Planning Your Blog for Content Consistency
Happy Wednesday! (although this week has been a little crazy for me… seems like it should be Friday already #amiright?)
So far I’ve gone over the technical details of setting up your blog… and now it’s time for the fun part- content!
One of my favorite quotes, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” Yes and yes. In order to keep your content consistent and keep up with the demand of your posts (which I try to do at least 4-5 times/week) – You need to PLAN!
This was especially important for me when I was working full-time in an office, taking care of Jadyn and her activities, and also trying to keep up with the house. I didn’t have time during the day to blog- I only had limited hours at night and had to use my time efficiently. I was up early and went to bed late, trying to squeeze in any extra bit of time out of the day. Literally the only way I was able to manage my crazy work lifestyle for the year and a half before I quit my office job, was by efficiently and effectively planning ahead.
My Routine
I always try to plan two weeks in advance what my blog post will cover with daily outfits. I rarely write my blog posts the night before they go live, rather they’re scheduled and I edit only a few things to make it more real to my life at the moment. This is HUGELY helpful.
On my content calendar, I write out down what outfit I will be posting each day and I schedule time slots for when I will be shooting those looks. Of course things come up and I might need adjust, weird weather, fast turnaround on a campaign, event I want to recap instead, etc.
Be flexible, but I really recommend having it planned out in advance as it will help your creativity flow because you won’t be writing your posts last minute when you’re exhausted and/or have writers block (not fun).
Everyone is different though, and if you work well planning only a few days ahead, then you should do what will be most effective for you to keep creating great content. The goal is to not have a blog for three months and burn yourself out because producing content becomes a frustrating and chaotic experience. If you want to blog, you have to be committed to content- so just make sure you find a system that works best for you and that keeps you inspired! One way that has mega helped me with productivity is sticking to daily a routine, here’s an example of my typical day:
5:00-5:30am – Wake up, get ready
5:30-6:30am – Eat breakfast, make coffee, read news, stretch (Not only does the mind need to be sharp, but I feel more motivated when I do just a little activity in the morning, I’ve started yoga so that goes in three days a week)
6:30-7:30am – Get Jadyn ready for school, make breakfast/lunches
7:30-8:30am – Go through e-mails, answer most urgent ones first, flag the others for response in a few hours
8:30-9:30am – Plan social media for the day- take any photos in advance if necessary
9:30-10:30am – Write blog post for specific day
10:30-12:30am – Go through rest of e-mails and respond, calendaring any new due dates, events, etc.
12:30-1:30 – Edit photos for blog post I wrote earlier
The second portion of the day is picking up Jadyn from school (grabbing more coffee) and tending to her homework/extracurricular activities. Also spend time with the hubs when he comes home from work, which usually consists of us discussing what’s the blog plan for the next week and some kind of brainstorming strategy. Later after Jadyn goes to bed, I finish off my To-Do list for the day and then plan for the next.
This of course changes a bit when I schedule meetings or events during the day, but early morning and late at night I tend to be most productive and sorry if you receive e-mails super late at night from me (sometimes I just get on a roll and handle all of them at night!). I need to sleep more I’m sure, but working on my own schedule is my favorite thing about blogging and it definitely doesn’t mean I can slack now that I work for myself, if anything it’s motivated me to work harder.
In the past 4 months since I’ve made blogging my full-time job, I’ve realized the difference between doing what you love and working a job simply for a paycheck is not dreading to get up for work every morning and excited about the week ahead. The only thing I dread about Mondays now are the fact that it’s just so busy with my husband and Jadyn’s schedule (we definitely take it more easy on the weekends and it’s so nice to be all together)- but Mondays are my most productive mornings and usually by Sunday night I’m itching to get back into my early morning routine.
Blogging can be that for you too if you’re willing to work! Hopefully hearing how I’m able to manage will give you ideas of what will be helpful to you going forward. Now let’s go over a few tools I consider necessary for managing my time well:
Tools I use
Buffer App: An amazing tool that helps me schedule my social media posts (Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter). Such a time saver.
WordPress Editorial Calendar– This is great because I can see all my posts for the month in draft form overview, this helps me see if the content flows overall. I also like the drag and drop feature to be able to edit my calendar quickly and to get ideas of what looks the best.
Wunderlist– I am a huge list maker and this keeps me on track, I basically have a list for everything…Shopping, To-Do’s, Emails, Posts and many more lol…This is a list app on steroids!
Evernote I read a lot online…especially to keep up with world news, fashion trends, ways to improve my blog, etc. I use Evernote to organize various web articles into categories so that I can reference them later for future blog post ideas or recreational reading.
Action:
Look at the next two weeks on your calendar and plan exactly what you are going to write each day. Just list your outfit pieces, or if it’s a food post- write the recipe title down… just an idea for each day you want to have a blog post so you can plan around that.
For example, on Friday’s I post my “FriYAY Favs” so I know every Friday I will need to recap my favorite items. I plan items for each Friday a month in advance.
The hardest part is just sitting down and planning out every hour of each day…then actually sticking to it! Once it’s in place and you start getting into the routine, you’d be surprised on how much you can accomplish.
That’s it for this weeks blogging tips! If you have found a really great online tool, leave a comment below… I would love to hear what tools you use as I am always open to improving my workflow and becoming more efficient 🙂
Happy blogging!
xx Brittany
