People always ask me how I have so much time to blog. Although I do work for myself, it does take a lot of planning to keep up with three blogs and a business. Earlier this year, I started planning out my blog posts in advance and it has saved me a lot of heartache in trying to find the time, energy and inspiration to blog every day. Another technique I use is to write my blog posts in advance and then schedule them to go out at certain times during the week. It helps to automate the blogging process and no one knows that I wrote the posts a week before they actually showed up on my blog!
Today’s assignment
Sit down in front of a Microsoft Word document or your notebook and jot down ideas for your blog posts this week. Think of it as an editorial calendar for your blog. If you want to blog every weekday, think of a blog post topic for Monday-Friday. If you want to post three times a week, plan out your posts to drop on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or whatever combination of days you want.
If you really want to be efficient, take it an extra step and write up all your posts for the week today, and then schedule them to publish on certain days. Voila! Your blogging is done for the week and now you can focus on blog promotion and responding to comments. Neat, huh?
Skellie offers more advice about writing in advance and this post explains the blog editorial calendar in more depth with a sample calendar you can borrow for your own blog.
Tell us about your experience in planning out your blog posts in the comments. Does this method work for you?
Since I have a Day Job, I definitely plan ahead! I take a look at meetings, travel plans, and the weather to determine when I will blog. Then I plan my outfits
I also keep a notebook on me that I jot ideas in, and periodically I'll go back and plan a post around those ideas. This notebook also helps me plan out how/where I will grow my network further!
I do this for the twitter and blog content I write for work. Why it never occurred to me to do this for my personal blog escapes me. LOL! Anyhoo, thanks for the reminder and I'm glad to have a set schedule to work from rather than simply just what inspires me for the day.
I intended to do this when I started but it never happened. so I'm going to try to make it happen. I have two posts in draft outline in my que so I know just have to write them
So, this was totally part of my vision for my blog. I would figure out what my schedule was for med school, plan out some posts a few weeks out, write them the weekend before or when I have free time in batches so that I would be able to post them out at regular intervals and continue to produce a great flow of content despite exams and other ridiculousness.
Unfortunately, I did not expect to contend with 9-6 anatomy classes, biweekly exams and the general complete overwhelm of meeting new classmates and moving into a new apartment. At the moment, I'm lucky if I have a couple hours a week to push out a post, which I've been trying to keep in line with the assignments for #31bnb so I don't fall too far behind. I have so many blog ideas bouncing around my head during the course of the week that for that little time that I get, I've just been writing whichever comes easier & feels mostly timely.
Once anatomy's over & I'm fully moved into my apartment, I fully intend to go back to my plan of planning ahead and getting posts done in batches. And start an internship at a community clinic. And volunteer. And get involved in some student organizations. Really.
This challenge was extremely helpful for me. I just returned from a music festival and needed to plan out how to best share my experiences. I now have at least 2 weeks of posts that I can use to give me diversity in how I report out about it.
My life is going to get crazy busy soon, I have started draft posts on my phone and on WordPress that I will be posting. I will be using the scheduling thing once I get more organized.
I'm a fan of structure, I've been planning out my blog posts since I first started my blog in January. It keeps me organized, and when I sit down to write, I don't waste time trying to figure out what I will write about! Plus, it's a fun weekend activity that gets me revved up for a week of writing.
I like the idea of scheduling my post and somewhere I fell off with that!! I am going to try really hard to get back on track with it. I like to post daily because I think it encourages followers to continue to read and help you promote your blog.
Well, once i figured out how to schedule posts, Ive kinda-sorta been doing this, lol. Some of the posts in some of my series' are scheduled. Others arent, but thats just because Ive been really lazy the past two weeks. Ive also been scheduling tweets on Twitter, too. Id love to be able to schedule posts on Tumblr, but I havent figured out how to do that yet, lol.
I just love the idea of writing/assembling posts for a few hours, and spacing them out over several weeks – its genius!
L
I can definitely see how other people have a lot of success with this method, but I don't think it works for me. I'm a super fast writer, and once I have an idea for a post, I generally pound it out in a half hour or less. I can just compose really easily. However, my version of doing this would probably be that every time I see something online that I want to blog about, I bookmark it under “To Write About.” So if I sit at the computer and don't already know what I want to post about, I usually have at least 5 topics waiting and, like I said, 15 mins to a half hour later I have my post. Would my quality go up if I planned more? Maybe.
I tried to do this last weekend but was only 50% successful. Today I was determined to have my blog posts for the week written and schedule. My goal is to have three per week and I have just completed scheduling them. So happy. This was a perfect assignment for today.
I've actually been using this technique since I started my blog. Being a single mother and working full time really cuts into my time to write so I knew I had to be organized. So first I decided that I wanted to post a new piece minimum 3xweek. After that every Friday I sit down and think about things I've already written plus any new ideas I have. Over the weekend I will write on the new ideas as well as revamp any existing pieces. Usually by Sunday I have my 3 pieces for the week on wordpress, scheduled to publish with publicity to facebook and twitter complete. What's great is that I now have quite a few pieces that are complete and can be thrown in whenever they fit or even submitted to other sites.