I wrote this blog post in 2 hours. And I’ll show you how to do the same.

Will these techniques make you FAST? Yes. But this FAST has a groundwork. If you can learn and implement it into your creative writing process, you can be a prolific creator.

What to expect?

You won’t be able to write FAST immediately. There is no magic writing dust. But these are the things you must know and apply to your routine to get faster and more creative.

I read many articles on this "how to write blogs" topic and they're talking about the same rotten strategies. By the end, you'll be surprised by the writing tips in this article. And you'll have a new approach for writing a blog post.

1. What is the difference between FAST and SLOW creators?

Taking notes.

Researching without taking notes is just consuming.

People don’t take notes when they’re in the research phase about a given subject.

But if you're passionate about your field, I assume you’re reading about it, daily. Then your daily life is a research phase, right?

For example, my expertise is marketing and I read books, articles, tweets or news about my field. Every day. And when I read something valuable, I save it in my second brain.

Here are the tools that I use daily.

• Evernote: Best app to take quick notes. Here, you can see how I take notes.
• Notion: You can use it when you want to structure your ideas.
• Instapaper: Throw any link you want to read later to Instapaper. Then read it on mobile, desktop or tablet. It works with Evernote.
• eReaders, eBooks: The same, there are tools that link Evernote and eReaders. So any highlighted sentence goes straight to your notes.

This is my stack. Once you form the habit of taking notes, you’ll have tons of material waiting for you in your second brain.

Then all you need to do is rephrase the notes you took and link the ideas together.

2. Create a swipe file to write compelling headlines.

The headline is 80 cents of your 1 dollar. If you can’t write a good one, nobody will read your article.

And since you want to write FAST, I’ll advise you to create a swipe file.

A swipe file is a folder where you keep all the compelling headlines. Go google “headline swipe file” and you’ll be able to create yourself one in 30 minutes.

Fake it till you make it.

I’ve also done the same. I opened my swipe file and imitated the headlines that could fit my subject.

Do the same. Imitating and rephrasing is one of the best ways to learn writing.

After a while, you’ll not need any templates. Because you’ll understand how to write a headline.

P.S I write 10-15 headlines for anything I write and send it to my colleagues, friends or wife. Then I start writing the rest of my article and I choose my headline when the poll finishes.

3. Write a killer first sentence that leads to the next sentence.

The first sentence of your blog posts does two things.

One: It gets your readers to read the second sentence.

Two: It gives your readers a taste of your article.

If the first sentence is cliche or boring, people will stop reading.

Now I’ll show you a bad example that I took from one of the big content marketing sites.

Facebook is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. You’ve no doubt heard this already

Vague, uninteresting and it gives me the feeling that the article is one of the many copycat articles about Facebook Marketing.

I won’t read it. Will you?

How about something like this

I don’t know you, but I know a common point between your grandma and you. It’s Facebook ads.

Or this

3 months of extensive research went into this article. We might have found a FB strategy that even Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t know.

Whatever, you get the idea.

For me, there are three kinds of openers I use 90% of the time.

#1 Curiosity gap:

The curiosity gap is the space between what we know and what we want or even need to know.

Example: I was not sorry when my brother died.  (From the book, Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga.)

• What you know: Her brother died and she’s not sorry.
• What writers know: Knows the reason why.
• What you want and need to know: How can a person not feel sorry in this situation?

In short: Give the reader information but not all of it, leave it open-ended.

#2 Short bites:

Keep it short and interesting. Keep it under 4 words then the reader will almost unconsciously take the first bite. Then the third and fourth.

So here the focus is on the first sentence. But the rest is also important, so there should be a rhythm to keep the reader engaged.

Here is one from me:

French fries. You can't stop yourself after you eat the first one. And this is what a great opener should do to your readers.

#3 Tell a story

This is from a blog post “Buyer's Journey”

Have you ever heard the story of the guy, who brought a diamond ring to the first date? No, you haven’t.

Likewise, it’s not the best way to approach a cold prospect with a price quote.

Why use this?

• Analogies make it easier to follow for readers.
• So do stories.

4. A short introduction to making your point fast.

If your blog post is over 3K words, you have the right to write a longer intro.

In that case, you need to tell your reader what she’ll learn by investing 15 minutes. But if your blog post is short, write a very short introduction.

5. Write in a conversational rhythm and tone.

People on LinkedIn are not wearing serious faces, they're pretty loose and like to read conversational tone.

Understand the harmony between long and short sentences, then write like you're writing a friend.

Write like you're talking.

Here is a legendary example from the author Gary Provost that explains the importance of flow. Love this.

6.  Use simple words to increase readability.

Complicated words don't make the writer look smarter and annoy the reader.

Write like you’re writing to 8th graders.

• So, never indicate when you can show
• Or obtain when you can get
• Or eliminate when you can get rid of

You get the idea.

Plus, there will be lots of non-native speakers and readers in your network. So, be simple.

If you want to grade your text you can use the Hemingway app to calculate the readability score of your blog post. This app transforms the a normal blog post to a great blog post.

7. Use the power of whitespace to let your text breath

Long paragraphs are scary. When people see a big chunk of text, the first reaction is to run away from there.

