Do you know it takes an average of 3 hours and 51 minutes to write a blog post?

Of course, it varies depending on the niche, the blog post’s length, the complexity, and what not.

But, nonetheless, speed of the writer matters.

Like in a Reddit post, one of the bloggers reported it takes him/her one or two weeks to write and publish an article:

Reddit forum image
1 to 2 weeks?

That’s a big uh-uh.

You can’t devote so much time to writing. After all, running a successful blog also involves optimization, marketing, outreaching, repurposing, etc.

Thus, to succeed in 2024 with blogging, you have to write like a Ninja. Ninjas were mercenaries in feudal Japan with unmatched speed, agility, and combat skills. You need to develop similar skills for your writing.

As someone who has improved his writing speed by 10x, I’m here to reveal the secrets to becoming a fast writer.

It took me years. But after this article, it will take you a few days to a week to get to my level.

Preparing to write: Lay a strong foundation

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the ax.”

What that means is that you need to prepare yourself well for the task at hand. This preparation will save you significant amount of time and effort down the road.

At BloggingX, I follow a three-step process to prepare myself for writing a blog post.

Finding effective blog topics fast

Many bloggers face this dilemma of what to write. And truth be told, most bloggers spend more time than they should finding effective ideas.

They start scratching their head thinking what to blog about the moment they’re in the writing mode.

The solution is to research your blog topics beforehand.

Laptop with notes
Researching in advance can save you hours

If you ask me, I research an entire month’s worth of blog post ideas ahead of time.

Say for example I need to publish 10 blog posts this month. I will research those topics on one-fine day, for say like 2-3 hours. This allows me to have a macro-view of my content strategy and help me reach my goals.

Some of the ways to find good blog post ideas are:

  • Dig into older blog posts and find posts that you can extend. This is what I do when I run out of ideas. For example, perhaps you wrote on “15 ways to lose weight”. You can create a part II of this article covering latest tips.
  • Dig into your competitor’s well-performing content. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs allow you to spy on your fellow bloggers and see what they’re ranking for. If you haven’t, you can cover those topics.
  • Research on forums like Quora and Reddit to find what users are looking for. You can create content on most asked questions.
  • Ask your community. If you have an active email list or a private Facebook or Discord group, simply ask what problems your community have. This will give you bunch of ideas to work on.

By far, the most effective strategy that I have ever come across is researching the popular blog posts of competitors and identifying the keywords they are ranking well for. If it is working well for them, it will work for you too.

Semrush research on Neilpatel.com
Organic research on Semrush for Neilpatel.com

You can get this done within 2-3 hours and have 5-10 topics to work on.

Outline your post

Writing a blog post without an outline is like preparing a dish without all the ingredients in place.

When I see people who do research collation and writing at the same time, I envision a person running to the store every time he needs an ingredient amidst preparing a dish.

Outlining is the biggest open secret of me able to churn out lengthy blog posts in a matter of 3-4 hours.

It’s very important to prepare the outline of the article before creating your blog post.

Outlining a blog post
Image credits: Ahrefs

Initially, blog post outlining feels like you’re pouring in some extra work. But the extent to which it eases your writing process is worth it.

These are the things I do when it comes to outlines:

  • Write the goal at the top, the keywords to cover, and headings and subheadings
  • List the sources and resources I may need to refer
  • Cover the important points and organize them so as to prevent researching while writing

Once the main points are written in the form of outline, you’ll have greater clarity, good hierarchy in place, tend to stay on-topic, and make sure the article is of high quality.

For my work, I make use of Dynalist for all my blog post outlining.

dynalist
Dynalist is great for outlining

It helps you create your blog outline with unlimited indentations, so that you can really drill down the subtopics.

dynalist outlining
Dynalist indentations

On top of that, each of these subtopic bullet points are clickable/zoomable. This gives you a macro-view of that subsection.

Once you start writing, all you need to do is expand upon the bullet points.

But do not let outline stunt your creativity. Keep your outlines elastic and always have room for creative thoughts.

Once you have a thorough outline in mind, you’ll have crystal-clear clarity of what the post will be about.

Because in writing, CLARITY = POWER.

