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Bloggers, Are You Using that Draft Button?

A person typing on a laptop with the word "content" on the screen123RF

As I write this, plenty of ‘in progress’ posts sit on my calendar. That’s because I learned when it’s best to press the draft button and wait.

Picture the scene, fellow bloggers. You come up with what you think would be an excellent idea for a post. So you start writing. You get two-thirds of the way through or maybe even three-fourths. And you realize the post isn’t as stellar as you hoped. You have two choices: You can either trash it or simply click that little draft button!

In WordPress, the platform that powers this site, there’s a little “Save draft” link just to the left of the “Schedule” button. (I try to write posts in advance as often as I can.) If you’re writing a post that you intend to go up immediately, the “Schedule” button likely says “Publish” instead.

But you get the idea.

I recently read an article called “Five Blogging Traps And What You Can Do To Avoid Them.” In that article, the fourth item on the list was, “You’re just not good at putting your thoughts on paper.”

”Sometimes it all sounds great upstairs, and when you sit in front of the blank screen to write, you freeze. Well, it’s a human reaction,” Connor Brooke writes.

He points out the handy little “save draft” feature, adding, “That means it doesn’t have to be published right away, or at all.”

It’s too easy to ‘trash’ a good idea

I really do think many people forget that “at all” part. But there’s no law that says every post that you start has to actually be published. But sometimes people seem to think the investment of time spent writing should be the most important for their blog.

The reality is the investment of time spent in quality control should be the top priority.

Sure, that post that isn’t going anywhere might have cost you an hour of your day. But what’s more important: The hour you think you wasted or the quality of the next post you publish?

I work in the TV industry, and there, when a breaking story happens, you don’t have a lot of time to get a story written and published. By default, we learn to write quickly — hopefully clearly and without any typos — but quickly nonetheless. We have a short amount of time to get the information organized, composed and published.

I think many bloggers, particularly newer bloggers, assume that blogging should be about publishing quickly.

I also think that there are bloggers who are too quick to discard a post they feel isn’t going anywhere. But they can always come back to that draft later. With a fresh set of eyes, they may find the little “hole” they couldn’t see when they started writing. The real point they were trying to make might seem more clear.

I will say I think that given the choice between deleting a bad post or publishing it just to say you published something, deleting it is the better choice.

But I don’t think deleting is the better choice when the options are trashing that post and saving it to come back to later.

I will admit that there have been posts I’ve left in draft for long enough that I just decided I wouldn’t be able to fix it. Then I deleted that post.

However, I can tell you there are far more posts over the 20 years of this blog that I’ve started writing, placed in Drafts, then come back to, improved, and published.

Don’t be afraid of the Drafts button

If you think saving something as a draft is a sign of writing failure, change that point of view! It isn’t.

It might just be the best thing you can do for your readers. If you have a point that’s worth making, it should be worth making sure you step up with your best argument.

You owe that much to your point of view. You also owe it to your readers who’ve come to spend time on your site.

They won’t know how much time you spent actually writing a post they find useful.

But they can definitely assume you didn’t spend enough time on a post that falls flat!

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.