How long does it take to write a blog post?

How much time does it take to write a blog post? Some people seem to rattle off content in minutes. Other people agonise over it for weeks.

So, what’s the truth? How long does writing a blog post take? Let’s look at some stats.

(I usually spend 6–8 hours on my posts, but they’re often 2000–3000 words long and sometimes contain videos, which can take hours to produce.)

• Introduction
• What does it take to create a good blog post?
• How long do others spend on writing blog posts?
• The challenges with writing blog posts
• Let’s wrap up

Introduction.

That’s a common response I hear when I ask people whether they have a plan to create content.

You’ll probably expect me to follow that up with some wondrous stat that it takes only minutes to write a blog post and that therefore it’s really not that hard to run a regular blog on your site.

I’m not going to do that.

Yes, it’s possible to write content quite quickly – perhaps in an hour or so – but that ignores the truth that most such content isn’t very good. And content that’s dashed off in a hurry often doesn’t stand the test of time.

There are around 4 million blog posts published each day.
(Source: Worldometers)

Only a tiny proportion of these posts will receive a large number of views, likes, comments and shares. The vast majority of the posts will be seen by almost no one.

Why is that? Why do some posts do much better than others?

Two big factors are quality and consistency.

Quality is a no-brainer here: a well-researched post that is easy to understand, flows well and looks gorgeous has a natural advantage over a wall of text cranked out on an ancient-looking website.

Here’s what SEO company Moz have to say about creating quality content:

Google also points out the importance of good spelling and grammar in your posts.

Google thinks editing matters #whyeditors pic.twitter.com/d1Unc3MX6S

— John Espirian (@espirian) June 29, 2017

This is one measure of quality content that’s relatively easy to sort out. See my top 10 tips for proofreading your own work. For content that’s strategically important, consider hiring an editor or proofreader to help you sharpen your message and smooth out mistakes.

So, your aim should not just be to write a blog post but to write a good blog post.

And you don’t want to write only one good blog post: if you’re going to bother with blogging at all, it should be a consistent effort over a long period. That means a commitment to creating lots of good blog posts.

What does it take to create a good blog post?

Producing good-quality blog content means you need to do at least some of the following:

• Listening: Do you know what your audience wants? Have you talked to them in person, by email or on social media?
• Keyword research: Have you done any searches to see what keywords are relevant to the topic you want to talk about?
• Multimedia: Images, videos and infographics are some of the most time-consuming resources to create. And yet they can give your content a unique visual stamp and make it much more shareable than similar articles that contain text only. Would you be willing to put in the effort needed to create or source your own images?
• Original thought: There’s little in the way of original thought left but you need to do more than copy what others have already written. Can you put your own spin on what’s happening in your industry?
• Editorial: Getting your thoughts down is one thing, but you also need to invest some time in formatting, editing and proofreading your content. Without this, your posts can lose credibility.

And all of that’s without the part where you publish and then promote the content. Yes, blogging well requires a large investment of time.

I’ll often spend 6–8 hours per week on producing my blog content.

That’s 20% of a typical working week. To some people, this sounds like an insane amount of time to spend on content creation.

(In my defence, some of my posts contain videos, and that’s a real time-gobbler. It often takes an hour to produce 1 minute of video.)

I get it. It’s a large chunk of time.

But look at the benefits of regularly producing blog content for your business:

• Less need to advertise (and a better long-term method of marketing).
• Improved Google rankings (people find you when they search online).
• More satisfied customers (your content helps them so they stick around).

How long do others spend on writing blog posts?

I wanted to hear feedback from others, so in 2017 I asked my network on LinkedIn how long they took to write their content.

I also asked them to tell me how many words they typically wrote per post, and what was the biggest challenge they faced when creating content.

Here are the figures they responded with. Remember, this was in 2017:

• ⏰ Average time to write a post: 3 hours 4 minutes
• 📏 Average length of a post: 1113 words

And there was no surprise in the challenges people faced. I’ll get to those in a moment.

Now, the figures above represent a pretty small sample of only 16 people. Hardly enough to draw any firm conclusions, right?

The good news is that Orbit Media Studio’s recent survey of 1000+ bloggers showed that it took their respondents on average 4 hours 10 minutes to write a post.

For comparison, here’s the data from previous Orbit surveys:

The 2022 Orbit survey put the average blog post length at 1376 words. Here’s how things have changed over the years:

Orbit’s figures are more interesting than mine, as they had a much larger sample size:

Orbit’s 2022 sample of 1016 bloggers.

• ⏰ Average time: 4 hours 10 minutes
• 📏 Average length: 1376 words

In terms of article length, the received wisdom is that long articles tend to outperform short ones. There’s plenty more about this in my article about how long blog posts should be.

The challenges with writing blog posts.

The people I spoke to on LinkedIn told me their challenges with blog creation. I’d put these challenges into 3 categories:

1. Audience value.

This challenge is about finding the topics that would be valuable to readers.

Take time to understand your ideal reader by creating a pen portrait.

What real questions are your customers asking you? What content would genuinely help them?

2. Editorial issues.

This challenge is about proofreading the content and sourcing good images.

To sharpen your text, see my top 10 tips for proofreading your own work.

To improve your visuals, check out this great list of 35 free photography sites.

3. Time management.

This challenge is about avoiding distractions and reducing procrastination.

Try closing all of your windows and leaving only one document open – the one in which you write the text of your article.

I write my blog drafts in Byword on my Mac.

Let’s wrap up.

If you’re going to commit to creating blog posts, expect each post to take around 4 hours to write. And if you want to produce something with real depth and lasting value, prepare for it to take much longer than that – I often take 6–8 hours to put my content together.

Remember that there are a lot of terrible blog posts out there, so don’t add to them by rushing the creation of your own content. Take your time and do it right.

If you can create quality content on a consistent basis, you’ll start to become known as a trusted voice in your industry. And who doesn’t want that?

Continue the business blogging guide

This post is part of my definitive business blogging guide.

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