Set clear goals and deadlines

At first instance, goals and deadlines may seem like two separate concepts. But they’re interconnected.

A goal is a dream with a deadline. Those were the words of Napoleon Hill.

Without a deadline, writing a blog post takes forever.

Put a deadline for your blog post. And force yourself to have it finished within that timeframe.

Flow Pomodoro Timer for Mac
Flow for Mac

Make it compulsory.

This eliminates distractions and keep you focused.

This is one of the effective tips, I follow to speed up my blogging. It also saves you time and makes me a highly productive blogger.

You can use tools like Orzeszek Timer, Timer for Mac. These tools help you track the time you took, and help you reach your goal.

I use a tool called Flow for Mac and also Be Focused Pro for Mac sometimes.

Of the two, Flow for Mac is my fav. The professional version, which is priced at $1 a month, gives you advanced features like:

  • Timer and session control
  • URL blocking
  • iCloud sync
  • commitment mode (forces you to keep the timer running if you’re guilty of stopping the timer often)

For Windows users, opt for Orzeszek.

Orzeszek
Orzeszek timer

But goals alone aren’t enough.

You need to set realistic goals — the ones you can achieve.

How much time does it take you to write a 1000-words post on average?

4 hours?

Don’t set a deadline of 2 hours. More likely than not, you’ll fail.

You can certainly improve your writing speed, but be realistic with your goals and keep them aligned with your skills.

Speeding up writing techniques

Once you’ve laid the foundation, now let’s go over the writing part to drastically improve your writing speed.

There are a few proven techniques to help you write better. Let’s explore them one by one.

Stream of consciousness writing

All writers suffer from a syndrome called ‘Writer’s block’. It’s a situation where a writer cannot get started with his or her work.

After introspection, I realized that I had something to write about, but I was searching for the ‘perfect’ way to put it on paper. And this longing for perfection hindered my writing speed.

While discussion writers’ block in an article, Copyblogger’s ex-editor, Stephanie Flexman, echoes similar concern, “You have something to say, but you don’t know the best way to say it or the main point you want to make. When your message isn’t clear, you’re blocked. That’s not a myth or an excuse

To turn this around, you should put your thoughts to paper first. You just write what comes to your mind.

write what hits your mind first
Write what strikes your mind first

This is called “steam of conscious writing”.

You should not let your fingers lift out of the keyboard. Write whatever strikes to your mind.

You should not set your mind like:

  1. I should write the introduction first.
  2. I should write the conclusion last.

When you start writing, write whatever you find easy.

Do you like writing the damn conclusion first?

Write it!

Following a particular pattern while writing blog posts, limits your creativity and sporadic flow of ideas.

Write whatever strikes.

That’s the key to speeding up your writing speed.

Focus on content first

Many amateur writers edit as they write. But this is just another excuse to fall into the ‘perfection’ syndrome.

Understand that writing and editing are two separate tasks. And if you edit while you write, you essentially multi-task, switching your attention back and forth. This can reduce your speed and efficiency by as much as 40%.

The way forward is to write the content first before donning the ‘editor’s’ hat.

Typing on a computer
Type it out before you edit

Do not be a critic of your writing while you write. This includes ignoring grammar, tone, typos, tense, and whatnot.

Rather than hovering back to the typos or grammatical mistakes in the middle of writing, keep the mistakes as they are.

It may initially be irresistible to avoid correcting typos while writing your blog posts, but it’s not impossible.

Your flow of ideas will be stuck when you stop and edit the mistakes. It is a real-time sucker. It may be very hard to put back the same flow.

Don’t let your mistakes steal your ideas. Make a way for ideas to flow freely.

Add placeholders (for images)

Consider adding placeholders under the subheads while outlining.

The placeholder can serve as visual cues or prompts, providing a visual representation of the content you plan to include. This can help guide your writing and make it more focused.

Image placeholder in outline
Including placeholders can help you recall stuff faster

In the image above, I included [IMAGE OF OBESE MAN CRUNCHING ON] as the placeholder.

When I sit down to write, I have a vivid image in my head on what or whom I’m writing about. In this case, an obese man crunching on junk food. Thus, I can relate to him while writing the section and produce better, faster results.

