We all know that blogging is a great way to grow your business. That’s why we start them. The challenge is that you need a steady stream of content to engage your audience and lead them to take action. A steady stream of content also makes sure your latest posts will always be in the search engine results!
In order to make sure you keep up with your blog, you should figure out exactly what it is you need to do for each post. You’ll need to make sure you have time for coming up with ideas, creating content, publishing it, and interacting with your audience.
Since everyone has different things going on in their lives, there is no one schedule that will work best. You need to come up with a schedule that works well for you. And the one that works best is the one that you’re going to follow.
Start with Your Goal
What do you hope to achieve with your blog? Are you selling affiliate products to your readers? Are you selling your own products? Are you trying to build an audience of loyal readers?
It’s important to clarify this goal first because it determines what content you’ll create and how you’ll create it. You’ll need a mix of content that will help you reach this goal, and this has a direct effect on how you structure your blogging time.
For instance, if you’re selling affiliate products you’ll need to make sure you have a mixture of posts that teach your audience as well as posts that share what products would be helpful for them.
Create a Publishing Schedule
Here’s a question you should ask yourself. To achieve your goal, how often do you need to publish? You should decide this first and then create your blogging schedule by working backwards, considering all that you have to do.
If you decide that you only need to create one post per week, you may decide to post on a Wednesday. If you want to create a few posts per week, you may decide to post on Tuesday and Thursday. It’s up to you how you want to schedule it.
Once you know how often you’re going to post, you can then figure out how you want to create the posts and get them done by your self imposed deadlines.
For each post, you might need time to do some research, and also might want to create an outline. You’ll need time to write and edit the post, and then publish it. Once it’s published, you’ll want to set aside some time as well. You’ll want to check for and reply to comments, as well as post a link to your new blog post so that more people will find out about it.
Daily Blogging Time or Weekly?
Now that you know what you need to do for each post, you can figure out when you want to spend time doing these things. You may want to break it up into smaller chunks, and spend different days doing different things. For example you may want to spend part of one day doing the research and outline, another day writing the post and editing it, and another doing the rest. Or you may prefer to do it all at once, and dedicate a good amount of your day to get everything done.
Let’s say for example you wanted to break it up so you only spent a small amount of time each day working on your blog. So, this could mean that on the first day, you need to research and outline. You could then write the post on the next day, and then spend some time the following day editing and then publishing your post. Through experience, you might determine that you need an hour a day three days a week to get everything accomplished.
On the other hand, what might work better for you is to set aside one time each week for all your blogging tasks. If you decide to publish twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday, you might set aside Friday afternoon for writing and finishing two posts. This might work better if you’re unable to set aside a little time each day. Some people find that it takes less time if they do similar tasks at once, so they’ll write more than one blog post at a time.
Start Blogging and Track Your Progress
Know that it will take some time to create a schedule that suits you. It will also most likely take some trial and error to understand what works best for you. Don’t spend too much time planning. Create a schedule and implement it, and then see whether it helps you achieve your goal or not. If not, try something different until you’re happy with the results.
For example, if you decide to spend a 4-hour stretch each Wednesday morning blogging, you might find that you’re exhausted by the 3rd hour. This tells you that you should break up the time into smaller chunks on separate days.
If you choose to work for a half an hour a day, you might find it’s not enough time to meet your publishing deadlines. If so, bump it up to 45 minutes and see if that helps.
Don’t forget to include other steps in addition to writing that you may be doing. If you’re including videos in your content, you need time to create and edit the video. If you accept guest posts, you’ll need time to find and review guest bloggers. Always set aside time for editing your posts before hitting publish.
Create a plan and get started, then refine as necessary. Remember that the goal is to create a plan that allows you to turn out high quality work consistently in a way that’s easy for you.
Enjoy,
