Don’t Write Blog Posts on the Back of an Envelope While Riding the Train

“Lincoln would never have waited until the last minute to write such an important oration,” assert the authors of The Big Book of Big Secrets, debunking the popular myth that Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while riding the train on the way to the speech itself. To prove their conclusion, they cite not only the fact that several drafts of that address have been archived at the Library of Congress, but the common sense observation that 1860s-period train cars bounced and swayed enough to make writing impossible.

Since my company offers not only blog writing services, but corporate blog training sessions, I’m always reading others’ blog posts and learning new ideas I can emphasize in those training meetings. Bottom line is, at Say It For You, we don’t advise writing blog posts on the way to “the presentation”.
.
In fact, before ever sitting down to their computer to create blog posts, content writers have lots to do, beginning with planning, which eats up 20% of blogging time. That phase begins with choosing a single focus under the general theme of “leitmotif” which has ideally been chosen when the blog was first created. The next 25% of the content writer’s time involves research, which includes following news stories, reading blogs related to the subject, interviewing experts, and gather facts, statistics, and definitions.

30% of the blog content writer’s time is typically spend writing and editing the post itself, making sure to incorporate keyword phrases in the title and spread throughout the post. The remaining 25% of the time is best spent “dressing’ the blog and actually posting it online, enhancing the post with photos, illustrations, or stock art, as well as adding bolding and italics to emphasize key points.

As an overarching guide to the process, blog content writers need to remember that the initial messaging visitors see needs to answer their primary questions about how you can help them… Online searchers are not likely to spare more than a few seconds to decide if they’ve come to the right place for the products, information, or services they need. Next, you must be able to differentiate your offering from your competitors’.

To be sure, train rides today are much smoother than they were back in the Honest Abe Lincoln era. But, honestly, at Say It For You, we know that doing a good job at content creation for marketing blogs takes time.