Additionally, including image placeholders can aid in structural planning. For example, if you know you want an illustration in a specific section, it can influence the overall flow and organization of your content.

As a tip, make your placeholders as descriptive as possible. Imagine your reader persona and how the section relates to him or her.

Voice-to-text methods

It’s a given that we speak faster than we can type. But how fast exactly?

A Stanford study found 3x. You speak 3 times faster than you type.

Dictating on a mic
Dictate instead of typing

So why not use this technique for improving your writing?

And the technology is on your side as well. Previously, the speech-to-text or dictation softwares were below average and couldn’t comprehend human speech. But now some tools beat typing in terms of accuracy as well.

Voice to text software like Nuance Dragon (Windows), Dictation (Mac), can do the job for you.

With advancement in the AI space, even Nuance Dragon is considered an outdated, legacy tool.

AI-powered speech recognition tool are taking the lead. OpenAI’s Whisper is considered the most accurate of the lot, and I use the same for my dictation needs.

OpenAI Whisper
Image credits: Bestgenerativetools.ai

Whisper is trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual data and can recognize diverse accents and languages. All you need to do is install Whisper as a plugin, enable it, and speak.

The tool indeed produces magical results. And that too for free!

Make sure to use good mics like Blue Yeti, Snowball or any Sennheiser PC headsets.

Enhancing productivity

Writing preps like outlining and writing techniques like dictation will double your writing speed.

But how do you triple it?

By adopting certain productivity-boosting habits.

Here I will reveal some self-learned, tried-and-tested productivity hacks for writers to further enhance your speed.

Manage distractions

Writing is a task that requires tremendous focus for prolonged period of time. But in this digital age, there are scores of objects vying for our attention.

Turn off notifications
Turn off notifications for good

Thus, to enhance productivity, you must manage distraction. Here are some things I recommend:

  • Create a dedicated writing space – Establish a designated writing area that minimizes external distractions and signals that it’s time to focus.
  • Apply the Pomodoro technique – Work in short, focused intervals (e.g., 25 minutes), followed by a short break
  • Switch off notifications – Silence or turn off notifications on your devices to avoid constant interruptions.
  • Use noise-canceling headphones – If noise is a distraction, consider using noise-canceling headphones or playing background music to create a more conducive writing environment.
  • Embrace imperfection – Chasing perfection will cause you to get distracted. Instead embrace imperfection and create bad drafts first.
  • Employ a secondary monitor – Having a second monitor prevents you from switching tabs and screens, which are both annoying and distracting. Instead, you can work on two screens and have more real estate to work with. In case you don’t have a second monitor, use split view in browsers like Arc.

Utilize tools

There exist certain tools designed to enhance productivity. Two of the tools I use are:

For writers and bloggers, clipboard managers are time saving angels.

If you’re on a Mac, you can benefit from Copy ‘Em. This clipboard helps you get more things done. It remembers the text you copied, weeks or months ago.

Copyem for Mac
Image credits: Apprywhere

Anytime you’re pasting something, you can search your clipboard. The clipboard managers can hold text, formatted text, images, any format of files, and even your video editor clips!

For Windows users, there’s Ditto, which is similar to Copy ‘Em in many regards.

Text expander

Another group of tools that I highly recommend is text expander. These expand the text automatically and reduce manual effort.

I use aText for my case.

aText for Mac

It has many useful features like auto-correction and mouse script which save time. You can also integrate it with applications like Outlook, Gmail, and MS Word to expand texts.

In the above example, I can type ‘followup1’ and aText will expand it to ‘I haven’t heard back from you yet :-)’.

You can set as many expanders as you like to save time.

If you’re on Windows, aText is available for Windows as well.

Alternative text expanders I’d recommend are Alfred and PhraseExpress.

The time you save by managing distractions can be directed towards refining and editing, which is the next point of focus.

Refining and editing

Explain how to use ChatGPT in this section. Present some prompts for grammar fixing, edioting, and formatting

Once you’ve everything in place, the last piece in the puzzle is to refine your content. This is like the cherry on the cake that makes your article presentable. This part is going to be easy.

