Blog Better, Blog Faster: How to Increase Your Blogging Productivity

Have you ever sat in front of your PC for hours working on your blog just to realize that all you’ve gotten done was  ¾ of a post and 2 comments on other blogs?

When I first began blogging this would happen to me all of the time.  I’ll tell myself that I would work on the blog for a few hours and then do some marketing.  But by the end of the day I would realize that I hadn’t gotten anything done.

Blogging is great because it gives us a creative outlet as well as the potential to make money.  But don’t  be fooled; running a successful blog is just like running a business.  If you have ever started your own online business, then you know how time intensive it can be.

That is why it is important to adopt good blogging habits that will help you blog better and blog faster.  As your blog grows, it will require more of your time and energy.  I learned this during my highest traffic months last year.  I received about 100,000 visits when one of my posts made it to the most popular list on Delicious.

It was great to get that spike in traffic but there was also a demand to pump out more content that would satisfy my readers.  During this period, I learned how to streamline how I blogged so that I could still produce good material without losing my mind.  The first thing I had to do was to get rid of my unproductive blogging habits to improve my blogging productivity.

Unproductive Blogging Habits

Being productive is a huge part to blogging success.  Serious bloggers are basically business owners who produce, distribute, and market their product.  Being a one person factory can be difficult if the blogger cannot find a way to do all of those things in the most efficient way possible.

Like all writers, bloggers usually face a unique set of challenges.  We struggle with writers block, procrastination, and finding inspiration.  Unlike other types of writers, bloggers have emails to answer, stats to check, and comments to moderate.  All of those things can be time consuming and distract from the really important parts of blogging.

Focusing on those other parts of blogging can lead to unproductive blogging.  We all know that the most important part of blogging is content.  That means the priority of every serious blogger is to produce meaningful content.

Another very important aspect to successful blogging is marketing.  Once we’ve got the content and have it published, we should use our time letting the world know about it.  So why do we spend so much time on other things?  Being unproductive can cause you to become frustrated and discouraged about the progress of your blog.  Take a look at some ways bloggers are unproductive:

-Check stats, email, and comments too often.
-Lots of ideas but not taking action
-Browsing for ideas
-Not imposing deadlines
-Starting but not finishing posts

Increasing Your Productivity

Focus on the Vital Few First
Like I mentioned earlier, there are just a few things about your blog that are vitally important.  It is important to take care of the crucial things first before you do things like check the number of visits or Adsense Revenue.

When it comes to marketing, each blog is different so the way you get traffic will be different.  Some blogs rely mostly on Google for their traffic so the important task for them would be SEO and link building.  Other blogs strive because of social media.  If that’s the case then those bloggers should focus on tweets and bookmarking.  Find out what marketing methods work best for you and do those things first.

Create Good Outlines
To save time, it is important that you prepare a good outline for your blog posts.  Before you sit and write prepare an outline of the points you want to make in your post.  When you are ready to write, you will have a springboard that will help you get started.  An outline will also help you stay on topic.  It can be a little annoying for your readers to read a post that goes off subject.

Plan Your Blogging Time
I have a rule when I have to get things done.  I do not sit in front of my pc without having a list of things I plan to accomplish.  The plan tells me what task I should be working on and how much time it should take me to finish.  The reason I do this is because without my plan, I will be more likely to jump from one task to another.

Having the plan also prevents me from working on something too long that is not vital.  There have been times when I would spend an hour marketing the site just to realize that I should have been working on my ebook instead.  Having that plan in front of me stops me from getting off track and keeps me focused.

Find Your Most Productive Time
Find the best time during the day to where you are the most productive.  I recently started waking up at 3am to write and work on projects.  I found that waking up that early and writing without interruption was best for me.  I also realized that writing during the daytime was almost impossible for me.

For me, there are too many distractions during the day but that may be the perfect writing time for you.  Some people can focus during the afternoon working on their blog while sitting in a café.  Others are more effective writing late at night.  Find your peak time for creativity and plan your blogging around that time.

How do you stay productive when blogging?

[note]This is a guest post from Ralph Jean-Paul, the main writer for Potential 2 Success a result-driven personal development blog. He writes on topics such as success skills, business and money, productivity, and more. You can find more from Ralph by visiting his website.[/note]