Being a professional blogger means in most of the cases: publish content, targeted at your audience, structured, and well written.
But the other part is: It has to be typed. And the more you want to publish, the more you have to type, and edit, and retype … If you where writing a book, you could give your handwritten manuscript to somebody else, but as a blogger, you are on your own.
If you don’t have good typing skills, blogging will be much more of an effort for you – and then you publish less. But other than being a good writer is at least part talent, being a speedy typer is purely training.
So let’s take a quick look at your typing skills:
- How many fingers do you use when typing?
- Do you need to look at the keyboard while typing, or do you ‘type blind’?
- Compare the speed of your typing when using mail / chat language (everything lowercase, kind of sloppy, simpler words, type as you speak) or pro blog language (correct spelling, not natural flow of words but keyword oriented)
- If you type blind, does this include special characters and keys like Delete, Backspace etc?
- Do you know your frequent mistakes while typing and know how to get around them?
- How many times a day do you change between mouse and keyboard? Do you need to take look each time you want to reposition your hands on the keyboard?
See any possible improvements there?
Thinking about these basics can have a valuable impact on your blogging business. If you have not done so, consider taking a course about using the 10 finger system. It will take you some time to learn, but it will be worth the time.
The money side of it:
No matter how fast you think you are with 2 fingers, you will always be faster with 8-10. It is not so much about hitting keys faster with one finger at a time, it is about muscle memory and your body knowing “this word, these keys, in this order = these fingers to be move now! “. With a 2-5 finger system it is about “move one finger from this key to another”
Less time used in typing down your blog entries means more blog entries in the same amount of time. And you will start to do more editing, because it is not so much of a hassle. Improving your typing skills also does speed up mails and IM conversations. Being able to position your hands on the keyboard without having to look at it, just start typing, etc, all adds up over the day.
If you can type blind, you also can look at your notes and type them down, instead of reading the notes, looking at the keyboard, refocus again on the notes, and so on.
The health side of it:
Typing with all fingers of your hand means less abrasion. Being able to focus on your screen instead of the need to look down on your keyboard has its benefits too.
Any tricks for faster, more secure typing you would like to share?
