As a business owner, you probably wish you had more time in the day to complete everything you need to do. This is especially true if you are a solopreneur! You need to find time for your clients, admin, sales calls, and marketing activities.
The problem with writing blog content is that it takes time - quite a chunk of time, I might add. It means that solopreneurs and business owners overlook it for less time-consuming marketing tasks, such as social media, Google ads campaigns, or email marketing.
But that overlooks the power that blog marketing has to offer. Blog marketing works in tandem with these other strategies, so it's worth finding time to write at least one blog post a month.
So, how do you do it? In this post, I will show you six steps you can take that will help you find time to write and publish your blog posts. I used these steps in the past to figure out my schedule, and I also teach these to my mentoring clients - so I know they work!
Shortcuts
Why is a consistent schedule important?
Posting on your blog consistently is essential if you want it to succeed. If you're publishing more content on your website consistently, search engines will constantly crawl and index your pages. As a result, you're more likely to climb the rankings for the keywords you want to target.
This means you need to have a plan in place to stay consistent with your posting schedule. To do that, you must ensure you have enough time to write your posts. But this can be tricky when you already have a packed schedule! So, here are six steps to help you find time to write your blog posts and stay consistent in your posting schedule.
How to find time to write your blog posts
1. Set a specific posting schedule
The first thing you need to do is to figure out how often you want to post. Now, you might think posting once or twice a week would be ideal to climb those rankings quickly. In a perfect world, where you have plenty of time to dedicate to your blog, this could be feasible.
However, Darren Rowse at Problogger identified that many business owners who start with this target quickly fall flat when they realise how much time it takes to write one post, let alone several in a week. I see this all the time with business owners who are determined to start their blog. They set out to write a post a week and end up stopping after two or three because they burn out or don't have time.
So, you need to be realistic. Do you have time to post once a month? Once every two weeks? Even if it's just once a month, that's enough for search engines to continue indexing your website, so don't feel put off that it's too infrequent.
2. Calculate how long it will take you to write a post
Once you've decided how often you want to post, you need to calculate how long it will take you to write one. For this step, I would suggest writing a practice post. You want it to be between 800 to 1200 words for a start. It doesn't need to be the best blog post ever either. Just write and see how long it takes you to put it together.
From this, you can start to work out when you'll be able to make time for writing your content. This will be shored up in the next few steps.
3. Figure out when you write the best
Everyone in the world has a peak time during the day when they have the most mental energy or ability to focus. For many people, the morning is usually the best time, but for others, it can be in the evening or late afternoon.
You need to schedule your writing time for when you have the most mental energy. This is because writing a blog post (especially if you're just getting started) can take up a lot of focus and creativity. It's no good sitting down to write in your afternoon slump because whatever you produce won't be great. I've made that mistake before, and I had to restart the entire post from whatever garbage I had written - it ended up being a complete waste of time!
4. Break the post down into steps
If you're strapped for time and you only have blocks of half an hour to an hour available, it can help to break the writing process down into steps.
Rather than sitting down to write the entire post and publish it within a few hours, try to think of the writing process as a series of tasks to complete. For every writing project (whether it's client-based or my own), I have the following steps:
Plan and outline
Research (including keywords)
Draft 1
Draft 2 (if needed)
Edit
Proofread
Publish
In this way, I can spend half an hour completing an outline one day, and then write the initial draft later in the week. This makes the whole process so much more manageable and less overwhelming, and I teach this to my clients too!
5. Schedule blocks of time to complete the steps
Now it's time to put everything from steps two to four together. Using your step breakdown, schedule blocks of time in your calendar for when you can complete certain tasks.
Outlining, research and proofreading take less mental energy, so you could schedule those for afternoon slots (or whenever you get that energy slump). However, the drafting and editing will need to be done at a time of peak energy.
Scheduling these tasks into your calendar will guarantee that you will have the time to complete them. It means you won't be tempted to override them with meetings, networking, or other tasks. But also give yourself some slack when you need to.
6. Maintain your discipline
Now you have a plan in place, it's time to put it into action! This is where your discipline will come in handy. After all, there's no point in coming up with a plan and not sticking to it - you won't get any results that way.
However, discipline doesn't need to be a negative thing in your life. You shouldn't feel like you're fighting to sit down and write. I watched an interesting video recently from HealthyGamerGG on YouTube, which talked about how discipline is directly linked to our emotions. He discusses why it can be so difficult for people to be disciplined in certain things, and it comes down to doubt. Discipline requires an emotion that is the opposite of doubt, which is resolve. If you feel resolved to do something, you feel that "fire in your belly" to complete the task or do what is required of you.
The video is below if you'd like to watch it.
But, as I mentioned above, you need to give yourself some grace. Sometimes things happen in life that we can't control. There may be a sudden family crisis, illness, business difficulties, etc., which require you to focus your attention elsewhere.
It is absolutely okay to do this. This has happened to me before; I had to take time away from the business recently to focus on my health and well-being. My website has also suffered this year because I haven't been posting as consistently (again, due to health reasons).
But the important thing is that I came back and resolved to post consistently again. That's the power of resolve and discipline. No matter what happens, you always get back on the horse and try again.
Next steps
Finding time to write and publish blog posts consistently is essential if you want a healthy business blog. It can be challenging to find time to write, especially as a solopreneur, but there are steps you can take to make time for your blog. They are:
Set a specific posting schedule
Calculate how long it will take you to write a post
Figure out when you write the best
Break the post down into steps
Schedule blocks of time to complete the steps
Maintain your discipline
If you follow these steps, you'll find there's actually plenty of time for you to sit down and write a post.
Bonus note: don't be tricked into thinking you must write a post every week. There's lots of advice out there that suggests posting two to three times a week is ideal for a blog. However, that's only feasible if you have a proper marketing team behind you with good content writers. It certainly doesn't work for solopreneurs. I always recommend my clients start with at least posting once a month or every two weeks if they have time. That's usually enough to get going.
Did you know I'm more than just a content writer? I offer 1-2-1 mentoring for clients who want to learn how to write on and manage their business blog themselves. I've been mentoring clients since Autumn 2022, and in that time I've helped solopreneurs build their business blog and write customer-focused content consistently.
Want to learn more about how I can help you with your blog? Book a free discovery call with me, and we’ll go through your situation, examine your blog’s challenges, and explore your goals. At the end of our call, I will offer a solution that will help you solve your problem, and you will also get actionable advice you can use straight away, whether you decide to work with me or not!
Until next time!
Lucy x