Today's post is a guest post from the lovely Charlene who blogs over at The Moderate Mum (link at the end). If you haven't visited Charlene's blog before, here is a little more about her:
I live near the sea with my partner Graham and after more than a decade mentoring families, I'm now a stay at home parent to our son Roscoe.
Charlene's post is all about helping us to blog to schedule, which all of us bloggers know can be tricky, but so helpful once you get your schedule nailed!
How to Blog
to Schedule by Charlene Allcott
 |
| The Lovely Charlene with her son Roscoe |
1) Get
it in the diary
Make
sure that you have a good chunk of time allotted in your diary for writing and
scheduling posts. Your blog is entitled to the same level of prioritisation as
Zumba or your dentist appointments. Be as generous as you can with your
scheduling, remember you need to write, edit and organise pictures. Time
yourself writing a post from scratch so you know roughly how long you’ll need.
2) Share
your schedule
There’s
no point allotting time to write or post if no one else knows about it. If a
blogging calendar falls in the forest does anyone hear it? You need to tell
your friends and family that you are not available at the time you have
scheduled for posting and make sure you set incredibly firm boundaries about
being disturbed. If you don’t feel comfortable telling others that you’re
blogging why not say you’re taking an online writing course, it’s only a small
fib – anything it takes to keep that schedule steaming along.
3) Write
in advance
If
you find yourself with a few minutes spare, instead of mindlessly channel
surfing or wondering what you would look like if you dyed your hair red, why
not bang out a post? You can keep that bad boy in draft until you need it, so
if your week gets unexpectedly hectic you can still keep to your goals.
4) Read
other blogs
You’ll
read a lot about bloggers block. It happens, the trick is not to panic. In the
meantime make sure you keep reading plenty of other blogs for information and
inspiration. You won’t be stuck without a topic for long if you stay engaged in
the community.
5) Be
accountable
Tell
your readers when you plan to post, this will encourage them to pop back and
check out what you’ve done but it will also give you the fear; fear is an
excellent motivator. Instead of thinking, la, la, la – I should probably post
today… You’ll think, I have to post, they’re waiting; they’ll hate me! They
probably won’t but just in case better get that post up.
6) Don’t
break under the pressure
Please
set realistic expectations. If you’ve got a job, a family and a reasonable soap
schedule you may not be able to post three times a day. Even with an
appropriate goal there’ll be a time when you can’t make it – don’t give up, just
splash your face with cold water and start again next week. Personally I
wouldn’t bother to apologise online, it’s only announcing to new readers that
you’re unreliable. Just make sure that you get that great content back online
and back on schedule.
I've never really had a hard time keeping the blog updated. But that's just me.
ReplyDeleteI really struggled with this when I first started blogging - I'm a lot more disciplined now though, but I think for the most part that's because I have a schedule!
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