Learn How To Create A Blogging Calendar
Simplify your life and improve your post quality by one easy addition: a blogging calendar.
No, we don't mean a widget that you can add to your sidebar to give your visitors a monthly view of your archives. A blog calendar is a powerful and easy personal tool you can use to plan your posting schedule and stay on top of your blog's management.
What's "blog management"?
Blogging is not simply about making posts. Essential blogging duties include:
* Coming up with ideas for and researching your posts,
* Writing posts regularly,
* Responding to comments and email,
* Creating buzz for your blog through social media and other fora,
* Engaging with other bloggers in your field by reading and responding to their blogs,
* Monitoring your traffic stats and analyzing visitor behaviour,
* Optimizing your blog for search engines, and
* Maintaining and updating your site design as needed.
In addition, committed bloggers are always educating themselves on the latest trends not only in their niche but also in blogging, which can include everything from design and widgetization to marketing and guest posting.
Okay, but why do you need a calendar?
A calendar can make much of a difference to your blogging productivity and time-management. A quick read through of the above list is probably enough to make you realize that any one of those duties can eat up hours. You may also have realized that you are giving too much time to some areas (for example, reading fellow bloggers or responding to your readers), which makes other areas (most commonly SEO and traffic monitoring) suffer.
Even if you're great at managing all of the above, chances are that without a proper schedule for posting, reading and responding, your blog is still taking up more of your time than it needs to.
Most importantly, your blog is about its contents, and by creating a posting schedule for yourself you can map out in advance the subjects that you want to cover (say, over a week) and also stay on top of your other duties.
How to Create Your Own Calendar
For your calendar to be effective, it has to be based on your own needs and skills, but we've put together the following questions to get you thinking about your own priorities and how to integrate them into a workable weekly plan:
1. How many posts do you want to make this week?
2. Within the niche of your blog, are there specific sub-topics you want to touch on? (This is a great way to make sure that your various sub-topics are routinely covered, and that you are not giving too much importance to a tiny specialty on your blog.)
3. What stage of the writing process are you at for each post: a) still thinking of an idea, b) need to research the idea, c) just need to write it, d) want to create a post in response to a fellow blogger's post.
4. How much time do you want to spend on each specific post?
Plot all these on a simple calendar or spreadsheet, and stick to it with some measure of dedication - and you're on your way to becoming a power blogger!
Other tips to become a power blogger:
* Put aside some time to tackle blog comments 2-3 times a week, or, if traffic is high, once a day. Checking comments every time a new one comes in will take up a great deal of your time.
* Get a feed reader (Google Reader is free and very easy to manage with a Gmail account) and subscribe to your favourite blogs, marking posts you want to respond or refer to in your own posts.
* Since social media marketing is vast, time-consuming and requires participation more than ideation, your best bet may be to tackle it every night. This will ensure that you're not using your most productive hours responding to tweets or posting on forums.
Setting up a blog calendar may require some work at the beginning, but soon will become second nature to you. Let us know if you feel that we have missed any useful tips!
by: Pilar Torres Wahlberg
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