A few days ago, I was checking my Google Analytics stats. I came across several search queries by my visitors. One of those queries was “how to write every day.” That was a great topic to write a post about.
If you wonder whether I have written on a topic or not, you can use the search box on any page of my blog. You can also reach out to me directly with a comment or using the contact page.
I published a blog post per day for the last five months. That was quite a feat, if you consider that I have a full time job. I’ll go over the details of how I did it in this post.
Commitment
If you want to publish a post per day, you have to commit to it. You put this goal high in your priorities list. Only few things are more important than publishing a post per day.
If you make a commitment, you’ll find a way to publish a post per day, no matter what.
Maybe your post might not be exceptional on some days, but you will hit the publish button in either case.
2+ Hours of Uninterrupted Work Time Every Single Day
I dedicate 2+ hours exclusively to writing every single day. I don’t include interacting with readers, participating on social media, checking my stats, or improving the design of my blog in those 2+ hours.
When I say “every single day,” I mean “every single day,” including weekends and holidays.
Actually, I work longer in weekends and on holidays. I work on extra tasks such as stats, design, and email newsletters on those days.
I know that I have lost 80% of my readers at this moment, but I’m going to be honest. I’m not going to lie about my process in order to get new followers and email newsletter subscribers.
How Fast Do You Want to Reach Your Goals?
First of all, you don’t have to publish every day. I publish every day, because I want to reach my goals as fast as possible. You can publish as much as you want.
My research showed me that posts published on Monday receive twice as many views compared to the posts published on other days. That means you have to publish on Mondays. You can take a few days off in the rest of the week.
Publishing Every Day Builds Momentum
By publishing every day, you build a momentum with yourself and with your readers.
You keep your mind sharp and focused on writing. Writing becomes a fundamental part of your life. Your mind works on your posts even if you don’t think about them. You won’t get that benefit from publishing a few days a week.
Your readers know that they’ll find a new post in your blog every day. That means they can visit your blog whenever they’re bored and want something new to read. And people get bored. After a while, this becomes a habit. They visit your blog even if they aren’t bored.
You become a part of their life. They tell themselves “let me check what Burak wrote today,” because they know that you wrote something that day. This is why people check news every day.
If you take into account the momentum factor, the blogger who publishes every day has a greater advantage than just the extra few posts they publish. If they publish twice as much as the average blogger, they reach their goal faster than twice as the average blogger.
Prioritization
If your blog is up and running, don’t do anything else for your blog before publishing your post.
- Don’t read comments.
- Don’t read emails.
- Don’t participate on social media.
- Don’t improve the design of your website.
- Don’t check your stats.
In essence, do nothing for your blog before publishing your post.
Perfect Is the Enemy of Good
I know that my blog posts aren’t perfect. I can write a good blog post in two hours. I can easily spend another two hours on improving my post and it still wouldn’t be perfect.
- I can check my post with Grammarly, the Hemingway app, and other automated grammar and style checking tools.
- I can read my post ten times and still find points of improvement.
- I can google synonyms of some words.
- I can reformat my post for greater readability.
- I can come up with a dozen titles, run them through the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer, and decide on the best one.
- I can write my post on one day and edit the next day.
All of these tips and others would increase the quality of my posts, but they would also increase the time it takes to publish a post. And I don’t have that much time to spend on each post.
Make no mistake, I read my posts at least three times. I use the spelling and grammar checker of MS Word. I use Grammarly, the Hemingway app, and CoSchedule Headline Analyzer once in a while to learn some lessons, but I don’t use them on a daily basis.
Keep a Backlog of Post Ideas
I wouldn’t be able to publish a post per day if I didn’t keep a backlog of ideas to write about. It would be impossible for me to come up with an idea on the spot, write a post about it, publish it, and repeat that every day.
If you have a difficult time to come up with post ideas, I strongly recommend that you read my post 8 Ways to Create Content on a Consistent Basis.
Pick an Idea and Stick to It
When you start writing a post about an idea, stick to it until you hit the publish button. Don’t go back and forth between different ideas. If you do that, you might work more than two hours and end up without a blog post.
Outline First, Write Later
When I start writing a post, I’m bombarded with ideas to include in that post. Human mind doesn’t work in a linear fashion.
My mind doesn’t come up with a single idea, wait for me to write a paragraph about that idea, and then come up with the next one.
When an idea comes up, at least half a dozen come up with it. If I start writing a paragraph about an idea, I’m going to forget about the other five or six ideas that came together with it.
Ideas don’t come in a logical sequence. They come in a bunch of tangled mess. It’s up to me to process them and organize them in a logical sequence.
First, I write down all the ideas without going into detail. That way, I don’t forget any of them. Then, I organize them in an outline.
I’m not going into details of which tools I use to outline. For details about that, you can check my post The Tools I Use to Capture and Organize Ideas, and to Outline, Write, and Edit Blog Posts.
Writing down an idea doesn’t mean that I’m going to use it in the post. Sometimes, I leave out some ideas. I keep some of those ideas to be used for future posts. I delete some of them forever.
Points of Improvement
Even though I publish a post every day, I don’t claim that my process is perfect. I have some challenges in my process. I plan to discuss my challenges and points of improvement in a future post.
If you don’t want to miss my post on my challenges and other posts on writing, blogging, startups, and life lessons, sign up to my email newsletter. I send a roundup of my latest posts in an email newsletter every week.
Conclusion
Publishing a post per day has its advantages. It builds momentum for yourself and your readers.
It all starts with a commitment to hit that target. Then, you have to prioritize it over other blogging activities.
You need to learn how to stop at good enough. If you aim for perfection, you might never publish a post, let alone once a day.
Keeping a backlog of ideas is crucial, because coming up with an idea in the last minute is not always feasible.
In order to avoid wasting time, stick with an idea when you start writing a post. Don’t switch back and forth between ideas.
Don’t try to write a post in one pass. Write down your ideas first, outline them, and write the post as the last step. That way, you won’t forget any ideas. Your posts will also have a logical sequence.
