Back when writing was my sole blogging-related job, I often spent countless hours in front of my laptop writing feature-length posts. Sometimes I spent this time at cafes waiting for my daughter to finish her preschool class (about three hours). Sometimes even more–when I’m just not satisfied with an article, I save it as draft for later editing and publishing. This lets me have more time to
On a recent Blog Herald article, Thord Hedengren wonders why some folks from traditional media often relate blogging to rapid-fire writing akin to being a shoot now, aim later approach. And so when a blogger takes time to write, edit and publish a post, it’s called slow blogging.
Sure, blogging does have the benefit of skipping a few editorial steps, and so bloggers often get to post news earlier than most mainstream media outfits. You can catch wind of some news or nasty rumor and post about it in the next two minutes. That can be good blogging, if it’s your intent to spread the news as fast as possible. But then good blogging also entails research, painstaking editing, and even thinking twice or thrice whether to publish an article or not.
I’ve been there. I’ve written lengthy posts only to take a long look at my laptop screen, and decide that it’s simply not good enough, or not relevant anymore, and hit the delete button.
And so, folks, I would like to ask you this. On average, how long do you spend on a blog post? Perhaps we can differentiate it a bit between news-type posts and feature- or review-type posts. Next time you write an article for your blog, try to keep track of the time, and tell me how much you spent on that particular post. You can submit your answer here, or you can leave a comment.
This particular post took me about 25 minutes to write, in which I also had to switching across browser windows and tabs, scan related blog articles, create a poll and search the Performancing archive for similar posts. Oh, I also had a five minute nap midway. But in most cases, writing blog posts would take me up to one hour, particularly when I need to research for related material, and when I want to make sure I have a tight argument.
How about you? Do you take the time to think, study and reflect before [you] post? Or do you think that this should be the case whether it’s a quick post or a time-consuming article?
12 thoughts on “How Much Time Do You Spend Writing a Blog Post?”
Some articles I get ideas for whilst travelling or doing exercise. These are usually written in my head and can be spewed out in an hour or two.
Tutorial/tip articles take longer because I have to be sure they’re factually correct lest I get pulled up for erroneous content or simply give a beginner bad advice.
how long it takes to blog, but what your choice of topic is and of course what quality you expect yourself to deliver.
I spend about 2-3 hours per post – mostly technical, tutorial-style stuff. It’s not all writing though – linking, research, tagging, promoting, etc all comes into it too.
I’d say that most articles can be written within 30 minutes. However for tutorials, or well-researched articles, I’ve spent as much as 3 hours crafting the perfect post.
Of course it depends upon what I’m writing about. An opinion post might be blasted out in five minutes while a techy piece might take me hours to research and more hours to write.
But that said, it’s my opinion that most people spend too much time fussing and polishing. Yes, you need to proofread, fix spelling and awkward phrasing, but you don’t need to keep tweaking and tweaking.. well, unless you really do have nothing better to do.
I’ve noticed that the people who loudly proclaim that there’s not enough time in the day are often the ones who spend too much time seeking perfection. It’s never going to be perfect because there is no such thing: the first draft might appeal to certain people more than your final polishing will. Good enough often really is.
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I spend about 2 hours, but often there is research work that I’ve done beforehand into data sources & related info.
Ah Ha! I knew there had to be some inspiration behind this post and the poll! I’ve read your response to the slow blogger name and I do have some things to say with regards to the tactic that I believe will make for a good blog post. I’ll see if I can get it done in under 60 minutes when I start writing it 😛
around 2 hours
After reading that article at The Guardian, I think I’m officially a slow blogger, alas, it’s nice to know that I’m not alone! My last post, which consists of one mere paragraph (based on 20 minutes of Japanese animation), was written and rewritten over a period of 2 days. The English language is so diverse that I’m constantly tinkering with the flow of my writing, yet I’m very rarely, truly satisfied when I publish.
I normally take about 1 hour to write up my blog posts. It really depends if I’m adding screen captures, as my blog is technical, or if it’s a quick “here’s something interesting you should know” or “we have this on sale”. Tutorials take even greater lengths if I really want to get focused on details. All in all The time taken directly related to the topic being written. You can see my blog for sample posts at Domains at Retail Blog.
Sometimes I have a sudden idea, start writing about it and have a decent article published in 30 minutes or so. The news type posts can take 5 minutes but I don’t consider those like real blogging, that’s just spreading the news.
But I usually try to write longer and more detailed posts, some of them, like the tutorial kind, involve many days in which I find a problem and then take notes while looking for the solution. Of course that’s not actually writing for it takes time. For writing the whole article and polishing I can take one hour.
I also write opinion articles and those include many references, which takes time find to find, read and analyze, and possibly better prose.
And of course, some days I’m on fire and can write many articles in less time but other days I’m not on the mood to write and do it quite slow or simply don’t.
By the way, I have a few blogs, a couple about technology and web development, one about social issues and other about music, movies and books.
I don’t write as much as I’d like but I think that’s before I strive to offer quality over quantity.
Cheers.
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