How to Write a Blog Post in 8 Stress-Free Steps

Is writing blog posts a source of stress? Something you know you should do it, but more of an obligation than something you look forward to?

It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you put a system in place to take your blog posts from the idea stage to publication, you’ll be far more likely to stick to your blog schedule and maybe even enjoy yourself.

Here are the 8 stages I take my articles and blog posts through. Occasionally I’ll do several steps, or even the entire blog post, in one sitting, but most of the time I do just one stage at a time and stretch the whole process out over days or even weeks. That way I don’t burn out one one piece and I have time to let ideas simmer before moving on to the next stage.

1. Brain Dump

Without editing yourself, write down or mind map everything you can think about your topic. Don’t overthink this. If it comes to your mind, write it down.

If you need pointers on creating mind maps (which I highly recommend), check out How to Use Mind Maps to Unleash Your Brain’s Creativity and Potential. If you’re not sold on the idea of mind mapping, check out Mind Mapping Benefits. If you just want to be inspired by some amazing mind maps, check out Mind Map Inspiration and the Mind Map Art Gallery.

2. Outline

Take a look at your brainstorm or mind map. Find the most important topics, consolidate related ideas, remove weak or disconnected points, and establish the order they should be in. This is when you take your big picture ideas and vision and start pinning it down into logical and manageable sections.

For more about the importance of outlines, check out Outlines Help You Write Better, Faster.

3. Research

Find supporting materials, including links, quotes, images and data. This strengthens your points, establishes your credibility and trustworthiness, and adds value to your post by making it a collection of information and resources.

Writing blog posts doesn’t have to be a source of stress. It becomes a lot more enjoyable once you have a system in place.

4. Draft

Now that you have the outline of your blog post, start building it up. Create an attention-grabbing introductory paragraph, fill out all your points, tie them together with transitional sentences and paragraphs.

If you aren’t sure of a word or paragraph, just skip it for now. Leave yourself a note to come back and fill it in. For instance, here’s what one of my paragraphs from a recent blog post looked like in the draft stage:

Based in France, the platform allows users to *******. The company recently switched from a pay-as-you-go system, to three memberships options that ************.
As co-founder ******** says, ***QUOTE***

As you can see, I use asterisks to note where I need to fill in information. For some of the blanks, I’ll need to research and find the information; others, like the quote I’m going to use, I know I already have in another doc so I’ll just find it and insert it in the next phase.

Leaving blanks like this allows you to work in the flow of the blog post or article and not have to stop every time you need a name, stat, or quote.

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5. Finish

Once you’ve completed your draft, go back and fill in all the blank spaces, find any remaining links, check the spelling of names, organizations and projects, insert quotes, etc. By the end of this phase, you’ll have your first draft.

6. Polish

As every good writer knows, however, your first draft is often crap, so don’t stop writing now. Once you have a draft, start working it into shape. Remove unnecessary words, sentences and paragraphs and make sure you hit all your points and that they flow together nicely. Check for passive voice and unclear thoughts, remove or rework unsupported arguments, etc.

7. Final Read-Through

Once you’ve polished the draft, it’s time to step away from being the writer and editor. Read the post as though you’re a reader seeing it for the first time. Look for confusing points and any sections you can tighten up, keep an eye out for typos and grammatical errors you may have overlooked, make sure the formatting makes the blog post visually appealing, ensure that all your links work, and make sure the post delivers on its promise to the reader.

8. Hit Publish

Finished with the final read-through? Sweet! The only one thing left to do is hit publish (and then start promoting the hell out of it—but that’s a different post). Congrats! I hope this stress-free method of creating blog posts works for you.

Your turn: What are some of your best tips for writing blog posts? Which steps do you find the most challenging? In the comments, let me know.

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Comments

Nancy

January 21, 2016

Hey Cat! Sometimes writing could be a really stressful thing, especially when you haven’t enough time to write or you have a limited amount of information on your topic.

I spent maybe only 3 minutes to read your post, but it’s very informative and full of great tips, so I’m not disappointed at all. The main thing, I suppose, it’s to allow yourself a sufficient time on crafting well-prepared research and find really exciting facts for spicing up your text. Another one necessary step is to be sure that all your words are completely your own and don’t consist any similarities compared to already published blog posts. Why? Because Google is really unfriendly to all duplicated content. To check my posts, I use Unplag plagiarism checker. And the last activity which is extremely important for every blogger – it’s to create a connection with his readers. For this reason I ask a suitable question in the end of my posts + share my writing on social media – Twitter, Facebook, Google+…

Thanks for sharing your secrets, I really appreciate this!

Cat Johnson

Blogging