How to Write Great Blog Posts Regularly (Even When You Don’t Feel Like It)
Do you remember the statement “content is king”?
I am sure you do. And there is something behind that. If you want some statistics on how many articles are published every day, I have some numbers to reveal you.
According to MarketingProfs it is more than 2 million articles per day. Chartbeat reveals the following numbers – over 92, 000 articles every 24 hours. Impressive, isn’t it?
Despite the numbers, people face the problem of writing new fresh posts every day. Nevertheless, they find ideas and turn them into awesome content.
You might ask yourself:
- “How is it possible to find a fresh idea?”
- “How can I generate more and more articles every day?”
- “How to overcome a writer’s block?”
- “How to find new guest post opportunities?”
I am not surprised with all these questions because I have already found the answers. The answers that helped me write a brand new blog post almost every day (I am a human, I need some rest as well).
I am pretty sure you want to write on a daily basis without any problems, am I right?
Great!
Thus, this post is for you!
I will show you the basic steps towards successful guest posting. Are you ready?
Let’s go!
SIDENOTE: if you need some SEO tips, you should read this 200+ SEO tips guide.
Contents
1. Attention! Writer’s Block
I believe there is no writer in the world who has never ever been a victim of a writer’s block. Let’s imagine that you are an engine that produces ideas for new articles. You might work a month in a constant condition; nevertheless, you will face the problem of absence the ideas for new posts anyway.
Source
Why does this happen?
The reason is pretty evident. Our brain needs some rest and if you bring nose to the grindstone, you will get a zero result.
Likely, you can fix this problem following a few simple but yet effective rules.
Day schedule.
It is very important to have a right working day schedule. However, you should start with your sleeping one. There are various points of view on how many hours a person should sleep every day. Some people claim that it is normal to sleep strictly 8 hours; the others suggest to sleep about 6 hours. From my perspective, it is up to you how many hours you should sleep but I strongly recommend you to go to bed before the midnight. Remember that we are living beings, thus we must go to sleep when it is getting dark and wake up when a day is breaking.
Perhaps, it is a standard to work 8 hours per day and that’s why we are used to start our working day in the morning. Alas, it is a bit hard to leave the bed and drown yourself in work without a few morning ‘attributes’ such as physical exercises, a contrast shower and a cup of coffee (tea).
I heard some experts state that it is far better to start writing an article being hungry. It is believed that your activity will be higher in this way. Again, it is up to you whether you should have a breakfast before writing a post or not. I, personally, disagree with this statement and I can’t start doing anything before I have a solid breakfast.
When it is time to write a piece of content, you must specify for yourself how many breaks are you going to do and how long each break should be. Don’t limit yourself with breaks because your endless sitting in front of the screen of your PC won’t give you any positive results.
I prefer to do about 3 breaks during my working day. Of Course, I don’t take into account my lunch break (1 hour in the afternoon) but these 3 breaks take approximately 15 – 20 minutes each. I like to get a little exercise and switch attention to the things outside the window. Moreover, it would be great if you could have a communication with your relatives (friends) or listen to the music.
By the end of the working day, I would suggest you have a walk in the street or visit some gym. You must unbend the mind and let your body work. And don’t neglect your sleep if your brain asks about it (I mean no watching TV long after midnight).
Plan Your Day With the Help of Special Tools
I know busy people can’t keep in mind everything they have to do over the week. That’s why they should use special tools for organizing a day schedule. I would like to introduce you a few of them:
- Wunderlist
- WeekPlan
- Remember the Milk
It is a free app for different devices you use (iPad, iPhone, Android etc). It works almost the same as other ‘ToDo list’ services but it has a few special features:
• Print your list of tasks if even you can’t login to the device.
• Repeat your tasks, notes and share them with other people.
This app focuses mostly on the most significant tasks you must do over the week. It is pretty easy in use and all you will have to do is to put your tasks according to the priority each of them has. As your main purpose is writing articles, you may put this task atop.
Another one ‘ToDo list’ tool you can use for planning the working week. User-friendly and you won’t miss anything using this tool.
What about a ‘Pomodore technique’?
If you want to improve your work but you don’t know how to do it by yourself, thus you should use this unique technique – Pomodoro technique.
It “sets” you for working 25 minutes without any distractions from the outside. Basically, you can’t do anything else except writing an article (no phone chatting, no listening to the music etc). After each 25 minutes of work, you should do a 15 minutes break (after four ‘Pomodoro’ sets you will have to do a 30 minutes break).