Leave whitespace and let the reader breathe. Whitespace gives your text flow, makes it easier to read, adopt it to keep your reader engaged.

8. Write for your reader, edit for SEO

People write 5K articles that could be summed up in 2K words. Only for SEO and to stuff keywords.

Because there is that theory that the longer articles are better for SEO, but what about your reader’s thoughts and time?

Here is my take: If you remove a sentence without losing the meaning, remove it.

You have two choices here:

1. Write a longer blog post for SEO. Win the SEO game and lose readers because of gibble-gabble.
2. Write shorter for your readers. Give the most with fewer words to create a loyal reader base. Then edit your blog post for SEO.

In the second option, you could get viral, attract more backlinks and shares. And you'll make sure that you're not wasting your reader's time.

9. Write for skimming with the help of sub-headings.

Internet reading is not deep reading. People often skim through articles or they scan before they decide to read the full blog post.

How can you create a better skimming experience?

• Use bold to highlight takeaways
• Write descriptive subheadings
• Underline links.

What do I mean by descriptive subheadings?

As you see in this article, my sub-headings are telling the story and giving you a chance to skip if you already know the story.

10. Use bullet points to cut long and complicated pieces to snackable bits.

Without bullet points.

Bullet points can make your writing shorter and punchier. They increase readability,  add flow to your writing and resets the attention of the reader by breaking the reading pattern.

Also, you can use bullet points to tear down complicated topics to snackable pieces.

With Bullet points

• Make your writing shorter and punchier
• Increase readability
• Add flow to your writing
• Resets attention by breaking the reading pattern.
• Tear down complicated matters to snackable pieces.

Now a pro tip to increase readability with the same text, from shortest to longest.

• Increase readability
• Add flow to your writing
• Make your writing shorter and punchier
• Cut complicated matters to snackable pieces.
• Resets attention by breaking the reading pattern.

11. Use cliffhangers to keep your readers engaged.

Every Netflix show closes with a cliffhanger. It almost forces you to watch the next episode.

Your goal is the same as your text. At the end of every chapter or subheading, you can add a cliffhanger to keep the reader's attention alive.

Cliffhangers are not necessary for skimmable articles like this one.

But if you’re writing a piece for deep reading such as long articles, whitepapers and so on, you’ll need them.

If I were to write a cliffhanger for this one, I would write something like this:

If you liked the Netflix analogy here, you’ll love the analogy on number 15.

Or

I kept the most powerful tips for the curious writers, the last four tips will blow your pen out of this world.

And so on.

12. Add an infographic, graphs or statistics to empower the narrative.

We don’t read in every moment we live, but we see every second. We’re better at seeing, therefore we’re better visual learners.

Showing a related image is ok, but creating a graph or infographic for your specific topic will make you blog post 10x better. And you'll be more likely to convince your audience.

Everybody knows, but nobody does that. So you can still be a pioneer.

13. Write your first draft FAST to spot the best ideas.

Hey, I know what you're doing. I was also reading all the articles on the given topic and kind of copy-paste them when I first started blog writing.

Would you like to find your own unique perspective? Yes? Then do this.

• Set a timer for 15-20 minutes.
• Write everything off the top of your head.
• Read your first stream of thoughts and pick the best ideas.

This phase has nothing to do with your original blog post. Use this method to get started and see what kind of ideas you have. This will help you to create your own approach to that specific topic.

Do this before you do your research. Otherwise, you can get affected by other writers' opinions.

14. Create an outline and calculate an estimate for your blog post.

This makes everything super fast. If you do that right, all you need to do is fill the blanks with your ideas.

For this blog post, it was easy. Because this is a listicle blog post and all I need to do was this.

H1 – How to write a blog post fast

200 words max

H2 – What is the difference between slow and fast creators.

200 words.

H2 – Blahblahblah

300 words.

and so on. Now I know what are my subheadings and how many words I should write.

It looks like a restriction but it's freedom. Once you do this, you'll see it becomes easier to write a blog.

15. Edit your blog post to make it shorter and meaty.

Editing and rewriting is a critical part of blog post writing. Actually, for any kind of writing.

This phase will help you trim the fat of your blog post and make it sharper. To me, this is the part that separates an average blog post and a great post.

Here are some writing tips to make this phase more fruitful,

• Read your blog post out loud. If it sounds strange, rephrase and find the right tune.
• If you have long sentences, make them shorter. If you can't, divide them into two sentences.
• If you think a sentence sounds cool but not adding extra value. Kill it, burn it and check the pulse, make sure it's dead. (For example, the latter sentence was cool but instead, I could just write "kill it")

Fast alone is meh. Your aim should be fast and good.

You can write fast now. But fast and good comes with practice.

Hone of your skills with this list. Put the time in your craft and take notes. Taking notes will expand your brain and make you a content machine.

Other than that, I used a bunch of other strategies to hone my craft, but these 15 things were the most helpful tips for me. I hope you learned something and convinced that fast writing is possible.

Please comment if you have any questions or thoughts.

I would like to hear something like "Heeey man, that was really helpful thanks" or "HAHA, you wrote this in 1.5 hours I don't believe it". However, you like 🙂

See you around.