Do you have a plan for creating content on a regular schedule for your blog? You might also need to plan for unexpected distractions!
For bloggers, the phrase “Life Happens” can be much more than a cliché. Over more than 20 years of blogging, I’ve tried to find a perfect formula for creating content on schedule.
I initially posted whenever an idea struck me. Once in a while, that might mean more than one post a day. Or it might mean going several days without a post.
Years ago, I just started posting something every day. It started back on Jan. 5, 2013. I didn’t set out to post daily. It just sort of happened. Five years later, I marked the fifth anniversary of daily posts here at the blog. No one was more surprised than I was that I had pulled that off.
But a worry nagged at me well before that fifth anniversary. Over time, I realized that some of those daily posts weren’t as good; they felt forced. The fact was, in some cases, they were. I was simply too stubborn to stop posting every single day once I realized I had a streak going. So some days, I posted even when I didn’t particularly have anything to say.
Fortunately for me — and my readers — common sense eventually prevailed. It still took another year and a half before I admitted to myself that I needed to stop the daily foolishness. But in the summer of 2019, I allowed myself the grace to stop it.
I eventually settled on a four-day workweek for the blog. My reasoning was that if I could provide content for half of the week, I could spend the other half creating content that would hopefully be better.
I knew I’d be happier with better content and I hoped my readers might be as well.
But even a half-week can be a bear
I’ve tried little strategies like trying to write ahead of schedule. I’m a big believer, as I’ve said repeatedly, in using an editorial calendar to plan out posts. Sometimes, an idea will hit me and I’ll just create a working title and place it on the calendar. When I have time, I’ll write the post and schedule it for a future date. Sometimes, I might write a couple of posts at a time on the same topic — like blogging or grammar, for example — and schedule them a few weeks apart.
Once in a while, I’ll write about half of a post and realize it needs to be fleshed out a little more. I’ll leave it unfinished on the calendar for a week or two later. By then, I can usually get back to it and either finish it or trash it.
That kind of planning works well when you have the time to do it.
Sometimes, I run out of that time.
Last week was a great example. In addition to being shorthanded at the real job, we had a tropical storm by the name of Debby that moved through. That meant I worked all different kinds of shifts and several of them were more than eight hours in length. So when I wasn’t at the office, I was trying to get caught up on sleep.
The blog had to take a back seat. I don’t like for that to happen, but sometimes that’s unavoidable.
To top it off, there were times when I couldn’t think of a post to write for the next day. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Bloggers, please don’t be shocked to hear that even someone who’s done this for as long as I have still manages to occasionally go bankrupt in the old bank of ideas. I’d be lying if I said I start every week with that week’s four posts already planned, written and scheduled.
Some days, I wake up knowing I still haven’t completed that day’s post. It’s a horrible feeling to wake up to for a blogger.
As a general rule, I try to have a new post hit the site at 8 a.m. Monday through Thursday. There were a handful of days last week in which that day’s post hit much later. Because it just wasn’t finished.
I missed my own deadline. And staying on deadline is a major part of my real job!
You need to extend yourself permission to miss deadlines…and a little grace
I still get anxious when I miss my own blog deadline. You’d think it wouldn’t bother me after all this time. After all, it’s my blog and I get to set the rules. If I were to miss a day, how terrible would it really be?
It probably wouldn’t be terrible at all. I imagine the majority of people who visit might not even realize that my Thursday post didn’t go up until Friday, for example.
But it still bothers me.
So I had to give myself a little grace…especially this past week!
When you commit to creating content on your blog, that can be a very difficult task. But if you burn yourself out while doing so, you aren’t helping your blog or your readers!
