How I Write a Blog Post: My Step-by-Step Guide

Having a consistent workflow when writing a blog post is an important stage of you as a writer. I have been a write for over three years and I already published 100+ blog posts and for this number of posts, I made an effective workflow that I consistently use and made me an effective writer.

Before, I was just thinking of an idea then write something write away, but now, I follow this approach so I can deep work and make sure the efficiency of my content while ensuring its creativity.

Brainstorming Ideas

This is always the first stage of my content creation process. I always write all of my ideas on a piece of paper and write all the topics that I want to write. I use a piece of paper for a distraction-free process.

I was using my phone before, but I don’t feel organized and I always get distracted from other apps especially social media. Hence, I switched to traditional one and heck, it was effective and efficient.

I have a dedicated small notebook that I use to write my ideas. This way, I will still be organized and I have a compilation of my thoughts and ideas in one place.

Tips for Idea Generation

You might be thinking that I will say for looking for the trends or do research, but I won’t. One thing that I learned as a writer is to write content based on your experience. It doesn’t matter if it is your personal experience turning it into a blog, but I learned that it is always better to write for your readers and not for the bots.

I always care for the SEO side, but I make sure that my content is engaging and compelling for my readers. I always use the first-person point of view to directly connect my readers and tell my story.

Creating a schedule

After writing all of my ideas in a piece of paper, I create a schedule for the listed ideas on where should I write it and publish at the same day. I also consider other schedule of my life such as school and event schedules.

I also don’t have a specific time of publishing a content, but I am working on this one and find out the best time where my readers are viewing my blog post. You can do this if you are using WordPress on your website, on Hive and Medium, you can experiment on your own!

Creating an outline

You are now done with writing all of your ideas and creating your writing schedule, now you are ready to start writing. I always create an outline based on the idea that I write, sometimes, I use AI to create an outline for me without losing my original ideas. This is to ensure that my ideas will still be based on my original thoughts and I can write more about the topic.

Writing your draft

I use MS Word for writing my draft.

I don’t overthink about the words that I write, I just follow my outline and start writing what’s coming into my head, this helps me not to miss anything about the topic especially if I love it and I have a lot of experience on that topic.

In this way, I can write freely without any hindrance and write more words that has a sense. Let’s face the fact that there are times that we are writing something just to make it longer – but when I love the topic, I write everything that I want on my draft!

One thing that also help me to write freely is my environment. I want having a peaceful environment so I can think of any ideas and words that I want. It feels like a water flowing into my brain freely without any hindrance.

As a person who often forget things, I have to write everything quick so I won’t forget it. So, I always wear my earphones when I have my friends around while writing or there’s a lot of distraction from the background. This way, I can only focus on what am I writing.

Fun fact: I listen to Lord of the Rings soundtrack when writing because it feels relaxing and giving a “journey” feels – just watch Ali Abdaal video about the context behind this.

Editing and Revising

This might be the stage that I need to improve because I only use Grammarly to correct my grammar mistakes and improve my sentence, but I don’t really re-read it to revise and edit.

I just feel that it takes a lot of time editing, but I don’t think I need to edit a lot of words and sentence because I also put correct punctuations while writing my draft and make sure that it is correct. My only concern is the grammar and so I use Grammarly for it.

But sometimes, after publishing, I try to re-read the content and when I found a mistake, I correct it.

Final Touch and Publishing

Finally, after everything and editing some part of it, I do add images into it and use correct formatting such as heading, italicizing and bolding words to emphasize it. I also add internal and external links that adds up to SEO-optimization.

Then, publishing it to my blog and scheduling it for later will be the last step. Since I use different platforms to repurpose my content, I always set a schedule based on the platform that I am using.

Bottomline

Having an effective workflow will help you to write efficiently and ensure that you won’t miss a single idea that you can share to your audience. By this, you can have a longer post – which is one criterion for ranking – but an informative and engaging for your readers.