Blogging

Writing Ahead is a Good Thing…But You’re Not Done!

123RF

Last Updated on February 19, 2022

Two weeks ago, I had a decision to make for Wednesday’s post.

Wednesday is the day I write about a “talker,” something that’s getting a lot of attention either in social media or in real life, one of the “hot topics” of the week.

There were two strong contenders for that Wednesday’s post. The first was in response to some chatter I’d seen some Facebook friends making about radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and how it was the next deep, dark conspiracy supposedly hidden in the pages of Obamacare.

The second contender was about a restaurant in North Carolina that decided, in an effort to celebrate and encourage gratitude, to start handing out 15% discounts to its patrons.

I ultimately wrote both posts, scheduling the RFID piece for Wednesday and the restaurant piece for that Friday, since Friday is the day I post about spiritual and faith matters and my chief objection to the restaurant’s policy was based on my religious views.

It seemed like the perfect idea: two timely posts that each fit one of the theme days I’ve established here at the blog.

But there was one little catch.

There usually is at least one little catch sooner or later.

Between the time I wrote Friday’s post about that little restaurant and the time Friday morning’s scheduled post time hit, something unexpected happened: the restaurant suddenly canceled the bonus it had been offering. My post about the discount, which focused on why I thought it was a bad idea, was already written and scheduled. Done and ready.

And now it was no longer accurate.

At least, not without some adjustments.

It’s one thing to write a post, and then see that something about the situation you’ve written about has changed. If you have a lot of influence, your post may even have had a small part in making the change. Readers, I think, will be far more forgiving of a post written before a change happens that doesn’t get the update, especially if you allow dates on posts.

But if your post is already outdated the moment it appears because of a change you didn’t catch, that will always look bad.

So there I was, the night before the post was supposed to hit, updating it to reflect the fact that the policy I intended to critique had been thrown out. I still offered my opinion on why I thought it was a bad idea, but at least the post was current when it hit the blog.

I don’t regret for a moment having written the post a few days in advance. Even though I had to update it, I still had a couple of days to work on it to make my primary points stronger, and then when I had to update at the last minute, I only had to worry about what was new, not the whole thing under a more extreme deadline pressure.

So when publishing in advance, don’t forget to keep an eye on your subject matter: you need to be able to react when something changes between the time you write and the time that post publishes.

Your turn:

On average, how many days in advance do you write your blog posts?

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.

1 Comment

  • I know exactly where you’re coming from…I’ve had to tweak posts on the fly after scheduling them because of changes just like you mentioned.  Usually it’s only when I’m writing on topical issues, but sometimes if I learn something new or contrary to what I had thought when I’d originally written my scheduled post, I’ll go change it before it goes live. Like you said, if you don’t, you look silly and it’s very hard to recover from that!

Comments are closed.