How NOT to Write a Blog Post
By: Joy Harding
Tags: Writing Tips, Self Improvement, Writing, Content Marketing, Research

How NOT to Write a Blog Post

Want to be a professional writer? Great! Just don’t do like I did…

I turned in a 1,500-word blog post to a client recently. It has lots of great links, lots of insights for the target audience, lots of source notes.

And I will wind up making the equivalent of $10/hour for my efforts.

Why so little? Because it took me almost 20 hours to research and write the stupid thing!

Never, ever again!

Don’t get me wrong: I was pleased to get the referral and am hopeful it may turn into regular assignments, which is all good. But not if I ever, ever wind up putting that much time into something I should have been able to whip out in no more than five hours.

So, please learn from my mistakes. Here are a few suggestions of things NOT to do when writing a blog post for a new client.

Don’t complicate the hell out of the assigned topic

In other words, Keep It Simple, Silly!

When the new prospect approached me to write a “substantive” post for their agency, I was thrilled. This might turn into a regular, paying gig! In a niche I adore — digital tech marketing!

They wanted a “listicle” about the top digital marketing strategies for 2020. Piece of cake, right? Do some web research, compile some links, write the post, refine it and send it off to the client…nothing to it!

But, noooooooooooo, I had to be some kind of show off and send them a proposal about how they could present themselves as a thought leader in their niche. I proposed interviewing their CEO or CMO and presenting THEIR ideas about top strategies for the new decade.

Great idea, except it’s close to the holidays and the prospect told me I’d have to interview several thought leaders in the organization — to his credit, he offered to help — and would they be able to get it done within their timeline (by Thanksgiving), etc. etc.

I felt so dumb. Of course, there was no time to put together a piece of that magnitude. So I back-pedaled and went back to plan A, the listicle. This took about three rounds of emails to get back to what they wanted to begin with.

Lesson 1: Give the customer what they ask for. There’s no need to waste three days going back and forth with client (I waited almost three days for client’s initial response).

Don’t be such a perfectionist about the outline

I offered to draft an outline for the post. It’s SOP; I do it with all my clients to make sure we’re on the same page. The new prospect agreed it was a good idea.

So, I took the feedback I received from prospect during the thought leader debacle and their desire for a top-10 list and started doing research to prepare a comprehensive outline.

And I researched, and researched…and researched.

I spent hours putting that list together. The client offered four things they thought should be on the list and expected me to fill in the rest.

I started with Google and went to all my regular websites (e.g., Forbes, Forrester, Content Marketing Institute). There was a lot of great content out there, which led me down a rabbit hole of research. This was a new client, after all. I wanted them to see how thorough I was.

Sheesh.

My notes — just for the outline —amounted to about 20 pages of links and content that I was going to draw upon when it came time to actually write the article. I wound up using less than half of the material and found NEW source material once I actually started writing!

Lesson 2: Don’t overdo the preliminary research. I know from experience that once you actually start to write a project, new source material is going to come up. It is not necessary to do so much work up front.

Know your audience better up front

You have to know who you’re writing for — it’s an important tenet of copywriting. Some brands have personas constructed down to the tiniest details: where their audience lives, what kind of work they do, what kind of car they drive, what they like to eat — I’ve seen some personas with names and everything. You have to know your target audience.

Well, I didn’t have a persona to work from, just a vague idea of who the prospect is targeting with their blog — upper level marketing professionals. Cool. The problem was that I didn’t start researching my target audience until AFTER I wrote the first outline!

If I had taken a little time up front to do some research on who I was writing for I would have known right away that a 10-item listicle was MUCH too long for these busy professionals. Researching the target audience helped me re-order the outline and restructure it. Waiting until I had already done a lot of research about the topic and drafted an outline made me waste time duplicating my efforts.

Lesson 3: Know your audience very well BEFORE drafting the outline.

Don’t spend so much time doing more research while you’re WRITING the blog post

OK, this may sound a little contradictory, but you should have enough research done in the outline phase so you’re not spending hours and hours doing more research when it’s time to actually write the blog post.

But that’s exactly what I did.

After learning more about my target audience, the tone and flavor of the post changed a little, which required me to do — you guessed it — more research! I dug up NINE additional sources to use as links spelling out the stats and usefulness around certain strategies. My final notes document was over 20 pages long and, as I mentioned before, I wound up not even using half of the original source material. Can you say redundant, boys and girls?

Lesson 4: Do the right kind of research up front, so you don’t repeat yourself later into the project.

Conclusion

Writing this blog post made it hard for me to believe I’ve been writing for clients for more than three years and that I was a professional editor for 15 years before that! All of the ways I go about organizing my time and the project pretty much flew out the window. When I turned it in on Friday, knowing how much time I put into what was really a straightforward article, I cringed a little. Systems will be in place for the next piece I do for a prospect. Guaranteed.

So, don’t do like I did. In fact, I’d love to hear how you guys structure your time for paid writing gigs. Maybe I can learn something new. Thanks!