This is just my system. It works for me – Try this, and see if it works for you!
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
- Get a cup of coffee. This part is the crucial first step.
- Open Scrivener. If you haven’t bought Scrivener, you need to. Michael Hyatt, Jerry Jenkins, and a great many others all agree on this – Scrivener changes the way you write! You learn to write more succinctly.
- Set your template. You should do this when you first get Scrivener. Michael Hyatt has shared his 7 step template with others by describing it. You want to set your word count (the gray target logo in the bottom right hand corner of Scrivener) to 500 words, and make a template also of 2,000 words for the VERY long blog post. Those will be for your how-to, or your occasional rants. Such as my “How to Master the Art of Working Harder at Writing” rant, and my “Surviving Catastrophic Conditions” article.
- Write your title. I personally hate the whole “write a winning title” thing, but the experts all agree – if I write a blog post on “writing your novel part 4” most people don’t read it. But “Seven Steps to writing a bestselling Novel” gets attention. CoSchedule actually has a headline analyzer, and gives you a score. CoSchedule actually recommends you not use a headline that gets a score lower than a 70. I suppose one of these days I should use it!
- Lead-in. I don’t pad out my lead-ins, and I probably should. I like to skip on them as much as possible, because when I read a blog, I tend to skip almost everyone’s lead-in’s and get to the meat of the article. If it’s good, I clip it to Evernote, and then I’ll go back and read the lead in later.
- The Main Article. Michael Hyatt recommends bullet points or number lists for this, as they work better when copied to Facebook. Personally, I do it to keep track because my default number is usually 7 (”7 ways to make a winning cup of coffee!”), and the number points let me know if I need to change it!
- Keep an eye on the progress indicator! I’m at 370 words right now, and it’s letting me know I’m almost done! Once you hit green, it’s time to wrap it up!
- Call to action. I don’t write too many articles that request you do something. Others do, (my indicator just changed color – I’m almost done with this article!). The call to action is where you challenge someone to (whatever you’re writing on), summarize (call this Summary or In Conclusion), or just say something so they know the article is done (conclusion). I use the Subtitle format in Scrivener to set this aside, then when it goes on WordPress, I choose H5.
- Spell Check. I’m all thumbs because I write too fast. I’ll get words completely wrong, and sometimes I’ll even leave words out. Scrivener lets you know by a red underline if you made a mistake.
- Get your stock photo. Most of them charge money to download it. You know, when you say that it’s free, that means you don’t charge money. Don’t lie and say it’s free when it’s not! Anyway, find your preferred stock photo place. Michael Hyatt uses iStockphoto. I’m using Upsplash right now. Once my blog brings in money, or I start making a lot more money through my writing, then I’ll get the same iStockphoto membership.
- Copy to WordPress. This is the one annoying part of Scrivener, is that WordPress uses a different formatting. So you may have to edit the format a little.
- Assign keywords and categories. This is how people on WordPress find you.
- SEO tags and Meta. I use All In One SEO, and it allows you to enter meta and descriptions for every post, including when someone copies it to Facebook. It takes about 5 more minutes per post. I miss the old days where you could just write in Livewriter, and publish, and two people saw your blog every thirty years or so. These extra steps increase your traffic, so it’s good. Just the cost of being professional.
- Schedule for publish. Co-Schedule gives a PDF including the best time to publish blog posts. Supposedly, 7 AM is the peak time, because everyone’s at work and doing their social stuff instead of the work their employer is paying them to do. Play around and see when the best time for your blog is. Schedule some for 6 am, some for 7, some for 8, etc. Keep track of what time produces the most traffic for you.
Conclusion
Wrap up dialogue goes here. You know it’s over when you see this!
What template do you use? Got a different system? Talk about it here!
