How to write a quick, in-depth blog post even when you don’t have time

If you are publishing a business blog one of the greatest hurdles you’re going to come across is publishing blog posts regularly, on an ongoing basis. Otherwise your blog, no matter how well-written, well-maintained it is, is going to lose steam. People will lose interest. Since they will not be aware of your publishing schedule their visits to your blog will be erratic at the best. In order to draw people on a regular basis, you need to publish blog posts regularly and there needs to be a set pattern. But as a busy entrepreneur how do you manage that?

Of course, being a professional content writer my advice would be to hire yourself someone like yours truly, but if you don’t want to do that and you would rather write on your own, here is how you can manage to produce in-depth blog posts on a regular basis even if you are running short of time.

Maintain an ideas file: If you know what you want to write, you can write it quickly. A big problem is when you have time, you don’t know what to write. This problem can be solved if you have an ideas file or a section where you can store your ideas. I use Evernote for that. Whenever I get a new idea that will require lots of research, I create a new note and then as I come across various bits of information while surfing the net, I keep copy/pasting that information in that particular note so that by the time I get down to actually writing the blog post, I have everything ready.
Create an outline: You don’t necessarily have to complete a blog post in one go. Remember your purpose is not to complete and somehow publish the blog post in a couple of hours, your purpose is writing and publishing quality content on your business blog. Don’t compromise on that, so don’t be in a hurry. Even if you have time to jot down just a single line, do that and then stop worrying about the blog post. You may initially feel that you aren’t doing much, but when you are maintaining multiple blogging ideas you will very soon come across a situation when you have lots of material at hand on an ongoing basis.
Use a mind mapping tool:
These days I find myself using Free Mind quite often. It is a Java-based mind mapping tool. Mind mapping tools are a great way to organise complex ideas. If you’re not used to the interface you may find it off-putting initially but once you get used to it, it will be an invaluable productivity tool in your kitty.
Install a blogging app on your mobile phone:
You may get an idea while travelling and unless you have some system to quickly store it, it may be lost for ever. I have the WordPress app installed on my mobile phone and whenever I need to collect my thoughts on a blog I create the entry and save it as a draft. Then, as and when I come across ideas and information, I just use my phone to update the draft. Finally, when I sit in front of my computer I give the finishing touches to the draft and then publish the blog post.
Don’t get bogged down by the size of the blog post: Although here I’m talking about writing in-depth blog posts you don’t need to begin every blog post with the same purpose. Just focus on the single sentence and you will be amazed how the floodgates to new ideas are suddenly opened. Even if that doesn’t happen, there is no problem with posting just a single paragraph if you think you are running behind your blogging schedule. Later on you can always update a blog post that you have already published – there is no rule against that.
Crowd source your content:
You can create a simple blog post and then ask your visitors to drop in ideas in the comments section on how a particular blog post can be improved. You can also seek opinion on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

What is evergreen content and why it is good for your business

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Evergreen content remains relevant to your audience no matter when it is accessed. It does not depend on the current trend or another hot topic people are dying to read about. It is like the wisdom of the ancients – it can be applied anytime.

Take for instance the importance of quality content. The importance of quality content never wanes no matter when you use it, no matter how you use it and no matter which channel or which language you use to publish and distribute it. If you read Dostoevsky or any other such writer you will realise that, although the circumstances happening inside the novel might be related to that time, the inherent message, the inherent dynamics of how the characters react to different situations, have timeless attributes.

The greatest benefit of creating evergreen content is that it gives you a steady stream of traffic over a long period of time. Since the traffic does not depend on a particular time a post that you write in 2014 may go viral in 2016 due to some related events taking place. I will give you a small example. I’m a big fan of cleanliness and whenever I get an opportunity to write something on this topic, I do it with great enthusiasm. So a few months ago I wrote about how great I feel when the new Prime Minister Narendra Modi again and again stresses upon the need to clean up India at the earliest. As I say, the article was published many months ago. Then this October 2, 2014 (Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday) Narendra Modi launched his government’s “Clean India” campaign and the online newspaper that had originally published my piece on cleanliness replugged it on Twitter and it got more hits than it had got when it was published and promoted for the first time. This is the article I’m talking about.

Another benefit of creating evergreen content is that it increases the level of familiarity among the regular net surfers. Since there is a greater chance of evergreen content being shared on multiple websites over a long period of time, people will come across it multiple times helping them remember your brand name or your company name or your name. Familiarity and trust are very important for any business to grow on the Internet.

But how to write evergreen content?

Some good examples of evergreen content are:

A blog post that is repeatedly updated according to new developments taking place centered around the chosen theme (The football World Cup statistics spanning multiple world cups)
Why your product or service is the ultimate solution to the perennial problem being faced by your prospective customers and clients
Your FAQs section giving answer to possibly every question someone may have about your product or service
Chronicling the activities of your office pet animal
The common grammar mistakes repeatedly made by professional content writers
Using historical references to explain your business tactics

Remember that the basic idea of writing evergreen content for your website or blog is to give people something that they can make use of, share or talk about at any time whether they do it now or 10 years from now. Even 100 years.

What is news content marketing and what are its benefits?

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News content marketing is writing, publishing and distributing highly interesting and relevant information and updates about your company/organisation or about related events taking place elsewhere. This is something slightly different from publishing content simply to educate your customers and clients and provide them product or service-specific information. A good example of news content would be

Your company or organisation has bagged a very big client
You are expanding your operations to other cities, states or countries
You are branching out into new services or products or adding new features or attributes to your existing services or products
Your business has gotten a new website or a new blog
Your organisation has won an award
Someone new has joined your organisation
Your office premises has acquired something new, like computers, new-age furniture, landscaping material or anything interesting you would like to share with your clients and customers
A small fire broke out but it was quickly brought under control (or unfortunately, was not)
Something interesting happened near the building
Your area is going to experience inclement weather
There was a power outage where you have your office
A stray cat wandered into your office premises and decided to make it its new home

The list can go on and on once you get into the groove.

Do you know people are obsessed about reading news, especially online? While conventional newspapers are winding up, demand for news is rapidly going up. Most of the links you come across on Facebook, Twitter, and even Tumblr, come from one or another news website. How is this tendency of people to consume and share as much news as possible beneficial to someone wanting to leverage content marketing?

What are the main hurdles you face while trying to implement your content marketing strategy?

Lack of an audience
Lack of enough fresh content
Lack of content writing ideas
Very low frequency of content publishing
Expense of getting the content written or generated is quite high

All these hurdles can be in one way or another taken care of via news-related content marketing. For smaller daily or weekly news you can have a separate section on your website itself (something like “Latest News”) and for more significant news distribution you can use one of the various press release services available on the Internet. You can also spend your time networking with influential journalists working with major news outlets like the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, Tech Crunch, Mashable, etc. so that twice or thrice you can get some major news about your organisation published over there.

What’s better, owned content or sponsored content?

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First let’s understand the difference between owned content and sponsored content. Owned content is the content that you produce, write or get written on your own and then publish it on your website or blog (or on a third-party website or blog with complete attribution to you or your brand). Publishing a series of blog posts, articles and informative webpages under your own website or blog is a good example of owned content. Sponsored content is content that talks about you or your brand as a reference and then that content is published on a third-party website or blog. Your name or the name of your brand appearing in a New York Times articles is a good example of sponsored content. Which should be an integral part of your content marketing strategy?

I think both have their own place. When you have just started creating content you don’t have any audience. It takes time to build that audience and unless you have built the audience, you cannot leverage owned content. So what do you do? You go for sponsored content. Sponsored content helps you build audience while you’re creating your own content.

Besides, sometimes you want to reach an audience that doesn’t directly come to your blog or website no matter how much owned content you have. Sponsored content helps you achieve that.

