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.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

I’m sure that many of you have wondered why some bloggers have thousands of subscribers, why their blogs are called “authority blogs” and why they receive constant or growing traffic. Yes, their writing skills are excellent, they provide good insight on different matters and/or they have a charming personality, but when it comes to blogging, there is one thing capable of deciding your success in only a few weeks: Consistency.

Importance of blogging consistency

Why is consistency important and how much it affects your blog? If you’re a casual blogger, writing about you math class or how your fish did 3 back-flips last evening, it probably won’t affect you too much, since your target would most likely be your classmates or close friends; but if you’re serious about maintaining an online successful blog, than constancy should be a top priority to you.

We’ve all heard that quality is better to have than quantity, but what if you can achieve both? What if you really have what it takes to intrigue you readers, to make them come back for more? And what if your readers keep coming back, only to find no new posts or new comments? Then, all your talent is wasted, and your initial effort was in vain.

These days, when the online environment is full of wonderful tools like StumbleUpon, Digg or del.icio.us, that make our web experience more pleasant and help us find information easier, people tend to get comfortable, do less typing in the address bar of their browser. That’s why you can be certain that your blog gets a lot of traffic from RSS readers. From time to time, I do like to navigate through my favorite blogs, looking for new posts, or reading old posts that I’ve missed, but 90% of the time I use my RSS readers to keep an eye on blog updates. So ask yourselves this: How am I supposed to come to your blog, if you don’t alert me constantly? And how can you alert me? By writing new posts! Further more, if your posts are high quality readings, you’ve got yourselves a loyal subscriber!

How can you insure your blogging consistency?

We all have bad days, less inspiring moments or simply don’t have the time to write even 2 paragraphs on a topic. What can be done to overpass these moments? Take advantage of your less busy days. Write, take notes, read more, get informed and form opinions of your own. Sure you can write a post, publish it and then go back to writing and publishing another one, but wouldn’t it be great if instead of this publishing frenzy you would save a draft of your second post, only to publish later, at a time when you won’t have the same idea-flow you had that day?

From a subscriber-statistic point of view, publishing 2 articles the same day will get you X unique visitors and 2*X pageviews that day, while publishing one the next day will insure your X unique visitors for 2 days in a row, and you’ll still have a respectable pageviews quota. If you’d ask me, I’d go for the uniques!

What do the search engines say?

With a new blog launched every second of the day, who do you think will win the search engines’ blessing? I put my money on those that keep a constant publishing flow, provide relevant results and maintain a high traffic level.

This is why consistency is essential for your blogging success, a huge factor in getting quality traffic, backlinks and reader loyalty.

So, blogsessed friends, how do you overpass your bad days and keep your level of publishing constant?

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive