Today is Day 3 of the Be A Better Blogger series. We’re using the outline offered by Collis Ta’eed in his article titled 31 Days To Becoming A Better Blogger, and our topic for the day is:
Write a week’s worth of posts in advance.
Developing the habit of writing in advance will give you a safety net of content to fall back on when you’re lazy, busy or uninspired. Writing and posting in the same time-frame will inevitably lead to an erratic posting habit, because your readers will never know what to expect from you. Write enough posts in advance and you could also earn the right to a blogging holiday...
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Today's task is an excellent step towards becoming a better blogger. We all have days where we are distracted or uninspired, which can make any type of creative writing task incredibly difficult. The key is to do your blogging when you are inspired, and to create drafts for future use as well.
Not only can this method help you publish higher quality content, but it can help you pump it out on a more consistent basis.
Have you ever noticed that when you are really in your groove, you put out excellent pieces - but when you arent, your writing just doesnt have that same edge to it? Imagine how well your blog would do if all of your content was sizzling, and your readers found something new and interesting every single time they visited your blog...
I have to confess, I hadnt read ahead on our 31-day list, but I am glad to see this tip towards the top of it. It couldnt have come at a better time for me personally. While I absolutely love to write, the timing & inspiration are not always in line with what my blog needs.
This is a method I've used in the past, but I havent used it strategically or consistently enough to really enjoy the benfits. The goal of this task is to help us create a habit of composing blog posts in advance, and getting into a routine of writing content when we are on a roll - instead of trying to force out content when it doesnt come easy.
I use the "save as draft" feature quite often, usually to jot down ideas as they come to me so that I can flesh them out as blog posts at a later time. This is better than an 'idea book' or using sticky notes for reminders, as I can sit down and just select a draft and finish it out when I'm out of topics to write about.
But our task today takes it one step further than that, to actually composing the blog posts start to finish. And then I'm going to add to the challenge by putting them in queue to publish automatically.
Like I said, the timing is great for me since I am working on a month-long series at the moment. Ideally I would like to publish each post at the very beginning of the day, but so far that hasnt worked out with my schedule. So I'll use today's task to prepare the posts for the next week, and have them publish first thing in the morning like I would prefer.
All you have to do is write your blog posts and save them as drafts, and you can also use the Timestamp feature to have them automatically publish on the day and time that you choose. This means you can write all of your posts for the week on Saturday morning, and have them publish to your blog every morning at 5am - or whatever works best for you.
This strategy is also useful for creating website content, writing your weekly newsletter, or any other type of content that you publish on a regular basis.
For more on how to use the Timestamp feature, and how to get in the habit of creating great content for your blog in advance, see:
How to Develop the Habit of Writing Posts in Advance
I'm off to write the next 7 posts in this series 😉
Best,
About Lynn Terry
Lynn,
This is a perfect post for me as well because I'm at a creative low for some reason and I would love to have my posts done so I can either timestamp them or have posts that allow me to take a break.
Jeff
🙂 I lucked out on this task - I didn't have to do a thing! I don't always have posts scheduled ahead of time, but at the moment I have a couple already written and a couple in drafts. Since I don't post every day, I'm counting the two completed ones as a week's worth. I'm going to try to get in the habit.
Hi Lynn!
Doesn't WP still "ping" them all at once even though they won't actually be posted until the date set?
Seems like I read this when I was checking out a plugin at:
http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/mpo/
An excerpt ...
"Let me illustrate more clearly with an example why scheduling future posts can ban your blog:
Say you are going for a vacation for 30 days and you want to schedule 30 posts so that your blog gets updated daily.
You schedule 30 posts by editing the time stamp.
Here when you post 30 posts, WordPress sends 30 pings even though that post haven't yet appeared in your blog. After that, for 30 days WordPress won't send a single ping, even though new posts appear in your blog."
Didn't know that.
Have Fun!
Rick Wilson 8)
OOPS! Stoopid Me!
Didn't read far enough. SORRY!
"Note: This future pinging problem has been fixed since WordPress 2.1 BUT the pinging problem with editing post has not been fixed yet."
Rick Wilson
This is an awesome assignment. I actually started doing this way back when, when you suggested it to me on the elite members forum.
In moving my existing "photo gallery" from a stagnant .html page, I took all of the existing projects that were already submitted over the past year and "wrote" a blog post for each project and post dated them for the 1st and the 15th of each month. This way I'm sure to have at least two projects featured for each month. I'm set until mid May.
When I get current project photo submissions, I still try to post them as soon as possible, but when I don't have them flowing in, it "looks" like I do. 😉
I love doing this (post-dating posts) with these type of posts because when I'm in the groove to sit down to do pictures & testimonials, I can knock out a whole bunch in one setting. It's easy and a lot less time-consuming, or at least it feels that way.
Thanks for doing this BABB Series! I look forward to tomorrow's task.
It really helps me to have those "ideas" in draft, if not full posts, as it makes it easy to sit down and blog vs sitting down to a "blank page".
But I have to say, having the posts lined up and ready to publish automatically on the dates set is a great feeling. It removes the pressure, which I'm finding helps me to think & write more freely and more creatively. This was definitely a good exercise, and is a habit I would like to really hammer in!
Great, practical post Lynn! This will save solo-preneurs and online marketers to much wasted time and opportunities in their blogging 🙂
You Rock!
Maria 🙂
This is something I've adopted recently and it has been very helpful for me. The overall quality of my content, I think, has gone up quite a bit.
AND, I don't feel pressure to "come up" with something - leaving me free to be inspired. 🙂
Not all of my posts can be scheduled that far in advance as the data is time sensitive. But it's definitely what I'm working toward on the Wednesday interview articles. Those are being done and scheduled at my convenience and to the best advantage of the interviewee.
Writing ahead of time is a little bit demanding. Sometimes, the ideas needed for doing the writing does not come that easy, you know?
True, which is why it helps to sit down and write when you are most inspired. This can help you breeze through the days when you arent.
I love this feature! I have a blog I publish articles in daily and used the timestamp feature to publish articles while I was in the hospital having my new son.
Cool Stefani - and what a beautiful baby! How old is he now?
Could you have timed this series better? Hope you feel better soon, Lynn.
Thank you Katherine. As for timing, I think it has worked out well for me considering what a tough month this has been on my routine. LOL. It has given me an easy topic every day to keep up daily posts at least 😉