Blogging is exciting when you are a beginner. What happens next? You are no longer so excited. As a result, writing posts and finding hot topics little by little become a monotonous work, and flashes of brilliant ideas fade out with every seldom occurrence. Time also turns into an issue. You somehow have a few minutes less each time you try to blog. Less time dedicated gives birth to deteriorated productivity. There also might be other reasons for that (e.g. you get sick, your Internet dies, your hamster runs away, etc.).
Here are some tips that will help you make the most of the time you have available for blogging.
Write In Advance
This will save your life when going off the schedule is certain to happen and cannot be avoided. You could also queue your blog posts up for publication. Drafts Scheduler and Queue Posts are the plugins you might find helpful for this.
Compile Your Ideas
Those seldom flashes of perfect titles and topics are too precious to lose. Evernote will save and accumulate them so that you can always get back to what inspires you. Add there links, articles and quotes as well. Whatever might be useful should be written down. This way, you create your own bank of ideas and extracts, and thus exploit search engine less often.
Say ‘NO’ to Distractions
Staying focused while working on something usually does not last long. Social media notifications and messages just seem to deliberately grab your attention. No matter how alluring those distractions are, ignore them because they steal your blogging time.
StayFocused and Cold Turkey are free productivity boosters. They block access to productivity-killing websites like Facebook and YouTube.
Have you heard of the Pomodoro technique? Many people find it incredibly helpful. Just have a five-minute break every twenty-five minutes of your productive writing. Try Focus Booster, Tomatoi.st, E.ggtimer.com, or any other timer to help yourself stick to the schedule.
If you cannot stay focused when writing from within the WordPress dashboard, enter full-screen mode and see nothing except what is needed to write a text. OmmWriter is an alternative if you do not like creating directly within WordPress.
Spend Less Time Sourcing Images
Finding the perfect picture takes too much time. You can actually speed it up with the help of such plugins as PhotoDropper (allows you to find images sourced from Flickr, free of charge), Flickr Pick A Picture (allows you to search Flickr for photos and pictures from within your WordPress dashboard), and Zemanta (offers a SEO benefit).
Streamline Your Search Engine Optimization
You could try using Yoast SEO plugin or All in One SEO Pack instead of wasting time analyzing your posts for SEO.
Build Your Analytics Into the Dashboard
Bloggers are constantly curious about statistics. Unfortunately, stats-addiction affects productivity as well. Let Google Analytics Dashboard be your partial rescue. It will load your analytics data right into your WordPress dashboard. You will no longer have to open up a new tab and log into your Google Analytics account. Try WordPress Statistics, WassUp Real Time Analytics, or Jetpack Site Stats (you can log in through wordpress.com).
Learn Shortcut Keys
Here is the list of the most useful shortcuts:
- Ctrl + a – Select all
- Ctrl + b – Bold
- Ctrl + c – Copy
- Ctrl + I – Italic
- Ctrl + v – Paste
- Ctrl + x – Cut
- Ctrl + z – Undo
- ALT+SHFT+A – Insert a URL
- CMD+1, 2 or 3 for the corresponding H1, H2 or H3.
Some effort a day keeps unproductivity away! Absorb the tips and use them to become a productive blogger!
If you are still looking for a perfect platform for your future blog, do not hesitate and migrate to WordPress. Years of success and millions of thankful users make a decent guarantee of your right choice.