This is a guest post by Sean Platt from GhostWriterDad.com
Are you an efficient blogger?
Even if you are, you could probably stand to improve.
Blogging is fun, at least at first. But soon enough it can turn into a grind. Like any job, the daily tasks grow tedious and you find yourself searching for ways to escape the endless cycles of boredom.
But you can’t give it up. A blog is one of the sharpest tools in the modern writers toolbox. You must get so good at blogging that the daily maintenance becomes barely an afterthought.
Fortunately, it’s possible. And once you get good at it, it even gets easy.
The key is in having some go-to content that’s easy to produce, yet highly relevant to your reader. If it feels like work, or seems like a struggle, you’re more likely to fight it and you won’t be as effective.
Use the following suggestions as a 15 minute template to create quick, quality content.
1. Create a List Post
I know the list post is old and tried, but it still works. Even better, the nature of the post makes it easy to craft a compelling headline. “The Top Five Mistakes That ____ Make,” “The Top Five Books You MUST Read,” “The Top Five Bloggers in Your Niche (That You MUST Know),” etc.
2. Add a Video
Go to YouTube, find a video that inspires you, embed the video, then write a few brief sentences about why that video harbors its own brand of magic. Same goes for audio. You can also record your own custom audio or video on the fly, and get either done in well under 15 minutes.
3. Upload a Photo
This could be one of your photos, or something you find on Flickr or another photo sharing site. The purpose of using an image is similar to video. Explain why the image inspires you and how it relates to your audience’s needs and desires.
A note: be sure to choose photos that are free to share under a Creative Commons license. In Flickr, it’s a simple as going to “advanced search options” and checking the box marked “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content ”.
4. Answer Questions
Your readers probably have a lot of questions. Answering those questions is an easy way to develop fast quality content, but it’s also the type of content that serves your readers and makes it easy for them to see you as an authority and naturally share what you have to say.
Get into the habit of keeping a list of questions that you’ve seen in comments – not just in your own blog, but also in the comments section of other blogs in your niches. Chances are that your readers will also have similar questions.
5. Write a Short Review
You could write a review about a book or product. It doesn’t have to include an affiliate link, but it must be valuable to your audience (sometimes you’ll make a lot more money in the long run by excluding the affiliate link and going for trust before the easy dollar).
Be sure to list the pros and cons even in a short review. You don’t have to find negatives for the sake of being negative, but if everything you say about every book or product is always 100% positive your readers will lose trust in what you say.
6. Create a Roundup of Relevant Posts
Roundup posts can be from your own blog or gathered from around the Internet. Write a few precision sentences to summarize each post and tell your reader why it’s relevant to them.
Curating content this way not only provides value for your readers, it’s also a way to get on the radar of other bloggers and site owners and to establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
All the above ideas can be implemented in less than 15 minutes, and all provide a lot of value to your reader. Quality content doesn’t have to take a long time to produce; you simply need a strategy and the will to get it done.
Do you have any tips and tricks for writing high quality content in a small amount of time? Just use the comment form below to tell us that…
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