Why is it so Hard to Write a Blog?

Whether you have tried to write your own blog posts or just wondering why someone would pay a ghostwriter to do it, you might be questioning why it is so hard? Why can’t educated professionals do it themselves? The truth lies in a combination of factors—primarily time constraints, underestimating the difficulty, and insufficient understanding of the target audience's interests and knowledge level.

It’s Surprisingly Time-Consuming

One of the main roadblocks to writing blog posts is time! Humans think through things way faster than they can write them down. It’s very different than an email exchange, where there is purpose and some give-and-take or reports and plans related to professional work. If you just bang out random thoughts as they occur, you’ll end up with meandering rants, which are unsuitable for a professional’s blog.

Guesstimate Time Needed on this Task Roadmap:

1. Decide on the topic and thesis

2. Research as needed

3. Outline the points you want to make

4. Write the first draft with an introduction and conclusion

5. Review against your outline and thesis

6. Refine it to meet the original intention (if there’s too much, make it a series)

7. Edit for spelling and grammar

8. Find great images to grab attention and support ideas

9. Upload it to your blog or LinkedIn with photos

10. Share it socially or in an email

What about using AI? A fellow ghostwriter told me his clients don’t even have time to copy and paste the fully prepared text with a link and hashtags he provides into a social media post, so they won’t have time to figure out an outline and feed prompts into ChatGBT. Never mind the editing and massaging necessary to add their voice.

Maybe it Just Ain’t Natural 

Think about this: a significant number of people visualize concepts as images rather than words. For those individuals, capturing nebulous ideas and crafting them into text can be really challenging. Plus, we speak much differently than we write. Blog posts are unlike writing for work-related tasks. Even when ideas are there, crafting abstract thoughts and knowledge into sentences and paragraphs is an art form and takes skill that doesn’t come naturally to everyone. It takes a lot of work to express them in a relatable and compelling way. Writers have innate talent and many techniques to achieve this. Lawyers are a good example: They are known for writing oodles of complex documents, but many would struggle to put thoughts into prose suitable for marketing.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know 

You have value to share that you probably take for granted; if this perspective is absent, how can it inspire the words? Understanding what your audience knows or wants can be incredibly elusive. Many professionals underappreciate what they just know and write at too high a level. Don’t overestimate what the reader knows about your expertise and set the stage by opening with more context. Another gap is knowing what you care about vs what the reader would care about. Hint: It’s usually not the same.

For example, a change to a tax law:

1. Set the stage by presenting a bigger picture of tax law or annual changes and/or potential consequences for your target (ie, small businesses) not staying up-to-date.

2. Then, tell readers how the change might affect them and what to do about it vs. drilling down into history or details.

Don’t take for granted that the years of experience brought you wisdom, and what you do with it is a big part of what makes you better. A ghostwriter is likely closer to the audience than the profession they are writing about. They can pull out details through interviews and use them to make a case for the reader to care, provide context and find an angle to make it meaningful to your readers while tooting your horn a little.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Writing doesn’t come easily and naturally to everyone. It requires organizing and limiting many thoughts into a digestible structure, figuring out what people want to know or what would sell them on you for a compelling spin. The professional is at one end of a thread of knowledge/experience and may not see where the average reader is on that thread. If this is the case, you wouldn’t know what to ask of ChatGBT in the first place. Never mind finding the time to do it.

Time investment is consistently underestimated for regular web content and blog posts. I can’t tell you how many rush projects grind to a halt when clients decide to write their own content.