How I Write My Blog Posts

I thought it would be interesting to write a blog post on how I go about writing a blog post. It’s so I can see how it changes over the years, which I know it has over the years.

Where Do I Save My Ideas

The first thing I do is come up with ideas for the blog posts and then write them down. I place them in SimpleNote.

What I Do with My Ideas

For the posts I deem worthy of writing, I then outline them some more in SimpleNote. Some of that is done during my lunchtime or after-work walks. I do some outlining then too. I like thinking through how I want to say something in the post and work through how best to phrase or order my thoughts?

Once that’s done, I tend to throw those parts into something SimpleNote too.

Next’s It’s on to WordPress

Next, I use WordPress to write the first draft of my post. During my writing process, I try not to edit as I go besides maybe fixing some spelling. I want to be able to get the idea out of my head.

Editing Drafts

Once I’m done with the first draft, I then open up the Hemingway application. Usually, I use it, more importantly, to break up my run-on sentences from the first draft. The Hemingway application is useful to me to tell me the following type of things.

  • How many complex and hard-to-read sentences there are.
  • The number of words, sentences, and paragraphs.
  • The reading grade level, etc.

Once I’m done with Hemingway, I paste the text into Grammarly, and then I do more editing. Grammarly does a better job of grammar checking. It even does a better job with spell-checking than the Hemingway application.

I repeat that process once or twice more between the two applications.

Once I feel like I’m done, I then paste my text back to WordPress to read through what I wrote as a whole. More to read through it to make sure it’s understandable and is logical.

When I’m happy with things, I then add categories or tag words in WordPress. Then I will add headings where it needs to be broken up the long sections of text.

Cooling Off Period and More Editing

I let the posts sit for a couple of hours or till the next day before reading it over again. I then reread it and do more editing if necessary.

If I end up changing things, I use both Hemingway and Grammarly to check the updated parts of the post. I tend to want to double-check things.

When the Post is Done

Once all that’s done, it’s time to create any links that need to be added. I don’t want to have to re-add them if I add them too early.

Then it’s time to publish my blog post.

Posting Everyday in January, 2021

In January 2021, I published a post every day. I found people tended to read my posts if I tweeted about them around noon or early afternoon on weekdays. On weekends it depended on what the post’s subject was if there were more readers, according to the Twitter statistics.

No Real Statistics and Future Posts

I don’t have any official numbers on how many people read my posts because I took Google analytics off my website and blog years ago. I did that, so Google wasn’t tracking everybody that would come to my website or blog posts.

Now I looked to post at least once a week and maybe two a week or a total of five or six posts a month.

More Blogging and Any Suggestions

So here’s hoping this was useful to all that red to get a better understanding of my process.

If you have any suggestions for other writing applications that might make writing blog posts easier. Please leave a comment.