Successful content isn’t created on the fly. In that same breath, building a successful blog doesn’t happen overnight either. The brands and individuals that see their blogs skyrocket to internet fame have a pretty incredible blogging process in place behind the scenes.
As in any process, you must identify the key steps that work best for you to be your most efficient. When it comes to blogging and producing incredible amounts of content, this idea rings truer than ever. I recently put together a quick video that takes my entire blogging process and condenses it to a brisk 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Take a peek:
Whoa, huh?
Let’s break down what you’re seeing here.
First, I write. Sometimes, my writing comes off the cuff. I can sit at my laptop and write for days. In the video above, you see me jot just over 1,700 words. The tone is typically conversational and informative. Often, I’ll jump between sections to outline my ideas before going back to fill in the blanks. I reread often and edit constantly. In fact, my writing and editing process is probably the least efficient of everything I do for one simple reason: I’m a perfectionist. I studied journalism. I’ve written for newspapers. The editing is an addiction.
Second, I refine. That’s right, I do more editing. I’ll go through the content and add special formatting. Adjust a few subheads. Make tweaks to the phrasing.
Then, I optimize. In the online world, search engine optimization (SEO) is key. It’s the make-or-break detail that determines just what Google thinks of your website. What you should know is that I go into most posts knowing exactly what I’m optimizing for before I even start. But rarely do I actually write specifically for my keyword phrase. This is definitely an area in which I differ from others. Many marketers will write specifically to a phrase — using it as many times as possible as they go. At one point in the video, you’ll see the word “content” highlighted. Because I back track to insert keywords later, this highlight makes it easy for me to see how well I’m catering to Google’s algorithms.
After that, I add graphics. For this particular post, the images were pretty simple. I used my go-to graphics template to create a main banner image and matching Pinterest-ready image for the post.
Then, I add links. As I write, I constantly refer to sources and other content I’ve produced that could be helpful to the reader. When I’ve locked down what the content says, I do a quick pass to link up all the relevant phrases.
Finally, I optimize for sharing. Because this post lacked in visuals, I took advantage of a simple Twitter plugin to make sharing the post super simple. As we scroll through the final post on the site, you’ll see large block quotes with one-click tweeting. This simple interface makes it easy for readers to share directly from my site and boost reach organically!
With the final details in place, we’re ready to schedule the post for launch. The blogging process isn’t the end of the road, though. Once the post launches, we dive into the wild world of social media. As any blogger knows, creating the content is only half the battle. How and where you share it also plays a huge part in driving its success.