Planning Ahead to Maintain a Publishing Rhythm
One lesson that I had to learn the hard way was to maintain my publishing rhythm. I was so sure that I could keep up with writing a post every two days until that moment when the inevitable happened. I was out all day on business and got back very late and very tired. So, I decided to leave the writing for the next day.
All good, except that no matter how much I wanted to publish something, anything, the page remained blank for a few hours. I had no back-up posts, no drafts saved and not even browsing the web in search of an idea did not help very much.
That was the moment when I decided to keep a tighter schedule if I wanted to maintain a good rhythm and encourage readers to come back daily and look for new posts.
Planning my publishing schedule
In order to be able to make a plan, you need to have a goal. In my case, the goal was to publish at least one in-depth post every two days. For other people, this rate varies based on being a part-time or full-time blogger, on spare time available daily, on the selected niche or it simply represents a blogger’s personal decision.
With a goal set in mind, it’s time to begin the actual planning. While in this post I’m mostly explaining my publishing habits, various bloggers could and should decide on their own timeline, picking the best moment for planning according to their own daily/weekly schedule.
Since I’m living in Romania, I have the advantage of being awake when most of my readers are asleep (~60% of my traffic is US and Canadian traffic). This gives me time to plan my actions every morning, when I’m fully rested and with a fresh mind.
Each Sunday morning, I’m planning my next week’s timeline so that when Monday comes, I’ll have a fresh idea to start developing from the moment I wake up. On every Sunday morning I’ll sit down at my computer with a blank document and try to come up with at least three post ideas that I’ll usually post on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday or Friday.
Coming up with post ideas and developing them
While most post ideas have already been generated in the past week, sometimes I have to come up with new post ideas to fill the schedule. One of the best ways to do it is by reading. Whenever I need a new post, one that should provide help and answers to my readers, I’ll go on a post and comment hunt across the blogosphere.
Many great ideas rise up in topics that can be further developed. Many problems and questions that require solutions and answers are raised in posts’ comments. This is one amazing way to come up with posts that are guaranteed to answer real problems, and we all know how important that is.
With these ideas wrote down, I start to outline each post, think of titles, subheadings and key phrases in the future posts. In about an hour, I have outlined my next week’s most important posts, posts that I’ll develop on each publishing day’s morning and so, secure my posting target.
Filling in the blanks
Since the Sunday morning planning secures the achievement of my publishing goal, I have more time to engage in research, without being pressured by posting deadlines.
This allows me to stay updated with the news, themes and plugins/widgets launched every week. Writing about them whenever I feel that they are helpful to my readers will fill the empty spots in a week’s schedule.
While this is a good way to fill in the blanks, not every week I’m able to find such interesting news or great new themes or plugins. So, this can potentially generate a problem, except it doesn’t.
Again, planning steps in to the rescue. Saturdays and Sunday I’m writing two series. Usually, on Saturday, I’m publishing my list of handpicked available domain names for bloggers, while on Sundays it’s time for the “Blog SEO Tips” series. Further more, on Saturdays I’ve developed a habit of testing out an online service or tool that I’ll review or promote to my readers.
My advice to you is to think of those topics that you enjoy writing about most and you know most about, write them down, split them in sub-topics and begin writing about them on a weekly basis, create series.
Looking at the results
Planning my weekly timeline has generated great results for me and Blogsessive. At this time I’m able to keep up with my publishing rate and even write a few more posts every week. Find that day when you can take some time away from everything else and start planning your future posts.
Further more, if you have a Google / Gmail account, make use of their free tools: Google Calendar and Google Docs. They’re easy to use, free and you can access them from everywhere, as long as you have an internet connection available.
Over to you
This is how I plan my weekly timeline and I hope it will be useful to you, my readers, and that it will help you find that perfect blog posts publishing rhythm.
If you already plan your postings, it would be nice to read about your habits in the comment section.
Photo credits to Daniel Branco.
-
- Spread the love!
- StumbleUpon
- Digg
- Delicious
- Fast & Free RSS updates?
- Join the 1,058 subscribers NOW!
Loading ...
My blog’s themes somehow resume to usual knowledge. It’s very easy for me to write about, because usually the next article like a second part of the previous article and so on. Anyway, I’ve really started blogging a week ago and I already have 4 almost finished articles and I believe it’s pretty good.
Wherever I go, I always bring a pad of paper and pen with me. Inspiration hits me all the time, there is no guarantee I will remember those pearls. That’s why, having a pad at all times is paramount for my writing.
I post around twice a week, and my brother too. I have the luxury of having another author involved in my blog. I do write my posts ahead of time – usually. I find that, by giving an idea some time to simmer, and going over ones writing over the span of a couple days, great results can unfold.
What a great idea – idea-hunting through not only other blog posts, but through ideas raised in the comments section. Something I never thought of before. Thanks for the post, and for the thought-provoking method for publishing rhythm. I’m still attempting to find my own weekly plan, but my efforts have been helped exponentially by deciding on weekly themes. From my themes, I then develop posts in key areas I discuss on my blog. Helps cut down the “what the hell am I going to write about today??” factor
I’m a total wreck, I have no scheduel or anything that looks like it. I just recently switched from posting once a day to posting once every two days. Only to improve the quality of the posts.
I also read an article by Darren Rowse about batch processing, and that’s what I will do from now on, just have to get the hang of it.
Informative post,I’ll be starting a plan like you suggest – thanks.
It would be lovely to be able to plan things and actually use the plan, but I usually end up brainstorming, structuring, and then using that as a springboard into doing other things that have little to do with what I originally planned.
Now I just use a little HTML template I made. All black, and the ROY G BIV colors for different areas I need to work on.
I guess it works fine. It’s just blogging is in red so I’m always very angry when I read my schedule. I’ve also got school and work headings at the bottom, but I’m out of school and can’t work yet, so they go pretty unused.
I should work on that a little bit…