It's Nice to Be Ahead!
It Really Is Nice to Be Ahead...
I've been with WA now for a little over a year and up until recently, I've been busy each day, researching keywords, writing content, sharing on social media, checking out various plugins and so on. When you break it down, it really is time-consuming.
I used to do this every day:
- Find my topic keyword
- Write my title
- Build the post framework (break my post down into 5 or more supporting sub-topics and make those my headings)
- Write my content
- Find images to support my content (usually one for each heading and a featured image)
- Publish and tweak for appearance
- Share on social media
- Request comments
Now, that's a lot to do in one sitting...
Enter the SAC...
If I'm going to take one of Kyle's teachings in the SAC (Super Affiliate Challenge) as the best tip so far, it's by far Content Efficiency!
I used to do the above 8 steps every day. Doing it this way takes way too much time. Content Efficiency is all about doing those steps but in a more efficient way.
Keyword Research/Selection
Instead of researching a keyword each day, take the time to research several. I decided to research 5 for each site I run (so a total of 10) every week on Monday.
Article Title Creation
Repeat the same process for your article titles. Do them all at once for however many articles you're going to write that week. This is also a Monday task for me.
Framework Building
Again, create the post framework for all post you'll be writing that week. We're still on Monday...
Now, by doing the above 3 steps in bulk, I probably spend 1-2 hours (if I'm being really picky with my research and prep work) on Monday hammering this out. Compare that to about 1+ hours per post if I do it individually. I write 4 posts for my sites total each week so that's 4+ hours reduced to 1-2. That's already a 50%+ savings!
Article Content & Image Selection
Now I usually write my content, 1 post per day. I do this so to break it up and allow myself time for other things and interruptions, etc.
Last week, I had plans to leave Thursday and spend 4 days camping in wine country with the husband, mother-in-law and friend. I knew I wouldn't have reliable service where we were going and I didn't want to miss any posting times.
I chose to write the 4 posts in 1 day. Now, most of the time a post takes me about 2-3 hours to complete. It varies but that's the average. That includes posting and image selection, etc. I can't really put a cause/effect relationship to it but I was able to write all 4 posts in about 6.5 hours. That's shaving 1.5 hours off my average when I do a single post day x 4 days.
Publishing
I then publish my articles and quickly edit them in WordPress to change them to drafts. Once done, I verify the look and layout is what I expected and schedule the post to post on the date and time I prefer.
Social Sharing
I also use Nelio Content to share to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter, as soon as the post goes live. This saves me a lot of time over doing it manually. . I get to choose the image and message to use and it will happen for me automatically.
The only thing I have to do later on, is re-share (say to a group from the page I posted to or what not and that's just because I'm cheap and use the free version vs the paid version that would share to my feed, group and page, etc.
Request Comments
This is still a manual process, although I wish Carson and Kyle would add a scheduled comment request system that would work with scheduled posts, etc. If anyone knows how to accomplish this now, I'd love to hear about it.
Conclusion
All in all, I'd say I can process my week's posting duties in half the time or less if I apply myself and do the steps in bulk rather than individually.
This allowed me to take that 4 days off without worrying about getting it all done and posted on my usual schedule. I'd even smile when my phone was in service and got the post notices.
Thank you, Kyle, this has been really great for me. This week I'm back to the daily grind but I plan to alter my schedule to free up my time and start processing all of my week's posting duties on Monday and Tuesday, leaving only the manual stuff (comments, re-sharing, etc.) for the daily tasks, taking maybe 15 minutes of my time on those days.
To anyone else worrying about the amount of time it takes to get everything done, consider the bulk approach and see if it works for you. It does for me and has freed up so much time it's really surprising.
If anyone else has tips for saving time and being more efficient, please share them by commenting below. Hell, even if you don't have tips yourself, but you found the SAC or any of the tips listed above helpful and actually saw savings by changing your processes a little, please share which tips worked for you and how much you think it saved you.
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
Scott
Recent Comments
26
Some great tips Scott I really must revisit my process. Based on a previous post of yours I now research keywords and article topics at least 5 at a time.
As I write my articles I tend to add in (make a note) of where I want images to fall and often these will be screenshots if I am writing about a particular product.
