We are a business that understands the significance of creating new content, sharing ideas and engaging with readers. Ever since we started working on our blog we have seen the benefits – more visitors and more interest. Each week when we post a new article and share it on our social media channels, we have an opportunity to interact, ask and listen a lot.

We know that blogging is an integral part of our strategy to demonstrate our expertise, share some knowledge and on occasion make some waves. This makes it worth spending time on, however, we are also measuring that time and estimating: how much is too much? Is there such a thing as too much editing, or being too meticulous when polishing an article.
Should we spend less time looking for that perfect image to illustrate what we are saying just because time is costly? We imagine that we are not alone and these questions surely arise among bloggers and marketers from all across the globe that do not have enterprise size budgets.
So we decided to look at the alternative and find the best ideas for spending less time blogging, while preserving the quality of the content. You don’t have to give up blogging when you need the time for other creative activities, you just have to improve your social media productivity. Here are some of the ways we’ve found that can help us all out.

• Feature more guest blog posts: It’s a great way to get some links to your website and interact with others in your niche. You don’t have to reach out to competitors of course, just take the time to look for bloggers with a style of writing that you like and a recognizable voice.

• Spend less time editing: No, we are not saying that you should post articles with typos and grammar mistakes, but you need to find the best way to edit the content, without this turning into a more time-consuming task than the writing itself.

• Re-run previous posts, but modify them: There is nothing wrong  with using a good recipe more than once. An older article or a micro blog can be reposted by adding new material, new updates and links or even removing some of the content that is just not as relevant anymore. If you blog at least once a week for a year, chances are you have plenty of material to re-use.

• Create a compilation post: You’d be surprised at how quickly a reader can leave your blog if they don’t find something of good value immediately. Once in a while create a compilation post featuring links to older articles and pin it to the top of the blog. Just choose the articles around a specific theme.

• Write shorter posts: It’s quite simple really. Longer articles take more time for research, writing, editing and even formatting. By reducing the length you could spend the same time for creating two new posts, instead of one.

• Feature videos and images: Write shorter articles with more practical tips and ideas and add plenty of images to illustrate them. Or focus an article around a single video that you have watched and it’s relevant to your field. Featuring more photo content and less writing once in a while won’t ruin your blog.

• Set a timer: You may want to create the perfect blog post, but you need to keep track of time somehow. Set a time for research and writing and then write for a certain amount of time and stop. This should give you an idea of how much you manage to get done within an hour or two.

• Have a blog vacation: This is perhaps one of the most left field ideas on this list, but it could really work for you. Instead of trying to get everything done within the week, announce a blog vacation and focus on reading new material and gathering links to other blogs and useful content. Keep promoting your articles and let people actually have time to catch up with their reading as well.

• Curate from tweets lists: You can create an engaging article by using a tool like Storify to create a narrative based on people’s tweets, this could be centered on an event or a debate on a #hashtag. It shouldn’t take you too long to find them. It’ll certainly be something different for your readers.

• Write more of the easy stuff: Now this piece of advice may sound slightly debatable as to how useful such articles would be, but its also important not to overlook the basics. You know which articles take longer and which don’t, so if you want 5 quick posts, write the ones that won’t take as long and start compiling a backlog of content.

• Extend the long posts over days: This tip is a really useful one that has helped us save time and effort on our own blog. If you have an article that is over 1000 words, chances are your readers will not have the time to read it all at once. Split the article in two or even three parts (with those longer than 1500 words) and publish them across multiple days. Don’t forget to link to the previous parts.

Is blogging a part of your marketing strategy? Tell us how you increase your productivity and save time?