February 16, 2024

How to Write a Blog Post Fast (With AI)

According to Orbit Media’s annual blogging survey, the typical blog post is 1,416 words and takes about 4 hours to write. A newbie blogger can easily spend many more hours—if not days—creating a single post. And that doesn’t account for the additional amount of time spent on image selection/creation, SEO optimization, and other aspects of publishing.

Thankfully, today’s AI-powered copy generation tools whittle down that time and make writing quality blog posts faster and more efficient than ever. In this post, we’ll teach you how to write a blog post fast and how to use Copy.ai’s AI-powered Blog Post Wizard to juice up your creativity and hook your readers from the first sentence.

Let’s get started.

Create a brief

You can’t write a blog post fast if you don’t know what you’re writing about. That’s why having a content brief—(a set of instructions writers can follow for creating effective content)—prepared beforehand is so important.

A detailed brief is a content writer’s best friend. Content marketing briefs are even more important if you’re outsourcing your content writing to freelancers who might not be as familiar with your brand and your product/service as in-house writers.

A quality brief allows writers to quickly understand your company’s criteria for writing a successful blog post. These are some of the main topics your content brief should cover:

  • Primary and secondary keywords: If you’re new to keyword research, check out SEMrush’s ultimate guide for helpful tips. Best practices call for using the primary keyword (the phrase you want the content to rank for) in your blog post title and URL and sprinkling other high-volume, related keywords into your headers. Avoid keyword stuffing—add phrases to your post in natural spots.
  • Blog post intent: Ask yourself, “what do I want to achieve with this blog post?” Think about what stage of your sales funnel it serves. A blog post that serves to increase website traffic will differ greatly from one meant to convert high-intent users who are already familiar with your business.
  • Tone of voice: Your blog post’s tone of voice should reflect the voice of your brand and fit the audience you’re writing for. Friendly, professional, relaxed, adventurous, witty, and empathetic are examples of tones of voice you can set when creating content with Copy.ai.
  • Competitor blog posts: Analyze competitor content that ranks on page one for the primary keywords to figure out how you can make your blog posts better than theirs. Identify relevant blog topics and angles they might have missed that you can cover, and format your post in a more readable way than competitors.
  • Examples of blog posts you like: There’s nothing wrong with modeling your writing after high-quality blog posts you admire. If you’re handing the blog post off to another writer, explain to them what you like about these examples (tone of voice, structure, use of data, etc.) so they’ll know what to focus on.

Your brief should also define the type of blog post you want to create. Some of the most common examples include:

  • How-tos: Tutorial blog posts that give readers a step-by-step explanation of how to complete a task. Guess what? You’re actually reading one right now.
  • Explainers: These posts give readers a comprehensive overview of a particular topic instead of just teaching them how to do something, like a how-to post. A popular example of an explainer post is an “ultimate guide.”
  • Listicles: Blog posts that are organized in list form were made popular by viral digital media outlets like BuzzFeed and Bored Panda. With these posts, writers will often list the “top” or “best” for whatever topic they are covering. To see an example, check out Top 10 Copy.ai Alternatives for Content Generation.
  • News: Make a connection between a recent news story and your industry or product to provide a unique perspective and transform the news piece into something that resonates with your readers.
  • Reviews: Reviews are popular for the same reason listicles that rank things are popular—people love reading the opinions of others. These posts are also helpful for people who want to buy a certain type of product to decide which one suits their needs best.

Once you’re set on the topic you want to cover and how you’re going to cover it, it’s time to learn more about it.

Research your topic

When you’re writing a blog post, research typically involves reading other sources on the same topic. However, it can also involve interviewing subject matter experts and collecting first-party research.

Look for and make a note of statistics and data from reputable sources that will back up your claims. If you end up using them in your blog post, be sure to provide attribution by linking to the original sources. When writing about topics that are rapidly changing and evolving, make sure the data you’re citing is current and not from a decade-old study.

