You might have noticed recently that there has been a distinct increase in the frequency of my blog posts. Hurrah for me! No, I haven’t suddenly had a brainwave of ideas; I’ve just got myself a bit more organised.
My ‘before’ schedule
When the mood struck me, I’d pull out a piece of paper and jot down some random ideas, which I would transfer to my laptop, where they would sit until I had time or actually remembered that I really should write one of them for the blog.
My new schedule
When the mood strikes me, I write down several blog ideas, which I transfer onto a monthly spreadsheet entitled ‘Blog Schedule’. The Schedule is dated, and colour coded by category, and I ensure that I visit it regularly and actually write and publish the posts on the allocated days.
Yes, my old system was pretty pathetic. My blog readership was almost none existent, and it was evident that I needed to take action if that was ever going to change.
I read a lot of blogs. Blogs about marketing, blogs about freelancing, blogs about writing, style, food, mummy-blogs… If it’s something I’m interested in, I’ll find a blogger that writes about it. And one thing that ensures that I visit some blogs time and time again is frequency and fresh content. I have some blogs that I’ll visit at least once a week, and that are saved in my favourites, or even subscribed to. But there have been many that never get updated, and haven’t stayed with me. I didn’t want to be one of those bloggers. So I decided to do something about it.
I can’t remember where I found the idea for the blog schedule that I use – it wasn’t mine, I took the idea from someone else, and tweaked it to make it my own. If you recognise it as yours, let me know, I’ll thank you, for you have made the world of difference to me!
How I did it
The example I found was very similar to the one I use, save a few changes. It’s set up in MS Excel, using a sheet for each month. Here is this month's:
| Current blog schedule |
It took me less than half an hour to create the original layout. If you are interested in replicating it, I can give you the cell/column sizes, just ask.
The schedule is working great for me. I now have a plan for all my blog posts, I can see at a glance what categories I’m writing about so that I don’t repeat my subjects, and I’m reminded how often I need to post.
I’m thinking of creating something similar for my Social Media posts, although I’m not sure how to make that work as yet. Ideas on a postcard, please!
As part of my marketing and social media plan, the frequency of posts seems to be paying off. As in, I’m getting more website hits. It’s early days, of course, but I feel better about it. I have something to aim for now.
I’d love to hear how you schedule your blog posts/social media posts. Do you have a tried and trusted plan?
