We have spent some time over that last few months discussing building a solid foundation upon which you will be building a successful blog. To recap what we have discussed, I have included a link to all of the previous post in this series below:

• Build your community
• Social Media
• Getting noticed now
• Must have pages for your blog
• Making sure your blog does not fail before it starts
• Critical components (Part 1)
• Critical components (Part 2)
• What should I call my Blog?
• The Launch

What the kicker is, even if you do all of those things we discuss above, if you don’t post to your blog, you have really wasted your time. Posting to your blog is one of the greatest benefits a blog has over a “static” website for businesses and professional services firms. It is the regular and consistent posting on your blog which will bring in the traffic. And it is this traffic which will become visitors and than hopefully readers. And finally, you want to take advantage of this ability to post to a blog to help you turn readers into clients and/or customers.

Here is what I said about posting in “The Launch”:

Post, post, post and post more: When you launch your new blog, make sure you have a minimum of 4 post up before it goes live. And if you are really wanting to get noticed, post every day for the first month. Post good, up-to-date, relevant content targeted to your niche, audience or market and you will have a good launch. Don’t expect a successful launch if you are not willing to take the time and make the effort to post as often as you can. And if you have been doing proper pre-launch planning during the foundation building process, you should already have a number of post “in the can” ready to post over time.

I know what you are saying. OK, Griffiths just how do I go about posting to my blog that often. And, you have got to be kidding, I won’t be able to come up with that much content. And you are right. Unless you use the tools and methods I am going to discuss below, you won’t be able to pull it off.

Get Organized

If there is one thing I have come to realize over the last 5 years that is key to posting on a regular and consistent basis, you have to be organized. You need some way to keep all of these ideas that are going to come flooding in organized so you can take advantage of them and use them for post ideas and material.

There are some great tools available to help you organize all of the material you are going to accumulate as you go about your blogging.

Blogging Tools

1. Desktop File Folders: One of the easiest ways to keep track of post ideas is to use your computers built in notepad or in my case TextEdit. When I get a post idea, no matter what stage it is at, I may use TextExit on my Mac and type out the title and some notes about the post idea I have. I then save that .txt document to a folder on my desktop labeled “post ideas”. As more ideas for that post come to mind, I will usually go to that document and add them to it. Once I am ready to start writing that post, I open the .txt document and use it as my guide for writing the post. Even if you just start out with only a possible title, this is a great way to save your ideas.
2. Third Party Blog Editor: I even use my blog editor of choice, MarsEdit as a way to organize and save post ideas. It is very similar to the method I discussed above. I will take a post idea and save the title and some thoughts in the “draft folder” of MarsEdit to be used later. The good thing about this method is you are already in your blog editor and can start to take the ideas and form them into a blog post. Yes, I could do this right inside WordPress too. However, with this method, I don’t have to be online to put my ideas down for use later.
3. Moleskine Notebook: For all of you who think I do everything paperless, please skip to the next paragraph. One of my favorite blogging tools is one of my Moleskine Notebooks. I use this just like one of the two tools already mentioned. I jot down post ideas, including titles and a brief outline of the post in the notebook. I usually have one of these notebooks at all times. And one of my favorite pens in my pocket too, the Space Pen. Once I get back to the computer, I will usually transfer my notes to one of my other methods of keeping track of post ideas.
4. Evernote: Evernote has now become my preferred tool for keeping track of jotting down my post ideas as they come to me. Other than the Moleskine Notebook, it has replaced the other methods for the most part. What is so great about Evernote is that if I am browsing and reading other blogs and I come to a post which I might want to link to in a blog post, I can quickly save it to Evernote to use later. You can also keep notes in Evernote just like a wordprocessor if you want and I do. With this tool, I can put all of the items I might want for a blog post in one place and come back to it when it comes time to write my post. And what is great, it has an iPhone version too which I can add notes to when I am away from my computer. And those notes will sync with the Evernote on my computer so all of my notes end up in one handy location.

The real key to any tool or method of organizing is to just use one that works best for you. The tools and methods I have discussed have worked and still work for me and my blogging. They may not work for you. What you need to do is find at least one way to get your post ideas down in some form and fashion that you can come back later and use those ideas for blog post.

Final Thoughts

You should have noticed this is “Posting to your Blog Part 1″. In the next post in this series, we are going to discuss where do you find post ideas so you can post to your blog on a regular and consistent basis. What I want you to do between now and Part 2 is to come up with your own way to organize your post ideas and put it to use in your daily blogging. And if you have other ideas I have not discussed, please leave your comments here so we can keep the conversation going.

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