My Hows on Blogging

In one of my posts earlier this year, I wrote about why I have been blogging for the last three years. But the question that I hear even more is how I blog and what process I have in place to ensure continuity. The truth is I don’t really have a process that allows me to produce blog posts at the monthly cadence with which I typically publish on LinkedIn. Instead, I am more of a binge writer that usually produces posts in batches and takes a break until that inventory runs out. My sporadic writing may seem a bit chaotic, but it still relies on a process for restocking that inventory every few months. And this process may seem better suited for binge writing, but the individual steps should hopefully apply to other blogging styles as well. My writing happens in three simple phases.

Find a topic: I make sure I jot down any promising topics whenever they come to mind or I get good suggestions from others. The goal in this stage is to make sure that the high level idea is captured somewhere so it can start kicking around in my head. This is a somewhat ad-hoc and muddled phase, but I try to maintain some semblance of order by keeping a running list of possible topics in one centralized doc.

Make an outline: Once I have some topics, I try to come up with a rough outline by identifying and capturing the key themes for each topic. I generally like to stick to the rule of threes where I try to organize my posts into no more than three major sections. At this point, I still don’t bother with getting the language right and use this phase just to put together a skeleton for the post.

Flesh it out and polish: Lastly, I complete the final blog posts when I have a backlog of at least a couple of topics, complete with outlines. This part is more about putting the meat on the skeleton and adding the right polish to produce a draft that I can share with folks who can give me some editorial feedback. I typically iterate on my posts once or twice before I am ready to publish them. Pro tip: I find long flights to be the best time for this so I generally find myself making outlines for a few posts before I jump on a flight. 

Generally, in my experience, the process gets easier with each phase. Topic ideation is generally the hardest phase, followed by outlining. The last phase is generally more of a chore and requires less critical thinking, which is why I generally try to batch it and get it done for multiple posts in one single seating.  If I can keep this schtick going for three years with what barely passes for a process, imagine what anyone with a little more discipline could actually do. If you are reading this and have ever given blogging some thought, I hope that these confessions from a chaotic blogger will inspire you to start blogging today...surely, if I can do this, so can you.

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