How to produce 2-3 quality blog posts in 1 hour a month
So, our clients (I know many of them will read this post), are busy people but very often we need QUALITY content from them and even though they want to give it to us they have very little time. Being the kind of guy who has the goalkeepers mentality (more on that later), I keep challenging myself to help those clients who want to get us content but can’t. So here is the path to getting the content you want to succeed for clients who don’t have time.
PART I — 5-10 minutes
Start with keyword research
Go to Google and start querying questions
if I worked in the motorcycle gear industry I might go to google and begin searching for “what is the best motorcycle” – DONT HIT ENTER – then just watch the suggestions come back. BINGO, now you got topics.
NOTE: The reason why I LOVE this strategy is that you know you are writing stuff that people are actually SEARCHING for. I can’t tell you the amount of times a client only has time to write 1-2 high quality blog posts a month/quarter and instead of writing on topics where there is an audience, they write on topics where there is no audience even looking for that content.
Other free keyword tools to use to get ideas from suggest’s:
Soovle
Suggester
Ubersuggest
Remember the search engines have other tools too.
OK, you get the point, stop reading and start googling
PART II — 5-10 minutes (one time)
Lay the groundwork for your pitch to the client
Now that we know there is demand, we still haven’t tackled the hardest part producing the content. Now there are two ways to produce this content, either the cheap way by hiring some copywriter to knock out a low quality article – or getting a subject matter expert to produce it. In most industries I’d prefer to get the subject matter experts any day.
To get the content produced follow these steps:
1 – Ask the client how long their commute is, usually they will say 40+ minutes – if they are baller it is likely longer!
2 – Do the math, let the client know that they spend about 4-5 hours a week getting to and from work, they will be convinced that your 30 minutes once a month is a good investment, if not go get a new client.
3 – Now you have buy in…Go get a Google voice account, since you can record calls – 3 minutes (one time)
PART III — 30 minutes
4 – What are you waiting for!!! Start asking questions. Have the client call your google voice number and just start peppering them with questions from your research in step 1.
You can download recorded calls! So now you have the conversation dowloaded, you can e-mail it to a third party to transcribe.
You are almost there, stick with me, don’t start cutting corners now and say, I’ll hire someone in india to transcribe it for 3 bux.
If the calls goes really smooth – embed the link to the interview…BOOM, podcast – now you can go and get links from podcast directories (ahem apple)
Part IV — Get it transcribed — 0 minutes
Assuming you are busy, don’t do it yourself pay someone.
Ideally that 3rd party is not some low quality company in india (that is the cheap way) – find someone who actually knows how to format a post for a blog with headlines and bullets – make it easy to read and people will read it. Pay the extra 10 bux to have an editor or blogger help you with it.
Here are some great posts on formatting posts for maximum readability and links:
BINGO, you have now given the client 95% of the work already done with minimal investment on their part.
Part V — Tweaks / approval time – 10 minutes
Upsides to this strategy:
1 – Low time commitment for client
2 – Your company ends up doing most of the work
3 – Its easy to pitch to the client – you don’t have 30 minutes for me
4 – It scales – others can join in if someone gets busy
5 – People can talk quicker than they can write
6 – If the SME is really enthusiastic one question can result in 4 blog posts not just 1!
7 – You are producing content that people are already searching for, meaning if you do it RIGHT (not crappy & quick) it will rank well and will naturally attract links b/c its a quality piece
8 – Your client gets atta-boys from bosses b/c they are adding quality content to the blog
Downsides to this strategy:
NONE, SO GO FREAKING DO IT!
Still not convinced of going the high quality route? Two more reasons why you should use SME’s over random low quality writers:
1 – Subject matter experts are going to be more on the cutting edge of whats new in the space making the piece more quality, and timely. This makes it easier for you to push it out and promote it to other SME’s and…get links.!
2 – Subject matter experts know other subject matter experts, so at the end of your call ask your client, who else in their industry would be interested in or writes about this topic/issue. Also ask what sites people go to for this info. All of those questions help you promote the piece after it is done. This works especially well in B2B markets.
