I have a little notebook with a golden pineapple on the front. It’s top wire-bound, seafoam/teal in color, and has pinstripes. Within this little Walmart treasure find of mine has all my blog posts for the months ahead.
This special notebook dictates what I write about, and I just add a little bit to it every single day. All of my ideas go in there. Trust me – it started out as a photo prop (and you’ll see it in my stock photos sometimes) – so I never intended it to have the scheduled post list in it. But, something clicked and there it happened. So now it comes with me wherever I go, and holds the keys to my blog.
I love pineapples – the taste, color, and smell – but also for what they mean. A crown on top, tough on the outside, and sweet on the inside. Be the pineapple. Get your crap together. We’re going to learn how to figure out your blog headlines for an entire month in 5 minutes.
Learning how to be more productive came quickly for me, and I know for some people it may not go as quickly. I realized after watching a Gary Vaynerchuk video, that I needed to focus on production and staying creative. I had to choose how I wanted to allocate my time – and frankly, contemplating what I was going to write about on a daily basis for an hour was not how I wanted to spend my time.
The problem is overthinking your blog titles and subjects.
Topics should be natural for you and not forced.
The words will come out like a high-speed river if you’re talking about something passionate and natural for you.
So obviously, at almost 300 words into this blog right now, and only 2 minutes in, clearly I’m passionate about productivity and getting the social media work done. I love writing about these topics. So when you are figuring out your headlines… the writing should come out fairly quickly, too, if you’re working off of an already-prepped guide for your blog (SO SOOO SOOOO important!!!).
I have a process when I’m coming up with ideas at home – and maybe you’ll need to figure out what generates that productivity. I work off of a list of headlines and fill in the blanks that I created. I spray my hair down with Kukui oil, grab some coffee, turn on my favorite Netflix chick show (currently Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce), and go to work with the notebook. It helps me get into a fun zone to work. Trust me, this helps the whole writer’s block thing.
You might be asking… isn’t typing it all out faster? Actually, for me, no. Maybe for you – you’ll have to make that determination. But as a creative, I find that handwriting my blog headlines goes the quickest because I’m not fiddling with a keyboard and trying to type everything perfectly. But once I have the headlines, I’m ready to work.
The reason I don’t spend a lot of time contemplating what to write is because my sheet of ideas is so good – it shouldn’t be hard or time-consuming to come up with titles. I know there are those of you out there that have a hard time figuring out titles. Don’t stress over it. Focus more on what is going to go within your posts and find your voice. I don’t like to make a huge deal about my headlines. I know they work, that they get shared, and I’m able to convey what I want to share within the main content.
So here’s your permission slip – stop worrying and stressing so much over your headlines. Stick to your top for the week or month, and pull out the how to’s, your personal experiences, the numbers, the stats, the instructions, the reviews, and anything else on that same subject. It’s soooooo much easier than dancing around on this and that with random subjects every other day.
Pick your topic. Grab your special notebook, your favorite pen, and write those headlines. Set the timer and just GO. (Lastly, get them all in your WordPress Editorial Calendar in case God forbid a pet or child spills coffee all over your notebook).