For most of my posts I can't get my times down to anything like yours though. I would say researching and writing (a 1500-2000 word article) takes on average around 3 - 4 hours. Then probably around another 1 -2 to resize images, create a featured image, check everything, add links and publish.
I'm using a theme that has a builder which gives me lots of nice options but I know I could use it more efficiently by creating more templates.
The article I wrote yesterday for example was about a scammy pyramid scheme so I wanted to make sure I had the article really well researched and written and it took me almost 5 hours to write. I'm just about to resize images and publish now.
Of course this isn't always the case. What I am trying to do when I do my keyword research is mix the kind of articles so if I know one will require a lot of research and write time make sure the next one will be much less so.
Good stuff Scott thanks once again. Hope the wine was good!
Nice...
For me, most of muy topics are still under the "I know them pretty well" category, so my research time is less than many others.
That said, what really helps me speed up my writing is breaking down the article into the 5+ subcategories that support the overall topic. When I do that I then only have to write 2 to 3 paragraphs per subcategory. When you add them all together it builds a decently sized full article of 1500+ words.
Most of my articles hover between 1800 and 2000 words.
Keep me posted on your progress.
You are doing so well. I have collected a bunch of keywords, but perhaps you can suggest a solution for me. I have trouble figuring out ahead of time what my next article will be. I do quite a bit of research on topics before I even start writing. Can you suggest a way to come up with ideas for articles ahead of time?
So, for me, it's a mix of qualifications...
1) I try to balance by monthly traffic so I'll pic the bottom one and top one for my two posts that week.
2) I also try to stagger info posts and selling posts (i.e. posts with affiliate links.
Now if I have more posts on one side vs the other, I might pull 2 from the larger pile to every one from the smaller, etc.
Hmm...I also stagger my info posts and selling posts. I think it improves content for your audience not to be always trying to sell something.
My main problem is with my WA site. I alternate one inspiration post with some kind of review, usually. It is easier to figure out the inspiration posts ahead, but it often takes me a while to figure out what to review. I am envious that you and several others can use Kyle's method. The WA site is difficult for me, anyway...makes the SAC really challenging. I just wish I could figure out a method that would work for me to do posts ahead.
Do you offer a lot of Site Comments? I leave 3 per day, Monday through Friday, and sometimes I get review ideas from those comment requests.
I am leaving three a day, most days, and have thought that I might find some ideas there...guess I have found one or two. Actually, I was just thinking this morning that when I give a comment, I need to peruse what else is on that site to get ideas, perhaps.
Definitely..also pay attention to the threads in social media. Writing about current topics is a great way to go. See a question, write a post to answer it. See a product or service mentioned/advertised, review it.
Good evening, I also have been saving a lot of time by using the recommended techniques by Kyle and Carson. It's definitely a beautiful thing, it gives me more time with my book which I didn't have enough time before. This Sac challenge is extraordinary, May you have a very successful week.
Thank you, I actually had time to work on it last night what a beautiful thing it was. May you have a very successful day in all that you do.
Wow.. You've really got it worked out.
I like to write my blogs down in point form first and then go back and expand. I also write down about a dozen potential blogs before starting to write content. Jim
Great post; will definitely use it when I fully start writing content as i'm still in the early stages of setting up site and training. Thanks for sharing :-)
Thank you for the advice.
Im just starting out and I had planned to get a schedule formulated to help with time management.
3-4 on your list is where I struggle most.;(
I am stealing your method, but Ill be sure to tell you if it has worked for me ;)
Definitely wrks but I still take a while to write my posts - I find they are getting longer and longer. Seldom less than 2000 words.
And the images and SEO for alt tags, titles etc seem to take forever.
So far, my niches have been around things I already know a lot about. As such, I can write articles pretty quickly. Now, there are times when I have to do more research and whatnot, that obviously adds time to the writing portion.
Imagery can be tricky. One thing I found is to expand the search criteria a bit to synonyms for what I'm looking for. (i.e. 1st place, winning, ahead, etc. all work for this post. I was able to find the racing one under winning I thin it was.).
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Great tips Scott. It makes so much sense to do things your way. Especially with how much time it takes to each one of those things individually over and over. Thanks for the ideas!
Michelle
I'm glad you like them!