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Content Marketing

Marketers — How to Stay on Track With Your Blogging Schedule

March 20, 2014

Creating a blogging schedule is critical for business bloggers because it keeps them on track. Not having a schedule is like jumping into a fire without a plan to save the baby — you’ll just crash and burn eventually.

Don’t just take it from me. Here is what Bryan Allain has to say about scheduling blog posts (took the words right out of my mouth):

“Using a calendar to schedule posts on my blog has made me in a better blogger in a number of ways. The calendar not only organizes future blog posts, it also helps to capture them in the first place.

The moment I get an idea for a new blog post I put it on my calendar before I forget it. Having a calendar also helps me keep my content from getting too stale. If I’ve got similar posts slated for back to back days, I can notice it move things around before it’s too late.”

So it is clear that creating a blogging schedule is important. Sticking to it, however, is far more critical, and is often where most bloggers fail. How can one stay on track with his/her blogging schedule? Here are some tips that will help you stay the course:

1. Be realistic

It is every writer’s dream to be able to write a blog post every day for the rest of his/her life. Obviously, that’s simply what it is — a dream. A business cannot run on words alone. As such, you will need to take into account every other business activity that needs to be done during the course of the week when setting aside writing days.

Often, when other things crop up and the week is packed, blogging is usually the first item on the list to go. To prevent this, go as far as to put in an open day or two as leeway — just in case.

2. Block out the best times

Did you know that there is a scientifically proven best time of the day to write? Apparently, the best time to write is early in the morning, in large part because we have a finite amount of willpower which is at its maximum in the morning.

Of course, this is certainly not set in stone. If you have to send your children to school in the wee hours of the day, early morning might not be the best time for you. In such cases, the best time would probably be when your workplace is quiet and peaceful.

3. Develop a routine

Every successful writer has a pet routine that they go through whenever they get down to business. Jack Kerouac, for example, had a ritual of lighting a candle and writing by its light, and then blowing it out once he was done for the night.

Personally, I usually make myself a cup of hot tea and put on some ambient music before I begin to write. Without these things in place, it would be a challenge for me to settle down to writing, but just having these items puts me into the writing mood immediately. Develop a routine that is comfortable and familiar to you, and stick to it.

4. Have a backlog of ideas to choose from

One reason that writers tend to slow down in their blogging routine is simply the lack of inspiration — or rather, the perceived lack of inspiration. It is therefore of paramount importance to craft an extensive list of possible topics and ideas before even beginning to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, in this case).

If you’re really stuck for ideas, Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator might be a good starting point. All you need to do is fill in 3 keywords that fit the theme of your blog, and this baby will churn out a huge list of possible topics, with cool titles and all. Just don’t end up relying on this too much — use this tool only to get a sense of how topics and titles are crafted instead.

At the end of the day, there’s no exact science as to how to stay on track with your blog schedule. It’s always going to be some parts discipline, some parts planning, and as always — a good dose of hard work.

Daniel is a Marketing Executive at ReferralCandy, and a sometimes writer-for-hire. He is madly passionate about entrepreneurship, marketing, and productivity. His byline can be found all over the web, but his home is at danieltay.me

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