I wrote my first blog post back in 2006. At the time, blogging was just starting to be used as a way to connect with your audience and attract more eyeballs to your products and services. Back then, I didn’t care about building a readership or writing posts that hit the Digg homepage, I simply kept writing content so that Google would send me more traffic.
Of course, a lot has changed since then. I now couldn’t care less about search engine traffic to my blog and instead focus all of my energy on building a vibrant, helpful community around my brand. It’s not only my blogging focus that has changed in the last few years, but also the way I actually write my articles.
The Old Way
In 2006 I was blogging once or twice per week to an audience of less than 30 subscribers. I think it took about 6 months for the blog to receive a comment that wasn’t left by me. Around this time, and up until very recently, I still held the same ‘style’ of blogging, even though my entire aim for what I wanted out of blogging had changed.
The process was very structured, and went something like this:
- Decide on something you can write about
- Choose a killer headline (1)
- Map out sub-headings for different sections of the post (2)
- Fill out these sub-headings carefully (3)
- Watch out for spelling / grammar mistakes as you go (4)
- Re-read the post (5)
- Hit publish when you want it to go live (6)
This is a very basic outline, but it contains most of the steps that I used to follow and most of the steps that I’m sure thousands (if not millions) of bloggers still follow today.
If we were to put this process on a chart that showed the level of passion, energy and excitement that takes place when writing the post, I think we would see something very basic like this:
There are clear peaks here of energy and excitement when you find a killer headline that you love, have the post organised and eventually hit the publish button. Apart from that though, blogging can look like a pretty simple and boring process. Some people might love this, and I totally get that, but don’t ignore other options before you try them.
One such option, is the new blogging way…
The New Way
The reason we need a ‘new way’ is because it is no longer enough to succeed at blogging by showing up and posting frequently. A few years ago that would have been great for your readers and excellent for search engine traffic, but things have changed. There is now so much noise in every industry online, that if you don’t stand out with amazing content, you may as well not write at all.
This change still means that you need to write content, and if you wanted you could write in the style of the ‘old way’, or you could start getting the most out of the process. A few months ago I noticed this change in my blogging but really didn’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t until a tweet from Adam allowed me to ‘picture’ the process in my mind that I could finally put things into words.
The process of the New Way, goes something like this:
- Decide on something you can write about
- Choose a killer headline (1)
- Start writing the most important things you want to say (2)
- Don’t worry about headings, spellings or grammar (3)
- Keep going until you’ve wrote everything you want to on the topic (4)
- Take a break and cool down (5)
- Tidy up the post and hit publish (6)
If we were to put this in a graph like we did for the old way of blogging, you would see something like this:
This New Way of blogging does include a concept I have written about here at WritetoDone in the past: keep writing until you’ve said everything you want to say, then edit after. Not as you’re going along.
However, this whole process is going to be an entirely new concept to most people. Again, it’s not simply enough to be writing content for your niche anymore. Due to the sheer mass of competition online these days, whatever you put out to the world on your blog has to provide massive value to your readers.
Because of this, if you can get really into your articles and get excited about the process, that’s going to show in the final result. The bottom line is that if you’re feeling really passionate about what you’re saying, you’re going to produce the type of posts necessary to gain mindshare in your industry.
Maybe I’m off the mark, but for myself and many others, I’m seeing a totally new way to look at writing blog posts…