From my point of view, this technique is really useful and you’ll gain a success following this simple “Pomodoro” rule.
2. Need a Fresh Guest Post Idea? No Problem!
Yes, this is, probably, the worst thing that could happen to a writer. The absence of ideas for a new post. I know the questions that revolve in your head when you have no idea what you should write about. Relax! Every question has the answer to it. Thus, I will share with you some tricks on how to find fresh ideas for the post.
Quora is one of the places I attend foremost. This ‘question-answer’ resource provides you with a bunch of questions people ask (and the replies they get). These question you can use as the ideas for new content. Let’s see:
As you can see any keyword you put into a searching box will reveal you the potential topics for your future post. Considering the example I gave you above on ‘Digital marketing’, I must say I wouldn’t change or rephrase anything (just a bit if you want). These questions seem to be great topics to think about.
“How to Generate Traffic with a Zero Marketing Budget”
Or
“Best Practises for Local SEO”
Or
“SEO Tools You Should Use in Your Work” (this one is a pretty tricky one, though)
Well, do you still have some doubts about getting ideas via Quora? I am sure you don’t!
Then let’s have a look the next trick:)
You might wonder how you can use Ahrefs Content Explorer in searching new ideas for your post. This service fits great for this type of activity as well. Just pick up a keyword you are interested in and see what Content Explorer reveals you:
As you’ve already mentioned Ahrefs Content Explorer suggested you a list of topics you can use as ideas for your posts. Of course, you can change the title (it is up to you) but you’ve got the material that is in trend. Let’s see what you can write about:
“15 Step Guideline to Create Your 2017 Digital Marketing Strategy”
Or
“10 Reasons You Need a Digital Marketing Strategy in 2017”
Go ahead and write two fresh articles:)
Isn’t it great, right?
I, personally, use only these two tricks. However, you can ask for help Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique and give a new life some “ancient” piece of content. But I don’t use it at all:)
3. In Search of Guest Post Opportunities
I believe you’ve already guessed what is the first place where you should look for guest post opportunities! Yes, it is Google.
Just put into the searching box the following combinations of phrases and you’ll get what you need:
• Keyword + “write for us”
• Keyword + “submit a guest post”
• Keyword + other variations (maybe you’ll find a few more that work)
The second trick I like the most is searching via Twitter. Yes, it is far better to search for guest post opportunities using this social network. Put into a searching box something like “marketing” + “write for us” and obtain results.
Moreover, I must admit that you could ask other bloggers about guest posting. Some of them might give you a hint on where you can ask for submitting your post. I don’t hesitate of doing that and it gives me positive results.
4. How to send a guest post inquiry successfully
Before you send the inquiry, you should discover the blog you are interested in. Look through what topics the blog accepts; are the articles commented and shared well; is there a guest post guideline. These features will help you understand of what you should write in your inquiry.
I recommend you to send the topic of your post with a few details about it first. Don’t send the article at once. First of all, you should clarify what exactly the blogger needs. His or her comments might help you to ‘chart a course’ and write the piece of content that is in-demand (or correct the one you’ve already written).
Remember it the blogger approved your topic for the article, you will have more chances that he or she won’t refuse you to publish it on the blog. At least, you will have your time to put right the wrongs:)
5. Start Your Writing
Your big challenge starts here (however, if you have already written a dozen of articles before, you won’t have any problems). Nevertheless, your experience and some specialized tools will help you cope with this task. I would like to share some services that help me in writing the articles:
– Grammarly
This service helps me a lot. As you’ve probably mentioned I am not a native speaker, thus it is essential for me to correct the mistakes I make.
– Titlecapitalization
Use this tool for capitalization titles in your article.
– Hemingway Editor
If you want to write in a pure English language, thus this service is for you.
Conclusion
Taking everything mentioned above, I must say that guest posting is your opportunity to share some knowledge, build your credibility and, of course, bring more traffic to your website.
I hope the tricks I listed above will help you always be able to create engaging and powerful content:)
Please, don’t forget to comment and share these tricks.
Author Profile
- Sergey Aliokhin is an Outreach manager at Ahrefs. He spends most of the time discovering and learning SEO and Internet Marketing tendencies. His primal goal is to study and practice new aspects of an outreach strategy. In his spare time, he likes to spend his time with family, visit specialized sports club, study martial arts. If he has nothing to do at all, he prefers reading books on science-fiction and playing the bass guitar.
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