The Power of the Blog Post Draft

Trying to come up with a new blog post idea every day is tough.  Sometimes you just aren’t in that creative mode.  Wordpress let’s you leave posts in draft most and that’s something really amazing.

You can start a post without actually working on it until you are ready.  Rather than make a big list of blog post ideas, you can start each post within your site.

Whenever I have an idea or come across something interesting that I want to share, I create a blog post.

I pick the title, put the post into a category and add the featured image.  And then I save the post as a draft.  That’s it.

Research Mode

Finding ideas for blog posts is something that you want to do in a big session.  Spend a few hours combing forums, other blogs and news sites looking for ideas.  If you just try to find one good idea, you will often run into other ones that seem pretty great.  That’s how I came up with the idea for this post.

This very post has been in draft mode for three months or so.  I saw someone talking about this on their blog.  Since I have tons of my own posts in draft mode, I thought I should talk about it too.

When you are in research mode, you are just scouring the Internet looking for ideas.  I like to load up a ton of ideas during this phase.  I am also super perfectionist about the images I use in my posts. I spend ages looking for the right stock photo.  I consider that part of my research.  If I try to pick the main photo when I’m in writing mode, the project can get derailed.

Writing Mode

When I’m writing a blog post, I want to stay on the post page as much as possible.  If I have to go research some stats or find a picture, it can be distracted and slow down the entire process.

With the prep work complete, I can just dig into the idea and focus on the writing.  This allows me to write blog posts very quickly.  In writing mode, I’m activating the creative part of my brain and I want to stay in that mode.

Getting distracted or trying to change gears will slow you down and waste time.  Time is far too precious to waste.  It’s better to write your posts fast and spend more time with your family.

Use Drafts to Plan The Future

You can put posts in draft mode and also schedule them.  At the start of the week, you know the five posts you are going to write.  Setting up a schedule like this will smooth out your process.

Why make a list or schedule somewhere else?  If you make a list in a Google Doc or a notebook, you still have to copy everything to your blog.  So you might as well do it all at the same time.

The most posts ideas you have stored up, the better.  I have several months worth of posts already lined up and every time I have a new idea, I add it to my draft collection.

Right now I have 86 draft posts on my blog, how many do you have?