Timothy Ferriss, author of the 4 hour work week recently posted 5 Uncommon Timesavers for bloggers on problogger. These two caught my eye because they’re both very common for me to do, so I thought I would pass it along.
2. Post less to be read more.
No matter how good your material is, too much of it can cause feed-overwhelm and unsubscribes. Based on input from close to a dozen top bloggers I’ve interviewed, it takes an average of three days for a new post to propagate well in the blogosphere. If you write too often, pushing down the previous post and its visibility, you decrease the reach of each post, run the risk of increasing unsubscribes, and create more work for yourself. Test posting 2-4 times per week—my preference is two—and don’t feel compelled to keep up with the frequency “you have to post three times before lunch” Joneses. Quality, not quantity, is what spreads.
3. Define the lead and close, then fill it in.
This is a habit I picked up from John McPhee, a master of writing structure and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. Decide on your first or last sentence/question/scene, then fill in the rest. If you can’t decide on the lead, start with the close and work backwards.
A good formula for the lead, which I learned from a Wired writer, is: first sentence or paragraph is a question or situation involving a specific person, potentially including a quote; second paragraph is the “nutgraph,” where you explain the trend or topic of the post, perhaps including a statistic, then close the paragraph explaining what you’ll teach (the “nut”) the reader if they finish the post.
#2, Posting Less To Be Read More is a concept I got a long time ago. There’s even a Sticky Post Wordpress Plugin that’s available that allows you to post your new posts past the one you want to highlight or bring attention to. Leaving your post on the front page, at the top gets it a lot of exposure so if it’s something you are encouraging comments on, or are marketing something, leave it there for a few days and take your off day from blogging to promote it. Spend your time marketing the post, generating links, use stumbleupon.com, Digg, Reddit.com etc and really hammer home the attention to it. The other option of course is the plugin I mentioned, Lester Chan’s Wp-Sticky (here’s a demo of wp-sticky)The plugin allows you to specify which post number you want to leave at the top and for how long. It’s like a “sticky post”. I haven’t used it yet, but it’s certainly in my bookmarks and ready to be pulled out, uploaded and installed when I do. Lester had two other Wordpress Plugins that I use, namely Wp-Polls and Wp-Print on my Former Fat Guy Blog and I love them both. Thanks Lester!
Timothy Ferriss is author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business week bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek., Visit Timothy’s blog at http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/
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Read the entire post: 2 Time Saving Blog Writing Tips
from Rob
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