To say blogging is time-consuming is an understatement – it can easily fill up your spare time if you let it. Unless you’re lucky enough to be a professional blogger you’ll most likely have to fit blogging around a job or taking care of the kids, and sometimes managing to be an organised blogger just doesn’t happen.
As I work every day and only really have evenings to write, I have to get my blogging organised otherwise I’d get way behind. I assumed that all of the much more experienced bloggers always had loads of posts scheduled way in advance – going by a recent Twitter chat apparently that’s not the case!
If you use your time wisely you can get ahead of yourself and save a lot of blogging stress. So here are my 10 tips on being an organised blogger…
Get yourself a notebook.
It’s impossible to remember everything so you need to be able to refer back to important ideas, websites or your favourite blogs. Write everything down in a notebook to make sure you don’t forget your brilliant ideas. It’s also an excuse to buy pretty stationery.
Brainstorm some ideas.
Even if it’s just titles, write these down in your nice new notebook. Or you could do what I do and save these as draft posts in WordPress (just the title to begin with) – if I don’t note them down I totally forget all of my good ideas.
Prepare the photos.
If you have lots of ideas but are yet to actually write the posts you can still start getting together any photos you might need to include. This is especially a good idea if you need to take photos outdoors – if it’s sunny make the most out of it rather than waiting until you’ve written the post, the weather could change and mess up your schedule.
Set a plan.
How many posts do you want to publish a week – be realistic! I’d love to be able to write 3 or 4 a week but have settled for 2 then if I manage more it’s a bonus.
Get ahead of yourself.
Once you have a nice list of post ideas spend an afternoon churning out some blog posts. If you can get enough written in one go you can schedule one or two per week so you always have a few week’s worth of content planned. That way you’re always a bit ahead of yourself and it’s not too stressful if you get writer’s block for a few days.
Write shorter posts.
If you think of a topic that you can write quite a lengthy post on, it might be beneficial to break it down into a couple of smaller posts. Short posts are more likely to get read anyway, plus you get 2 blog posts for the price of 1!
Make the most of any quiet time.
Every Wednesday I have to sit in the car for an hour while Little H does gymnastics so I use the time to write a blog post. I have the WordPress app on my phone and type straight into it, then that when I get back to my laptop the drafts are there waiting for me.
Try recording your notes.
One thing that I haven’t quite mastered yet is speaking my notes into my phone rather than typing them. It would be so much quicker but I need to practice using this function a bit more.
Research link ups, Twitter chats and hashtags.
Look into some relevant link ups or Twitter chats that you could join, this gives you a day of the week to get a blog post ready for, and some link ups have a particular theme which can give you post ideas. Note down a list of hashtags so you don’t have to go hunting each time you post.
Schedule, schedule, schedule!
Schedule your social media posts as well as your blog posts. Use Hootsuite, Buffer or a similar program to schedule tweets and Facebook posts in advance. You can schedule the same post several times over a week to save time later.
So there are my tips on getting yourself more organised and saving some time. Are there any tips here that you don’t currently do? Or do you have any other ideas?
If you still need to get more organised, have a read of my blog post Top tips for being awesome and getting stuff done
Happy blogging!
beautiesandthebibs
some great ideas here I love a good note pad and I am always writing things down or just writing the title of a post and leave it in the drafts for when I have time to do it. ! I used to be really good at scheduling posts but have got a bit laid back with it need to start again #stayclassy