If you’re not an expert on a topic, try to find and talk to someone who is. Reach out to experts and ask if they’d be willing to provide a few quotes on the topic to strengthen the legitimacy of your piece. A great place to find experts on a variety of topics is Help a Reporter Out (HARO)—an online service journalists use to connect with and get feedback from experts on just about any topic.

Outline your blog post

An architect wouldn’t start building a house without first drafting blueprints. The same goes for a brand new blog post. A good outline helps you plan what you’re going to say and in what order, so you have a clear flow of ideas ready before writing your first draft. Without this blueprint, your blog risks being disorganized at best and incoherent at worst.

Aim to write your blog post as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality. A solid outline will make it easier for you to do exactly that when it comes time to write.

A high-quality outline includes headings and subheadings for the blog post’s sections and bulleted ideas under those headers. Don’t waste time writing out perfectly crafted sentences in the outline. Use short phrases instead to avoid the “sunk cost fallacy,” which will make it harder to edit/cut/revise your writing later.

Focus on making each section about a distinct topic. Use one bullet per distinct idea. Your bullet points should reference the support you plan to include when you move to the drafting phase.

Your outline isn’t set in stone, so don’t worry about perfection. Worry about the organization. At the outline stage, you want to check: Does this plan include everything I want to cover? Is it broken into distinct ideas that don’t overlap? Are those ideas presented in a logical order?

Get help from an AI blog outline generator

To speed up the outline process of writing blog posts, try using a blog outline template or generator tool. Better yet, use one with AI capabilities. Copy.ai’s blog outline tool (aka the Blog Post Wizard) is AI-driven and can help you generate ideas for H2s and section headers within minutes and create a solid blog outline.‍

Here’s how it works.

Find “Templates” on Copy.ai’s navigation bar to get started.

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The Blog Post Wizard will be the first template listed. Click on the button to open the blog outline generator.

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Now it’s time to tell the Blog Post Wizard what you want to write. Enter a title and the keywords you want to use, pick an appropriate tone of voice (Copy.ai offers nine options), and state the intended goal of your content.

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Once you’ve entered this information, click the “Generate Outline” button (shown above) and watch the Wizard work its magic.

In mere seconds, the Blog Post Wizard will create an outline for you based on the information you’ve given it.

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With the Blog Post Wizard, you’re always in control. You can click on and edit every section the Wizard created to fine-tune your outline.

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If you want to add a section of your own, hover over any of the sections and click on the plus (+) button to create one.

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If you want to start from scratch, click on “Regenerate All,” and the Blog Post Wizard will create a completely new outline.

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Once you’ve created an outline you’re happy with, you can go one step further and populate each section with relevant ideas and talking points. Click on the “Generate Talking Points” button to fire up the Wizard again.

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You can edit every single talking point the Wizard creates, add new talking points of your own manually, or ask the Wizard to regenerate each set of talking points.

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Think of the Blog Post Wizard as a friend (who happens to be an awesome content writer) you can ask for help when you need to kick-start your creativity or when you’re battling writer’s block. The Wizard can help you break through the barriers so you can just start writing! Want some help drafting, too? Copy.ai can also turn your outline into a full draft. Check out this YouTube video to see how our drafting tool works.

If you'd rather write the copy yourself, read on to learn a few drafting tips.

Start writing! (Write now, edit later)

Writing is revision. In order to revise, you’ve got to have something down on paper—even if it’s garbage. In this step, the objective is to write a blog post fast so you can revise and polish it later.

As a rule of thumb, your draft should be around 1,000 words divided into the following blocks: introduction (100 words), body copy (800 words), and conclusion (100 words). You don’t have to hit these numbers perfectly during the rough draft—it’s just a ballpark. Keep in mind that it’s usually easier to edit down when you have too much text rather than adding more when you come up short.

Keep up the momentum when drafting. Don’t get hung up on spelling errors, awkward sentences, or exact word counts. Just write. And be sure to limit distractions. It can help to set a timer or use the Pomodoro technique to work in time blocks.

Draft the main body

In the body of your blog, each paragraph should begin with your main point. Why? Research shows that readers don’t usually “read” complete articles or blog posts; they’re more likely to skim the headlines and beginning sentences of paragraphs. So start each paragraph with the important stuff!

