Vowing to blog more? 7 shortcuts for fast blog posts

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is identical to mine—writing more blog posts every week—you probably had the same sinking feeling I had when I made that resolution yesterday: How in the world will I ever find the time to do it?

Here are seven shortcuts when time is really at a premium:
 

1. Compile a list of FAQs.

This morning, a social  media client emailed me to let me know how many inquiries and industry-related questions her company received during December from their website.  

Every time someone emails a question about your product, service, industry or expertise, save the question and the answer on a Word doc. At the beginning of every month or two, open the document, cut and paste, and blog quickly about frequently asked questions. If you receive a lot of questions, you can group them by topic. Each topic can be a separate post. This is perfect, by the way, for an assistant.

2.  Compile a list of must-read articles on a certain topic.

If you’ve created Google Alerts, you’re getting lots of helpful articles in your inbox regularly. If you’re on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and you frequently click on links to articles others are sharing, you might feel like you’re drinking all that great content from a fire hose.

Create another Word document of articles you find particularly helpful. When you add one to the list, make a notation of what you found particularly helpful. When you compile a dozens or so links, write a post.

3. Record a short phone interview with an expert and have it transcribed.

One of my other resolutions is to call people I meet via social media and record a very short phone interview on their area of expertise, outsource the transcription, and create it as a blog post.

Want three blog posts from one conversation? Do a short interview on three topics during the same call. Each one gets its own blog post. 

When you create the posts, let the experts know and ask them to share the link.  

4. Share industry definitions.

While updating my my ebook, How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound, I added to the long list of PR definitions and social media definitions in the back of the book. Then it hit me. The list can be divided into separate blog posts by topic. Another great task for an assistant. If you don’t have your own ready-made list, you can create one simply by Googling.
 

5.  What’s the most valuable tool, trick, tip or advice you learned each day?

It can be a free tool like FreeDigitalPhotos.net, where you can download free stock photos. Or an expert you discovered and started following on Twitter. Or a trick on how to encourage more people to comment on your status updates. At the end of the day, you can write a very short post—two or three paragraphs are fine—or compile the tips from each week into a blog post every Friday.
 

6. Let blog readers know about your favorite tweets from the past week.

Every Friday, my assistant—Christine Buffaloe of Serenity Virtual Assistant Services—compiles a list of my 10 most helpful tweets from that week and turns them into a blog post for my blog readers who might not be following me on Twitter. I’m amazed at the number of people who retweet the list. You can see my “Dog Tweets” from last week.
 

7.  Let followers know about your next event.

This is the one area where I need the most improvement. Even though I blog regularly about events I’m sponsoring, like webinars, I frequently forget to let my readers know about other people’s teleseminars or webinars where I’ll be appearing as a guest. Update your readers about your book signings, tweet chats, Meetups, industry meetings, networking events, trade shows, radio or TV shows where you’re appearing, podcasts, etc. 
 

8. Now it’s your turn.

What are favorite ways to create really fast blog posts? Comment below, and feel free to link to a post you created quickly so we can see the example. 

If you like these tips, please share the link.