Drafting messages in order to publish them at a later time is a great way to save a bunch of time. You sit down one time, focus on writing, writing, writing, and then you’re done for a couple of days or even weeks.
I haven’t “completely” done this exercise yet. What I mean by “completely” is to take an entire day off and write as many blog posts as I can, putting them into my WordPress post management and schedule them for a certain date to be published (or simply leave them there as drafts and hit the “Publish” button when the time is right).
I did once spend two hours though. I locked my door and really focused on the task at hand and got five blog posts written that way. Two of them are still in my draft posts area, so to speak.
Matt Cutts posted the other day mentioning he’d have ~219 (!) yes, two hundred nineteen draft posts. He’s now thinking of deleting or publishing them. Think about this for a second (or two)… 219! I currently have only 5 drafts (five). He has 219… Wow!
How many draft posts do you have in your WordPress Mission Control Center?
Well, I do have an excuse (we all have one, don’t we)… I started this blog just a couple of weeks ago (4 weeks exactly today!), not two years ago like Matt.
Still, one of my goals is to have a bunch of posts finished and scheduled to be published on __.__.____. Let’s say to have enough for an entire month… this would free up our time, wouldn’t it? Imagine, you’d have 30+ posts ready and scheduled, how much time would you have freely available to do something else then?
And to answer Matt’s question… Matt, I, personally, would trash the “pretty sucky” posts and polish those that would make them become a high quality one, if you have the time. (Matt must be 10 times as busy as I am!)
“Well, let’s first get that AdSense video finished, Marcus…”
Alright!
—Marcus Hochstadt
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Hi Marcus,
I only started my blog last week but have 4 drafts waiting in line, in case I have no inspiration, but also have put keywords and frases of ideas that popped in my head, good for another 10 posts in case I run out of stuff to write about.
keep up the good work!
Hi Marcus,
I think that’s a great idea, for sure… however, I think there is also an even easier way to do that.
If your material is supposed to have your own very distinctive, inimitable flavor to it, it might be a little more difficult to do what I’m about to point out but if you are simply intending to create content for a particular niche then it’s so very simple to buy Private Label Rights material and then “spin” it into something unique enough that the search engines won’t consider “duplicate content”…
I also think that “search engine” people look upon this as some kind of a sin but when you really stop and think about it, how much of what you read, even of their stuff, is truly original?
So, go buy 30 articles on whatever you want. Stick them into an article spinner and come out with 30 versions unique enough in the eyes of the SE’s… finely tailor them to suit your personal tastes (if you wish) then load them up… voila… 30 articles in under 15 minutes. Now you can go sip your pina colada on the hammock. ;-)
Sam
ps. You might get a smile out of how I present the information here:
How to Avoid Google’s Duplicate Content Penalty
Marcus,
I’ve been trying to do the same thing. I posted something similar to this the other day, but you said it much more succinctly!
Best of luck!
Brad
@ Mirjam, congrats to your efforts! Keep it up as this will ensure you never run out of content (if that is correctly said).
@ Sam, thank you very much for stepping by. Though I’m not sure if I agree with your strategy. I’m rather a fan of keeping it real. I not only sleep better but also have a cleaner face at the Search Engines, long-term.
@ Brad, I just checked out your blog and yes, your post is similar. Coincidence we both wrote about it, isn’t it? And wow, you started programming when you were 11; amazing!
I have at least a dozen ready to fire off!
Carnival Of Tips – February 9, 2008…
Welcome to the February 9, 2008 edition of Carnival of Tips. We had over 50 great entries this week on:
Career & Business:
Mark Riffey presents Political marketing: Mobile and phone support posted at Business is Personal.
Cindy King presents Best …
[…] Hochstadt presents Why Drafting Messages Saves You Time posted at Marcus Hochstadt, saying, “Drafting messages in order to publish them at a later […]
[…] Hochstadt presents Why Drafting Messages Saves You Time posted at Marcus […]
The Writers’Block Carnival – writers from across the blogosphere…
Welcome to the February 25, 2008 edition of writers from across the blogosphere. It’s a bit late and there are some repeats from the last carnival, but it’s also full of new good reads as well. Enjoy!
writing
Jessse Hines presents The…