‍Next, follow your main point with a few sentences that explain and support that main point. Your supporting evidence could be a statistic or data point, an explanation, or an expert quote.

Draft the conclusion

Your conclusion is more than a summary/recap of what came before. Leave your readers with a takeaway and something to think about or somewhere to go next.

The concluding paragraph is also where you insert an end-of-content CTA: a call to action that appears at the end of your article and encourages your reader to take some sort of action. Readers who get to this point in your post are more engaged and more likely to convert. Make the most of this opportunity with your CTA copy.

CTAs can come in a wide variety. Check out some examples of CTAs you might use. Or try using Copy.ai’s Blog Conclusion tool, which will generate different variations on conclusions for your piece within seconds.

Draft the intro

While many writers are tempted to begin with the introduction, we suggest writing it after the main body and the conclusion. Why? Sometimes it’s hard to know how to begin a post until you have an idea of everything that’s going to fall inside.

‍Your introduction needs to state your post’s main idea (i.e., thesis) and preview what’s to come. Your intro also needs to hook your audience from the very first sentence. To supercharge your intro writing chops, try using Copy.ai’s Blog Intro tool to quickly generate an array of catchy phrases and sentences for your introduction.

Craft a killer headline

According to Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will read a headline before clicking a post. Headlines are powerful, so you should leave them for last.

Writers often get stuck on writing the perfect title and waste valuable time on crafting it before writing—only to throw out the title later when the blog post ends up being about something else. It’s more efficient to write your headline last.

Tips abound on what makes a captivating headline. We like this roundup from the folks at WordStream: 19 Headline Writing Tips for More Clickable, Shareable Blog Posts. You can use Copy.ai to implement WordStream’s tip #13,“ Brainstorm Lots of Different Headlines.” Our Blog Title generator will crank out ideas for snappy, clickable headlines within seconds.

Revise: Make structural, big-picture changes

As Stephen King famously said, “To write is human, to edit is divine.” Revision is a fundamental part of the writing process—and a critical part of learning how to write a blog post fast. You take your rough draft as a whole (warts and all) and distill it into a cogent, compelling, and succinct piece. In other words, something your audience wants to read.

One of the best revision techniques is called reverse outlining. You take your completed blog post and, in comments or in the margins, write what each paragraph is about in just a few words (one sentence maximum).

If you struggle to boil down a paragraph to a sentence, it might have too many ideas that need to be broken into multiple paragraphs (or saved for a separate post). Conversely, if multiple paragraphs have the same basic point, it’s a sign you’re repeating yourself too much.

Keep in mind that this process isn’t about correcting a few spelling mistakes or deleting redundant sentences (that’s editing—the next step). Revision is about viewing the piece from the reader’s perspective (the word literally means to “see again”).

To revise effectively, try to understand what the reader would want to get out of a piece. Look for anything that would be annoying, confusing, or get in their way, and revise with them in mind.

Edit: Get down to the nitty-gritty (sentence) level

Revising and editing are often thought to be interchangeable, but they’re not. Editing involves checking for tone, style, the coherency of your argument, and proofreading your writing on a line-by-line basis to check spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure to ensure that your piece is polished, typo-free, and ready for publication.

To spend less time editing, use a free proofreading tool like Grammarly, GrammarCheck, or Ginger. Or punch up your prose with Copy.ai’s editing tools, including Sentence Rewriter, Verb Booster, and Change Tone.‍

If you’re writing your post to rank for a keyword, this is also a good time to use Copy.ai’s Rewrite with Keywords tool to enhance SEO.

Bonus tip: Read your work aloud! It’s one of the quickest ways to identify sentences or phrases that are clunky, awkward, and in need of editing.

Write blog posts quickly to create time for other tasks

When you learn how to write a blog post fast, you free up your time for running your business, cultivating new customers, and promoting your brand. Use our AI-powered writing tools to quickly generate website descriptions, social media posts, product descriptions, and so much more. Get started today for free!

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