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Transcript of How to Write a Blog Post – Preparing to Actually Write Video Tutorial

Hello again. We are in the middle of writing the blog post; part of this content development arc that we’re doing. Finally, we’re going to actually start writing something.

When I am all ready and I encourage you to go back to the video that we just finished of how to get ready for writing. This is what I’ve got. I’ve got my blank documents and what I’m going to do now is I’m going to set a timer for 25 minutes.

I very much like the Pomodoro technique for both working and also especially getting started with blog posts, because you can deal with writer’s block or just lack of focus. I use simple pomodoro timer, it’s available both for iPhone and Android. Lets take a look at that. There’s the Android pages, very nice. There’s the Apple page. They’re real simple, that’s what it looks like. You just turn it on and run and you can have different controls.

What I’ll aim for is around 300 words in the first pomodoro. I have the tomato there because the Italian word for tomato is a “pomodoro.” I also have a joke with my partner when he interrupts me in the middle of a work session, I say, “I’ll talk to you in a moment, I’m in the middle of a tomato.” That’s enough of a joke that it makes me happy and it makes him happy and he goes away and he understands that I’ll be with him in a few minutes, but for the moment, I’m absolutely focused like a bullet on a target to get my writing done.

I will do, in those first 25 minutes, I just want a first draft. I don’t care about quality. I don’t care about coherence. I don’t care about typos. I don’t care about — often, even if I’m wrong, I’ll just write down a stat that I remember from somewhere and I may have to go back and find it later. I just want a draft because in my experience, once you’ve got a draft, even if it’s a really bad draft, all the hard part is over. Then, you’re just editing at that point and editing is much less stressful and scary. There’s almost no performance anxiety with editing, whereas writing first drafts can be a little daunting sometimes.

After you’ve got your draft, it really gets easier. What I do is I write for 25 minutes and then I take a five minute break or I get another cup of coffee. Usually, I get away from the screen is really what I’m doing in those five minutes. I’m just getting away from my computer screen. I will sit down for 25 more minutes, another break, and then I will write for 25 more minutes. At the end of that, I always — I’ve never had it not work, which is why I like it so much — I will always have a decent draft that’s usually 1,000 words long. My blog posts usually come in around 800 to 1,200 words for clients and guest blog posts, they don’t want anything less than 800 words. Every once in a while, I will writ a blog post that’s over 1,500 words or even over 2,000 words.

I have actually had clients be freaked out when I sent them a 2,000 word blog post. We’ll talk about this maybe more in content optimization, but when you look at the search results for a given keyword, there have been studies done, that almost all of the ton 10 positions in the search results were for articles that were 2,000 words long. Google has their program, I guess you’d call it, which is the in-depth articles. If at least 10% of your blog posts are over 2,000 words, you will qualify to be one of the in-depth sites.

There is a lot of evidence that it will help with your search engine rankings. 2,000 word blog posts are a commitment. You can certainly do them, but you have to have a lot to say. It’s weird with us content writers because people don’t like to read. People want tight, snappy copy. At the same time, we’re rewarded when we blather on for pages and pages. Which of course, we’re not rewarded for blathering on for pages and pages, but that’s almost the way it’s set up. Frankly, as a copywriter, I can take one of those 2,000 word blog posts and really strip it down to probably 600 words, if that, and convey pretty much the same amount of information if I really had to. We’re talking a lot of bullet points.

Again, Google would actually penalize me for that. So we’re in a real bind between conciseness of thought and number of words. Again, that’s probably more than you need to know. Really what’s happening here, is I’m about to set a timer for 25 minutes. I’m going to do a live example for you of how far I get with my little five storytelling techniques. I need to get this blog post done and fortunately for you, that means a slightly shorter video of me talking.

I will see you in about 25 minutes and we’ll see how far I get. Talk to you soon, bye.