Yesterday in 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt, we discussed ways to avoid writers block. While we spent time looking at our previous post, considering some of the comments and questions from our readers and clients. What we were also doing was coming up with ideas for blog post. All the time, making sure we were focusing on our readers.
Today’s task involves starting an editorial calendar and using the post ideas we came up with yesterday as a means to start populating the calendar. In my own blogging, I can honestly say, my posting is more productive when I use the editorial calendar and follow the ideas I put on it.
Today’s task is to develop a weekly editorial calendar
No matter how much I say about an editorial calendar there is just important key, you have to use it. My editorial calendar is on my Google calendar. And here are some of the key points.
- I start off by putting on the calendar those series post I may be running. Whether they are only over a few days or over an entire month. It helps to see what you are doing even in a series.
- Next, I decide how many post I am planning to do in any particular week and start my week from there. If you are going to do three regular weekly post, put those on your calendar on the days you are going to post them. You should already have 10 to 12 post ideas from the homework you did in yesterdays post. If you are doing 3 a week, you have a months worth of posts.
- For me, I also have my Newsletter and auto-responder emails on my editorial calendar.
- In an upcoming post in this series, we are going to discuss guest posting. If you are jumping on that opportunity, you should also put those guest postings you are going to be doing on your calendar.
- Another key to using an editorial calendar, make sure you are flexible. Schedules change and you may come up with a different idea based on events or post you read that week. And don’t be so ridged that you are not inserting additional post between those you have in your editorial calendar.
- Finally, I also color code my calendar and my editorial calendar has its own color. This way when I glance at my calendar first thing in the morning and each Monday when I plan my blogging week, I can see what is up for the week because my editorial calendar stands out.
What I would suggest you do is sit down sometime today or this evening and plan out the next 3 weeks of blog post. And by the way, I want you to post 3 times to your blog each week during this series. If you did the homework from yesterday, you should have a minimum of 10 post ideas, so you have one extra post idea. Having the ideas and having them schedule is one of the best ways to avoid writers block and you will post to your blog. Planning and using an editorial calendar will give you a great road map so you can take the best advantage of blogging as a way to promote your business or service firm.
And just so I can stoke the commenting and questions fires a little, you will notice I left off what days of the weeks you should be posting to your blog.
- Based on your own experiences with your blog, when do you see the best traffic?
- And if you are not blogging yet, what days of the week do you visit blogs the most often?
Make sure you leave your comments and questions to this post. Let’s keep the conversation going.
