How much time do you spend on a 1000 word article?

[fab5freddy]

I don’t consider myself a professional copy writer, but I do consider it part of my marketing job. And really enjoy writing and reading on topics. However my boss points out that I have a budget of 2 hours for each article of 500-1000 words. (He wants to avoid long form content). And to be honest I find that quite limited. Only a small research on competing articles and what keywords we should rank for already chips away 30 minutes of my time. Leaving me 90 minutes to write an article.

Luckily I sometimes get carried away in my writing and I can split up the result of 4,5 hours work into 2 articles. But it happens more often that I miss the time to deliver the quality I want. At the same time my boss states that redactional offices often only get 2 hours to deliver an article and I should train myself in this.

I feel somewhat hampered in my desire to deliver good content. At the same time I want to learn to speed up my process. Can you guys and ladies here give some insight on how much time you need and how you work with time constraints and your desire to deliver quality.

[KSahu05]

What matters more to rank your blog on google ?

Long articles or engaging articles.

[zanny]

keep it up freddy!!

[DavidDennison]

There's a lot to say here and a lot that's based on personal preference. First, you need to think of your creative process in mind. How long do you NEED to create good content? If it's longer than 2 hours to produce quality...ask your boss! Do you want good quality content, or do you just want content that can be created in your timeframe? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The only other piece of advice I can offer - RUN!

Bosses and clients like this never really see the value that content creates, and even if they do, they are completely unrealistic. Also, once they've set this kind of tone, it usually just gets worse. I know you can't just quite your job and what not, but I would be prepared to look for other options when it gets worse.

[fab5freddy]

Hi David, 

Thanks for your reply and advice 🙂 

I keep track of my spend time on articles. Sometimes that's difficult because I get lost in the rabbit hole and I write a far too long article. Luckily I can split the original article into 2 similar topic articles, but it screws up my time tracking. It goes to show that writing content is a creative process difficult to manage in time. That's why I like Mia's comment so much. So perhaps I can learn to manage time constraints better.

For me an indepth 1000 word article with stats take me 6 to 8 hours to write. To be fair, we have different content types and I am fortunate enough I can recycle some older content. But to be honest this content is mostly low qualilty. Oddly enough it ranks and that's why perhaps my efforts are considerd as a bit too much. But I find it difficult to release thin quality articles and I expect it can backfire when algo's are getting better in detecting quality content. 

Sorry for the rambling and thanks for your thoughts. Much appreciated. 

Fab

[MiaSrebrnjak]

Hi @fab5freddy,

that's a great topic! I also prefer quality over quantity, but I also understand how setting a time limit can boost productivity (and even creativity for some people). I poked around the internet to learn about daily routines and writing habits of famous fiction writers and found this blog post. There's definitely some truth in what the writer Jodi Picoult had to say about this matter: "If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page." Writing fiction is, however, a whole different endeavour 🙂

I wanted to ask a couple of other group members how they feel about time constraints when they're writing: 

hi @CSkaggs, @DavidDennison, @BGAD, @MPeterman, @ComfortCurator, any thoughts on this? Thank you!

Cheers
Mia, Community Team

[CSkaggs]

This is interesting as writing is such a creative and technical art. It's a difficult question for me as I have moments of inspiration, so I can't sit down to write in one session. I break my sessions up in threes. One half hour to plan/outline. One hour to sit and write the informative content and pitch to others for input. One hour to edit, add, and make what I'm writing try to sound human and friendly. 

[fab5freddy]

Hi CSkaggs, 

Thanks for your reply and for detailing your approach. Do these estimates apply to a 1000 word article?

Fab

[fab5freddy]

btw Mia, was that  a gentle nudge to say that 2 hours could suffice? 

😉

[MiaSrebrnjak]

😃 not at all. I would definitely need more than 2 hours to write a 1000 words article, especially if I'm writing about a new topic. Research takes a lot of time!

[fab5freddy]

Thanks Mia. That's great advice actually. Thanks for sharing the blog article. 

Out of curiousity. How much time would you spend on a 1000 words article? 

Cheers' 

Fab