Excuses, excuses.

• I’m not a good writer
• I do not have time
• Not much to write about
• There are other blogs already writing about what I want to write
• It’s too complicated (I have to think about SEO, grammar, research, ugh…)

The list goes on.

Want to know what it really takes? It takes 3 to 5 hours per blog post. That’s it.

Still overwhelmed? What if you spread that over a week, say 30-60 minutes per day. Have you a few minutes? If the answer is no, time to make some lifestyle changes. Otherwise, you can blog.

In this article, I will show you a simple process you can use to write a blog post a week. If you write consistently for a year, that’s 52 blog posts. And not just any low-quality $15 posts, I mean crafted posts that add value to your small business.

Before you start writing, brainstorm!

Make a list of as many blog title ideas as you can. These will serve as a backlog of things to write about. The process of writing a blog post assumes you already have a topic you are excited to write about.

Start with topics related to things your customers keep asking about.

Then move on to Google Trends and Google Search and see what people find interesting. Don’t get too scientific here. Keep it simple.

On Google, Trends enter 3 closely related topics and write a title for the topic with the most interest.

On Google Search, begin typing what you think people would search for and choose one of the autocomplete suggestions you find interesting. Then write a title for that topic.

Once you have a list of 50 or more titles, then you can begin writing.

The process

Thanks to the guys at Buffer for their guide on How to write a blog post, I have written a few articles using the process described, and not only have I been able to write for my blogs, but I have been able to convince many of my small business clients to start writing (Now I’m excited about the case studies I will be able to write, cool! More writing.)

Here is the process:

• Research 30 to 60 minutes
  Did someone write about your topic? GREAT. Write why you agree or disagree. Why did you find the article useful? This is why it’s ridiculous to stop yourself from writing just because someone else wrote about your topic.

  Save your research somewhere, like Evernote or Pocket. Make sure you tag your research so you can find it later.

• Outline 4 to 10 minutes
  For really long posts, it makes sense to break down the research into sub-sections to research. But not too many. Write these sub-sections as bullets under the title of the post.

• Writing 1 to 3 hours
  The research is done. Time to write. Write freely, no editing at this point. Write as much as you can. Reference your research, but do not research more.

  Also, write somewhere where you will not be interrupted. I promise you will feel great after 1 to 3 hours of focused writing.

• Editing 10 to 30 minutes
  Take a long break before you begin editing. Then do this:

  • Check grammar
  • Summarize long paragraphs
  • Do some typography (Bold, italics, bullets, etc)
  • Read your article slowly. Enunciate.

• Images 30 minutes
  Check Pinterest to see what others are using for similar posts. Then create your own using something like Canva.

• SEO 10 minutes
  Pay close attention to title, description, and URL. Leave the rest to a Content Writer expert. If you are using WordPress, install the Yoast plugin. Then each post will have an SEO section where you can edit the title and description.

• Headlines 5 minutes
  The post title and headline are almost the same. The title is what appears in search engine results, the headline is the attention-grabbing text your readers will read first.

  You can expand the title (in case you had to shorten it to make it fit for SEO). Or you can shorten it, to make it clearer to readers what the article is about.

• Promotion 10 minutes
  For beginner bloggers, just focus on one social network and email. Post once you publish, and again a week later. And if you are using WordPress, I suggest you use Mailchimp to automatically send an email to all your subscribers.