metrics like unique visitors, comments, reshares on social…).
Here are a few ideas how you can repurpose your existing blog posts:
- Create new blog posts by picking one core idea of the existing blog post and flesh out things in more detail (i.e. I could use this blog post and create a new blog post that solely focuses on repurposing content)
- Update and republish old blog posts that have performed really well in the past but could use a little makeover
- Create an email sequence by repurposing the core ideas into an email of its own and adding a few more instructions, examples, or photos.
- Turn it into a workbook or cheatsheet (this can then be added as a content upgrade to your blog post!)
- Create a video tutorial or live stream by using the text of your blog post as the foundation for your script
- Break your blog post down into smaller chunks and stand-alone ideas and share them on your different social media platforms
Repurposing blog posts can be a big time saver for creating content. One story can lead to dozens of pieces of content and you may even find it efficient to think about repurposing options before you write a new blog post.
RECAP
The thought of creating systems might feel intimidating to you. But know that creating better structures for your business is fundamental for running a manageable business. Systemizing your blog content planning and repurposing will not only save you crazy amount of times that you can use to focus on other areas of your business (or to go your well-deserved yoga class!) but also reduce the stress and overwhelm you feel when it comes to writing your weekly blog posts.
