How to Write an Optimized Blog Post: A 2021 Guide for Lazy Writers

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TL;DR — This article is not another generic, theoretical article about how to write a blog. It’s a blow-by-blow breakdown of my work process, shortcuts, and free tools I use to speed up my writing. I’ve used this process for employers and clients across all kinds of industries and have built up this toolkit over the past ten years. In this article, I break it all down: from why I write my headlines first and CTAs last, to lazy writer shortcuts I use for making my writing useful and interesting, to simple editing rules for getting to a professional final piece.

You know how there are some things you’ve been doing for so long that it’s hard to explain to other people? For instance, if you were to explain how to ride a bike to a child or how to tie shoelaces, step by step — that would make you stop and think, wouldn’t it?

That’s pretty much how it is for me when I try to explain my writing process to people. I’ve been writing for a living for more than ten years. On average, I used to write 336,000 words per year (that’s the average of three full-length thriller novels, for context) for my employers and freelance clients.

But it was only recently that I began to articulate my process — when I began teaching someone else to write blog posts, from start to finish. To my surprise, this person started taking pages of notes on what I was saying, and when I looked at his notes, that was when I realized , “Hey, I have a real skill I can actually teach.”

A big part of being able to write so many articles (and get them approved) are four simple words: A. Super. Efficient. Workflow. And that’s what I’m going to break down in this article.

“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” ― Bill Gates

What this article is NOT

After doing a quick Google search on “How to Write A Blog Post in 2021”, I skimmed the top five articles that Google showed me. What struck me about these How To articles was that they had a few things in common:

1. They were very general and high level (eg. “Step 1 — Know your audience; Step 2 — Determine the type of article you are writing).