Praise to Rob Snell who shared this idea about a year ago during his keynote at Pubcon. He was specifically talking about his brother who isn’t a blogger, but is a wealth of information on Dog supplies and how he used a similar strategy to get content out of his brother, Steve. BTW his keynote rocked, if you ever have a chance to see him, do it.
Posted: 02.10.11
Matt Mikulla:
Those are excellent tips Wil.
I was at a local internet marketing meetup the other night and someone tipped me off to Wordtracker Keyword Questions. It’s very useful tool to find certain questions around a keyword to write about.
Lindsay Wassell:
I am the slowest writer on the planet. Though hugely rewarding from a business perspective, putting out my own blog posts is a challenge because it is such a substantial time investment. Really. I’ll use some of these tips for myself first, then see about rolling them out to clients. Thanks for giving me another way to think about content production.
Brian Young:
Simple, effective, measurable — I like this strategy a lot. Thanks Wil.
Kyle:
Fantastic post! I have the same problem with content development and will definitely use this to develop new post ideas. Thanks Wil!
Chris Carragher:
Wil – All very good ideas. Thanks for sharing.
Matt – Thanks for bringing up WordTracker Keyword Questions. I’ll definitely bookmark this page and re-visit when needed.
Geno Prussakov:
Good advice (as always), Wil. These tips can also greatly improve the quality (and effectiveness) of content on affiliate sites. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.
Are you gonna be at PubCon South in a month? Would love to meet in person.
Wil Reynolds:
@Geno, I wish…the travel schedule this year is insane and something had to get the axe. and it was sxsw and pubcon. :(
@chris you got it buddy.
@kyle thx
@brian thats what I liked about the strategy, quick & easy to implement.
@lindsay – I’m with you…trying it even for yourself is huge. If you can train someone, you can really get to a system where you can say, “insert screen cap of serp” as you record the ideas, and they’ll know how to do all of that for you.
@matt that wordtracker tool will be on my to check out list this weekend
VSEO Social Media:
Good stuff Will. People (like me) and my readers find it easier to follow a well designed PLAN when wanting to perform such tasks. This makes for an easy to follow step-by-step approach.
I did a similar post on my blog, but it wasn’t as clear (I like the time line you added) which means I’m gonna have to go back and update my post or do another using your model. Strong work!
Sunny.:
Hey Will,
First like everybody said – Your post rocks !
Second – I am from India , dont kick on my stomach, just kidding.
Indians can produce quality, you see first Indian to reach this post :)
Cheers !
Sunny.:
Wil – tip from India :)
5minutesite.com/local_keywords.php
Good tool for finding local keywords…
Nick DeLuca:
Will, Love the tips you wrote here. I use that google search tip in the beginning of your article and it works wonders for us. We show clients that this is what people are actually searching for. It’s easy for them to search and play around, then when done we build the content based off of that! Keep up the great work!
Wil Reynolds:
@sunny thanks for sharing! And you are absolutely right, quality can come from India for sure, sorry for not mentioning that. Unfortunately a lot of the solicitations I get don’t reflect well on those who do content well.
@nick thank you buddy! I’m glad you’ve Ben using this strategy as well, it just makes sense to produce content that you know people are searching for you know?
Ryan Lamothe:
Great idea, Wil! I have recently been watching a lot of your YouTube Videos and find you to be one of the more realistic SEO’ers out there. Maybe not the most flattering adjective, realistic, but in the SEO world, I think that says a lot. I will be re-posting this article, with a link of course, on my site personal site Ryan Lamothe and my company’s site, SearchENVISION. I would also like to pick your brain a bit, what is th best email to contact you@?
Wil Reynolds:
wilr at this domain, pick away at http://www.pickwilsbrain.com
Joseph Cannizzo:
This post will definitely help me keep regimented with my blog post creation. I procrastinate frequently however, I think this will keep me on track.
Andrew:
Are you outsourcing all of the content writing and only including the interview portion as the 1 hour a month? Otherwise, if you’re creating the content yourself from the interview, it surely would take more than an hour to generate 2-3 quality posts.