A common hurdle to effective inbound marketing is time. Whether it's creating an enticing call-to-action, email blast, or lead nurturing campaign - the common denominator for all of these is time. Blogging regularly, as an example, is an effective yet time consuming way to increase your website traffic. To that end, here are some tips that have worked for me in creating valuable yet efficient blogs:
- Write In Your Head First - use your time driving to work, waiting in line at Chipotle for lunch, or maybe even while you exercise, to develop a structure and key points for your blog post. Figuring out the structure and planning the writing before you actually sit down to put fingers to keyboard is a key time saver.
- Beginning, Middle, End - as you write in your head, determine the beginning, middle, and end of your post. Naturally, you'll have an introductory paragraph that sets context and a closing paragraph that asks questions or provides a summary. The meat of your post - whether it's data or recommendations or analysis - should be focused in the middle of your article.
- Finishing Touches - is your goal to spur discussion, gain conversions, or take a position? Drive that point home by asking questions or asking for feedback on a particular position. Have a catchy graphic and, per the first point, think about the graphic you'll need before you write. For example I've used Compfight to search for a graphic for this post.
What helps you write an effective and efficient blog post? Do you write during a certain time of the day? How do you blog ideas come to you?
Full disclosure here: this blog post took me 38 minutes to write. Biggest time suck? Finding a graphic. It look me probably 5 more minutes than I anticipated to find the right graphics. Any tips on that? Let us know.
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