Use AI for content refinement

A robot
AI reduce manual effort

Before the advent of AI tools, refining content was a manual process. You were required to go over the content and fix the typos, tone, grammar, etc.

But it’s 2023 and you’ll be wasting time by following the manual process.

A better approach is to use AI tools like ChatGPT and Grammarly. The latter can fix grammar, tone, and suggest several content improvement. But lately, I’m seeing great speed improvement with ChatGPT.

All you need to do is apply a prompt and get your content refined.

ChatGPT prompt
Prompt in ChatGPT

The above prompt fixes all the grammar mistakes and enhances readability.

Finalize your post

The last step is to finalize the post for publishing. This involves formatting, indenting, highlighting, and applying necessary white spaces.

While writing you can use some dots or asterisks like (… or **) to mark the things.

What I do is I put asterisks in front of the texts that need linking or reconsideration.

Marking in Google doc
Asterisks marking in Google Docs

While proofreading, I can search (cmd + f) for those asterisks.

I also enclose important paragraphs in square brackets, so that while publishing my content manager will be able to add in content boxes to them.

Content box in WordPress

They serve as speed hacks in the time of final formatting.

It’s as simple as that.

Blogging on WordPress

WordPress is by far the most popular blogging platform. So I assume your blog is built on WP.

But if you write your blog post directly in WordPress, you may need to reconsider.

In WordPress, it’s usually harder to collaborate with your proofreader or content manager. It also has some serious limitations when compared to other document editors.

Instead, I prefer to use Google Docs to create all my blog posts.

Once you’re done writing, next is uploading it to WordPress. And there are a few Ninja hacks which I want to discuss.

Streamlining content upload

Once I complete the article, I download it as docx file. Docx is an improved file format for Word with reduced file size and improved interoperability.

To import the Word file directly to WordPress, I use the Mammoth Docx Converter plugin.

Mammoth Docx Converter

I’ll choose the Docx file I downloaded and click upload button. The plugin uploads all the content along with images to WordPress. It may take few minutes if there are many images to upload.

After the upload is complete, if you are using WordPress block editor, you may want to click on “convert to blocks”.

Then add in some internal links, do the SEO and your blog post is all set to be published.

Automating image optimization

Earlier in my blogging career, I used to manually resize and compress the images. I also used to manually add alt texts to the images.

And if you’re slow on publishing, chances are you’re manually handling image insertion.

There’s a better way. And it involves using plugins and a automation techniques.

For resizing and compressing the images, I do make use of a plugin called ShortPixel. I’ve tried dozens of plugins in my career, and none of the them came close to ShortPixel when it comes to compression and efficiency.

If the screenshots I take a on my retina 27-inch Mac blows the resolutions out, ShortPixel does a good job of resizing it too.

I can even create automatic backups, remove extensions, and resize large images like the following:

Settings in ShortPixel

And the best is that I can exclude some images from being optimized based on some patterns.

ShortPixel image exclude

If I think for some images (especially JPGs), ShortPixel blows out the quality, I can exclude them by including the word – “raw” in the filename.

I also make use of Format Media Titles plugin to auto-create alt texts for me based on the file names.

This workflow is a huge-time-saver for me, and encourage me to use more and more images in my blog posts.

Managing your content

Adopting the aforementioned practices will make you 3x faster. But you’ll eventually hit a ceiling — a point where you cannot speed up further.

That’s when you should consider hiring a content manager to help you out with the content.

A female manager
A manager can do the heavy lifting

A manager can assist you with writing, producing, and managing content on your site. As a result, the publishing speed of your blog will be far higher than what you could have achieved on your own.

Besides that, you can also delegate on-page SEO, social media posting, and outreach activities to these managers. This will enable you to focus on core tasks like creating content strategy and driving more traffic to your blog.

Conclusion

Writing fast isn’t an art that a few writers possess.

It’s a science that anyone can master.

Follow the framework (research > outline > write > edit) I have mentioned above, stick to it, and I can assure you’ll see results sooner rather than later.

Liked my method? Why not share it with someone who needs help with speed writing right now?