Last month, Leigh Peele posted 11 Tips For Writing A 15 Minute Article over at Yaro Starak's blog. I usually spend more than 15 minutes on my blog posts. But the tips are useful whether you spend two minutes or two hours per post.

Today, I'd like to share my thoughts on a few of her tips.

1. Have a Title List

There are some people who enjoy an idea sheet, but I am not a fan those unless specific. Instead, I like a title sheet. ... Here is an example -

Idea sheet: Write an article about blogging traffic

Title sheet: 10 Ways To Get Traffic (You Didn't Know About)

Since a title sheet is more specific than an idea sheet, it instantly launches you further into the blogging process. For the same reason, I've never been a fan of lists of ways to get ideas for blog posts that are full of things like:

  • "say something controversial"
  • "write a top 10 list"
  • "review a product"
  • "write a tutorial"
  • "interview an expert"
  • "write something inspirational"

These are all fine suggestions for how to say what you want to say, but useless for solving the more common problem of not knowing what to talk about.

6. Get Worked Up

Excitement over a subject is the best way to let the "ink flow."

Thus, as I mentioned the other day, the importance of blogging in a niche that interests you. It's hard to get genuinely worked up about something you don't care about.

One suggestion if you write while worked up -- if you're writing angry (which isn't the only way to be worked up, of course), save your post as a draft. Before publishing, calm down and re-read it to be sure you're not saying something you're regret later.

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Once you've published, it's out there. You can delete it from your blog, but it may live on in somebody's cache forever.

9. Stop Overthinking It

Simple is smart. Quick is good.

If you've got a lot to say, consider splitting it up into multiple posts, each focused on one part of the topic. There are several advantages to doing this:

  • You can finish writing faster.
  • Visitors are less likely to be turned off by an overly long post.
  • It keeps each post focused on one concept, which is good for SEO and good for delivering your message with maximum impact.
  • Writing a connected series of posts engages your readers over a longer period of time, which also has more impact.
  • You don't have to figure out exactly what you're going to say about each concept before publishing anything.

I'll lump three last tips together:

2. Borrow Ideas From Other People

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8. Learn To Quote

Plagiarism isn't cool, but quoting someone's work is.

...

10. Keep Your Hand On The Pulse Of The World

...

Pay attention to what people are questioning this week or what they are up in arms about.

These three tips go hand in hand. Blogs and news sites related to what you blog about are prime fodder for ideas for you own blog. When something inspires you:

  1. grab a quote from it -- you'll get done quicker because you'll already have part of your post's content written for you.
  2. add your comments -- they can be brief or long.
  3. add a link to the original article -- first, because it's proper etiquette; and second, because it may get you a pingback link from the original article.
  4. and post it to your blog.

This pattern (and a tool that makes it easier) is what's taken me from twice a month blogger to daily blogger.

As I said in the beginning, I usually spend more than 15 minutes on each post. But this method can be used to build a popular blog with two minute posts.

Look at Slashdot for example. Most of their posts contain about 1 1/2 sentences of original content, a quote from and a link to an article somewhere else. This pattern has earned them an Alexa traffic rank of 1,239 -- only 1,238 websites in the entire world get more traffic (from Alexa toolbar users) than Slashdot.

One key when publishing a "content curation" blog like that is focus. At Slashdot, the focus is "news for nerds, stuff that matters". They post about technology and liberal politics, focused especially on online rights.

The other key is quality. Rather than re-posting everything you find on your topic, choose only the best content, and avoid being repetitive. If you go for quantity over quality, you may get more search traffic, but you won't get many repeat visitors.

And in fact, you may not get more search traffic, because, while you'll have more pages working their way into the search results, you'll get far fewer inbound links, which are probably the single most important factor for getting high search rankings.

Well, I've violated the "Stop Overthinking It" tip by lumping several concepts into a single post. Hopefully you'll learn from my mistake and do it better!

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