Do you stop investing in sponsored content when you have created a considerable inventory of owned content? Depends on your marketing strategy. Do you want to reach out to a diversified audience? Or are you simply happy with the sort of people coming to your website or blog at the moment?

Benefits of investing in owned content

Gives your brand its own unique content
Strengthens brand identity
Prospective customers and clients don’t have to scour the web in order to find content relevant to your product or service
Your website or blog becomes a resource hub – you give people a reason to come to your website or blog repeatedly, or refer your links to the family and friends, or share your links on social media and social networking websites
You generate more targeted traffic that can give you more leads, sales and even repeat sales
As a personal brand you become an authority figure

Benefits of investing in sponsored content

You can target bigger audience from the word go (although it’s not recommended to go for sponsored content from the word go because the exposure will go waste if you have got nothing substantial to offer on your own website or blog)
You can build an audience for your brand much faster
You increase respect among your own audience by appearing on reputed publications (the New York Times example, for instance)
You can leverage the reach of well-established blogs and websites

Is your website content mobile friendly?

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This issue has got nothing to do with elementary content writing, but with 47% searching for product reviews and 29% obtaining additional information on their mobile phones and 50% mobile users using their phones as primary Internet source (source – 2013 stats), not creating and tailoring your content for mobile users can make a big dent in your bottom line.

Personally – and I’m not sure how many people are doing this – when I come across a link on my mobile phone that I’d like to read properly I save it in Pocket and then later on either read it on my daughter’s iPad or on the computer. As the stats show above, most people don’t mind reading long texts on their mobile phone.

There are two aspects to creating mobile friendly content on your website: having a layout that seamlessly scales according to the screen-size, and content that is easier to read and comprehend on a smaller screen. The design aspect is controlled by your web designer (he/she should keep in mind the content-reading requirement of your visitors). How do you write or create content that is mobile-friendly?

There are three

ways of going about it; it depends on your priority. If not many of your visitors come from their mobile phones (you can find that out from Google Analytics) but still you don’t want to take chances, you can keep the same content for your computer users and mobile users, as long as your design is liquid and quickly scales according to the screen-size. For instance, that is, if you are reading this from your computer or laptop, reduce the width of your browser window and see how this web page turns into a single column layout below a certain width.

The second option is to recreate your content in such a manner that it’s easier to read it on all the devices.

Here are a few things you can consider:

Create shorter headlines: Shorter headlines don’t hog the precious real estate on the small screen and your user doesn’t have to scroll up-down or left-right in order to be able to read your headline and figure out what your page is about. Since most of the mobile users are in a highly distracted stage (you never know where they are when they are checking out your website) use clearer, smaller expressions so that they don’t have to use their minds much.
Use smaller paragraphs: If possible, just use one sentence per paragraph. This way it is easier to read text without straining the eyes and even if the font size is increased, the person doesn’t have to scroll up-down much in order to read the message confined within that paragraph.
Use bulleted points whenever possible:
Bulleted points enable you to write in a concise manner without having to bother about complete sentences and other grammatical necessities. Due to smaller sentences (sometimes just a couple of words) it’s also easier for your readers.
Don’t make visitors click through multiple links: Linking is good, especially when you already have a webpage/blog post dealing with a particular subject and it doesn’t make sense to write about it again, but too much of it can create problems for your visitors. It’s not very easy to tap on hyperlinks on small screen and even when they tap on the links, coming back to the original page can be a great hassle. How do you avoid this hassle?
Create highly focused, vertical pages:
When you create highly focused pages you don’t have to use many links. You are dealing with just a single topic. SEO experts advise you to link to as many pages from your website/blog from your current webpage/blog post as possible and if you want to follow such guidelines, go ahead, but make sure the message of your webpage/blog post doesn’t remain incomplete without having to tap those links.

The third option, a bit more time-consuming, is to create multiple versions of your content. This way you can serve all the segments of your visitors, whether they are accessing your website from their computers and laptops, tablets PCs or mobile phones. Just make sure you don’t end up creating lots of duplicate content.