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The 30 minute Blog Post Challenge!

How to create content in record time.

By now you will have heard that having a blog is an essential part of running your website. It helps your SEO efforts, it attracts people to your site and shows your customers that you understand and care about your industry and your service. But how can you keep up with your blog when you have a full-time business to run? Today we are taking the challenge of writing a blog post in 30 minutes and showing you how.

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Whilst a 30-minute blog post is probably not going to be perfect but what it will do is give you experience in creating. It will help you find your own style, the things you like to write about and your own individual style.

Choose your subject
The best posts will be something you care about personally. Your blog is not a place to report the news or provide facts. It is somewhere for you to give your thoughts on things that affect or concern your business and your customers. As soon as you find something that fits this criteria and interests you, try and write for 10 minutes on this subject. As you write you may find that your post takes shape as you create. It’s always better to write down ideas you can delete or edit later rather than forgetting them. Bookmark pages and links, have a notebook for sudden flashes of inspiration. You will soon have a hearty bank of content ideas that you can look to in a rush.

Keep it relevant
Remember that the people that will be reading your blog will be people that have an interest in your business or site. This should be your primary focus. You may have a great interest in certain subjects and can write engaging content about it but people will not be on your site for this. Your content may even be so good that it attracts others to your site, but if these are people that have no interest in your business then there will be no point.

Keep it short.
Posts between 300-700 words in length tend to be the most read. People don’t have a lot of time for reading online content so consider that people may be reading your posts in a short break or perhaps on their phone. Lengthy posts are not just unlikely to be read entirely but may even put people off as they are pressed for time. Once you have chosen a good subject and have practised you will be able to craft a 500 word first draft in 10 minutes or so!

Write Drunk; Revise sober
This mantra is often attributed to Hemingway and whether he said it or not, the point remains valid. Write without care, get all of your ideas down, try to write in your own voice. You may not have to actually get drunk but don’t try to write perfectly first time, every time. It may read like a garbled stream of consciousness at first but you can then return to it with a level head later. A break and a heavy edit will help turn your raw material into an interesting and considered post. Once you have got your content, spend as long reading and rewriting.

Pictures and Links

Spend 5 minutes choosing a good picture and making sure all your links are working and go to the right page. These pictures are what will draw people into your blog. Your links make your content rich and worthwhile. Good content will be interesting enough for people to read as it is, the links are there for people that want to read more in-depth.

This leaves you with 5 minutes to think up a title and a snappy header for your text. This needs to be intriguing as possible as this is what needs to make people stop and take notice. Try to write as many different options as you can and go with what you think sounds best. 5 minutes should be enough time to come up with 10 or so titles.

So, 30 minutes, a few times a week and you can have a great page of content for your website. You can start a discourse with your readers and customers, and when the subject is fitting, find the time to create a longer a more detailed post.

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