When it comes to blogging, discipline is the key to being able to consistently deliver great fresh content and take your blog to the top.
A lot of people tend to drift off and tell themselves they’re working, yet a lot of their “work” seems to consist of staring at the screen, checking their texts or updating their Facebook status.
8 Ways to Increase Your Productivity as a Blogger
Writing blog posts one after the other can be quite a tough task to focus on, if the writing part is the part you like the least. So it’s understandable that you might be tempted to stop every few sentences, or skip creating a new one for one day.
So what can you do to increase your productivity rate to achieve the best results for your blog?
1) Choose a Suitable Work Space
Might sound like an obvious one, but the environment in which you’re working plays a huge part on the sort of mood you’re in and how productive you actually want to be. It also can help you to operate more efficiently, ie. typing faster or having easy access to all your files.
You want to work somewhere that you’re able to sit upright at, you’re able to type nice and easily, and you shouldn’t find your eyes wandering around the room.
I’m a huge example of doing it the wrong way, as I used to actually work on my laptop in my bed quite a lot, and I do often work with the T.V on.
The work space you choose is very important when it comes down to being able to keep your eyes on the screen and your fingers on the keyboard. Keep this in mind when you look to increase your productivity.
2) Map Out Your Blog Posts
In most cases, blog posts shouldn’t really be less than 750 words, and for large posts especially you’ll need to break down the post into sections and plan it out. Posts will take a lot longer to write if you haven’t planned them out to begin with, and you’ve just started writing from the top.
My blog posts on this website are structured fairly simply. They consist of a featured image, a 2 paragraph introduction and then various subheadings.
On this post I have 8 subheadings for each point. So once I’ve thought of a title for each post, I’ll go through and add the categories, tags, SEO descriptions etc. and then start to list the subheadings. This way I know exactly what I need to write about and it’ll save me a lot of thinking time.
All I have to do then is write the intro and explain the subheadings in full detail.
Have a go at writing a blog post from scratch without doing any planning, and then have a go at doing everything in a specific order such as I’ve listed above. You’ll be surprised at the difference it can make to increase your productivity.
3) Cut out Social Media (Unless Promoting Yourself)
Social Media has taken over all of our lives. Let me ask you something, is the first website you look at when you go on the internet Facebook? I’m sure for a lot of you it is, and by the way that link was put there as a test. You clicked on it didn’t you?
In all seriousness I’m sure we’ve all wasted a hell of a lot of time just checking our social media accounts to see what everyone else is up to. You shouldn’t be poking around having a lot at other peoples’ news. You need to focus on yourself and ignore the temptation to look at any social feeds or walls.
The only exception to this rule is when you have a business account or you are posting as yourself to promote your blog. If that’s the case then fair enough, but it’s got to be in and out. No lingering around after you’ve done what you needed to do!
4) Eliminate All Other Distractions
Anything else that could distract you needs to be removed from around you. The usual suspects are T.V, food and drink (take a short break when you need these), any time wasting websites and your phone.
Every added distraction is just another thing that could chop away a few minutes of work, so do what you can to minimize these, and tie it in with ‘choosing a suitable workplace’.
5) Get the Right Amount of Sleep
I’m not saying that you should get as much sleep as possible because that would mean you’d get far too little work done. Most people could actually easily wake up an hour earlier without compromising any energy.
I’ve often woken up earlier than normal and felt more refreshed throughout the day, so make sure you get around 6 hours of solid good sleep. Any more than that is not completely necessary and this is where you could gain productivity by fitting an extra hour of work in.
6) Prioritize Important Tasks First
It’s no secret, as the day progresses you will lose energy, which is why I’d recommend prioritizing the important and perhaps longer tasks first.
This way you’ll be proud to say you’ll have completed the most daunting tasks in the morning and it’ll make the rest of the day a little easier for you and help increase your productivity as a blogger.
7) Think Big, Do Small
There’s no point in thinking really small, and there’s no point in trying to do big things all in one go. The trick is to have a dream and to be able to visualize the big picture in the end, but then take small steps one at a time to work your way towards it.
What I mean by this is that no one should try to become what they want to be right away. In the case of bloggers, you shouldn’t try to build the dream look of your blog in the first month.
It’s just not a good use of your time. If you’re in this for the long run, you should be focusing more on creating great content bit by bit and building a reputation for yourself.
Your blog will go through so many little changes in the months or years to come, design-wise, so don’t get caught up on the big picture you have. This needs to be built over time, so just focus on the small steps and not trying to take one giant leap of faith.
8) Plan Ahead
What I tend to do is create a list of article titles and brainstorm ideas before I need to create another post. This way I always have a piggy bank of ideas and won’t get caught out one day with anything to offer.
Another good planning idea is to schedule your posts to publish and have at least 2 awaiting to be published so you’re keeping ahead of things.
Always plan ahead where you can and you will be able to keep on top of things and always have backups in case one day you’re unable to post and so on.
So there you have it. 8 great ways to increase your productivity rate as a blogger, all of which I use to my advantage when writing new blog posts.
