Blogging isn’t just about typing words and writing long paragraphs on any topic. Blogging is more about engaging storytelling. It’s more creative than strategic. And we all know that the level of creativity is directly proportional to the level of productivity.
However, let’s be honest, even if we’re highly motivated and inspired in one moment, the very next moment we bloggers are lazy and procrastinating. It’s not that we hate writing on our favorite subjects. It’s just that we don’t exactly feel that vibe of working persistently following a consistent pattern.
So how do we tackle that?
There are various ways you can shift your mind to a more productive version. That’s exactly how famous bloggers like Neil Patel, Brian Clark or Michael Arrington find consistency in their work while not losing the quality of their articles as well.
Here are some of the tips that work great for turning you to a more productive blogger;
- Find the Ideal Work Space
Before any tactical or strategic advice what you need to consider is that the place where you site and work is in a good state. You can work in your bed having a laptop or you can keep a desk in your room etc. However the practice that has actually been noted to be effective is to dedicate a separate place for your work.
The reason for this is that your workplace should remind you of your work and goals. This feeling is hard to attain in the same place you party and chill at; your home. It’s true that an external office space can be hard to bear in terms of its expenses. That’s where collaborative spaces play in. There are plenty of places you can join; these places are especially easier to find in big cities.
Just use a search string like Coworking space in Delhi, New York or whatever and you’ll find your ideal workspace while saving big.
- Set Clear Goals
Most of the time, the real problem behind procrastinating and unproductivity is uncertainty. Let it be anything in your life, when you don’t have a certain goal to chase, you’ll not be able to put in the work consistently.
If you have a blog where you constantly publish content, you should set a goal knowing what exactly you want to accomplish through that blog.
Do you want to build your personal brand in a specific industry? Are you trying to promote your business? Or is it just a hobby and you enjoy writing? Your goal will determine how much work is productive for your blog.
Also an additional tip here is to set your goals with respect to a specific timeline. For example you can say you want to hit 2000 daily website visitors till this year. This way you’d have set your goals both for long and short term.
- Make a Content Plan
You’ve identified your goals, both long term and short term, now the next tactical step is to plan your content. By planning I specifically mean identifying your content needs. You have to align your content with the goals you have with your blog.
For example, if your blog is about marketing, you know that it’s a competitive space, so the content you’d have to craft in this category would need to be a lot more detailed and unique than any other category.
Similarly think of the other requirements you have from your blog to add value. Do you need a designer to craft the visuals for your blog posts? Do you need any video content to embed within your articles? All this thought process needs to be counted when you plan your content.
This will bring a lot more clarity to your blog and hence simply things for you.
- Make a Content Calendar & Stick to it
Firstly don’t confuse a content plan with a content calendar. Content plan is simply the thought process, the needs identification, the ideation. While a content calendar is a timeline you set for all your current and future pieces of content.
A content calendar has two basic uses. It helps you create uniformity if you want to publish a lot of blog posts. Because at times you’ll have 2 blog posts written, 3 outlines prepared, 4 off-site articles submitted and a few more posts you just thought of. So to clear the mess you have to set dates and statuses on all the content you create.
Apart from this a calendar also helps in the entire process of creating content. From ideation, to outline, to writing the content, to getting the designs/visuals ready, there are a lot of stages your blog posts will go through and a calendar can be massively helpful in that.
What’s easy is to make a content calendar however your productivity prevails when you stick to it.
- Limit Your Distractions
One of the hardest things to overcome as a blogger is your distractions. Since we live in a digital age, we have all kind of distractions summed up into social media. Those Facebook notifications, those Whatsapp messages, those Youtube videos, all of them take away most of your productive time and it’s a fact.
So how do you overcome this?
You can do so by using tools like Offtime, Moment and Flipd to put a pause on your social media accounts while you sit for work. These applications can block whatever social application you want to block and thus you can focus on your writing without getting distracted every second.
- Breakdown Your Articles Structurally
Writing in just one go in the form of an essay is no longer a viable practice. Smart bloggers know that structuring the blog post in sections would be helpful for the reader while reading as well as for them to write efficiently.
All you have to do is make an outline before starting and divide the complete article into smaller sections. This way you can keep a uniform approach of starting, reaching the mid and finishing the article.
Also this approach allows you to track your progress and gives you a sense of accomplishment as you complete one section. These small victories will lead you to execute more and more.
- Take Breaks in Your Writing
One of the most common mistakes bloggers make is that they aim to write as much as possible in one go. Although it does sound very productive and shows persistency, still it doesn’t end up well if we measure the overall accomplishment through this approach.
There are two problems that rise.
First of all as humans we get our energy drained out both physically and mentally as we work constantly sitting in the same place. Thus you might even be putting more time trying to work on it all in one session.
Secondly the quality of your work would be worse that way. If you take regular break within your work, even if it’s just a few minutes’ walk, your brain would be a lot fresher to continue the task again.
- Read Content From Other Bloggers
As you spend time on blogging on your own ideas and crafting your own content, you should also take out some fraction of it to read the content of your fellow bloggers. It can be in your own niche as well as in slightly relevant niches as well. Reading content from other bloggers inspires you, gives you clarity over your weak points and brings a new innovative idea to your mind.
For example, you gave a read to a blog post of another blogger on a topic which was recently covered by you as well. Reading that post you may find that he added some nice visuals, more statistical data and linked to resources which you didn’t. Thus in a look you now know what needs to be improved in your writing and content creation.
Other than this, the consistency of others, specially your competitors, always motivates you to do more.
- Create in Advance
There’d be occasions when you’d be free from all your other tasks and thus will have a lot of time free. And then there’d be instances where you’d be extremely busy. So in order to be really productive and accomplish your goals on a consistent basis, you’d need to create content in advance.
For example, let’s say that you know the next Tuesday you’re going to take 3-4 days off. You should plan that week’s content in the current week and write a blog post in advance which you can then publish. This way you won’t break your pattern while equally taking the time off.
10. Be Healthy & Exercise
It’s an established medical fact that both your body and your brain perform better when you’re living a healthier lifestyle. Most of the careers that are powered by Laptops and other tech gadgets require the person to sit on a chair all day which obviously create health related problems.
To tackle this you should indulge in healthy eating habits and take some time out for exercise. You don’t have to go hard on yourself. Evening a half an hour jog time or running can help you being more creative as well as productive.
