Being Consistent With Blogging – Some Tips

It’s been a little more than a week now that I have started back with my blog, after more than a year of writing nothing. Being consistent with blogging has and is still a challenge. This post is not even the original topic I wanted to talk about today. Luckily, I had a plan which is helping me with not dropping the ball, so far.

Below I will discuss the basic strategy I am working with to be consistent.

I hope you get some ideas on how you TOO can work on being consistent, if that’s a challenge.

Create a blogging plan

I love to create plans, but I also love to not stick to them.

It happens.

But how long can that be my mantra. I needed to buckle up and get things done.

My first step has been to create a plan. It had to be a practical one, that I knew I could and would follow. Here’s what I did.

Identify the main things that need to be done during the week

Identify responsibilities and the main things to get done during any particular week.

• I have to work, that meant 8a-4p, Monday to Friday was booked.
• I had decided to sign up for two online courses. So I knew for the next upcoming weeks, Monday I would be in class from 4p-6p. The other class would be from 6p-8p, that day. Yeah, cutting it close, good thing they were online.
• I also had classes on a Tuesday 4p-6p, and another class Wednesday 6p-8p
• There would be other small task to take care of. But work and class would be my biggest time-suckers for the week, that would not be easy to re-schedule.

With the unavailable times identified I now had a better idea of how to manage the remaining hours of my day and week to create content and be consistent with blogging. Easy enough right.

From this, I knew I had free hours on a Thursday and Friday, also Tuesday was a viable day to work on things after 6p, that’s still an early time to get work done. And if all else failed, I might have time on the weekend.

Brainstorm in advance

One of the tips I picked up from others, was to come up with 50 initial topics, you would write about on your blog. So, for my second time around trying to blog, I did exactly that.

I cracked open google sheets and listed out 50 topics to blog about.

Doing this has been a lifesaver. With this list, I have a good idea of what I can write about. I don’t have to struggle every week to have a topic. If I schedule a topic for a particular day and I am not ready to write about it, I still have lots of other topics to choose from, which might be easier to tackle.

Content calendar

Another great tip I picked up was creating a content calendar. Managing content creation is definitely key. As I mentioned I listed all my topics in google sheets, because it was a recommended option for creating the content calendar. It has been working out ok for now.

You can also check out my digital planner which can be a great option for planning. When I am planning in detail I usually use the digital planner on my Ipad.

But back to the content calendar. In google sheets it’s a design of your own making and what makes sense to you. I just set up some columns to indicate a date and the blog topic I wanted to write about. I also added check boxes, so I can tick off when I complete my tasks. I’m basically creating a list with checkboxes.

My content calendar is not only for planning about blogging activities. If you’ve read anything else here before, I am actively looking into passive income streams, such as, creating YouTube videos. So that is also content I need to manage the creation of and it’s added to the plan in the calendar.

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Consistent Blogging

My next tip has proven itself to be important and that is to pick your days to write content. Consistent blogging is key.

It’s been said by other creators, I’ve found, to post your topics on the same day, every week. That’s so your viewers can look forward to seeing you (if you do videos) or reading about what you have to say. Sadly, I’ve tried that, and as of now, I have been off sometimes by a day. I do hope to get better, but even if I miss my day, I still post. The post is sometimes a completely different topic from what was planned originally.

Having designated days for posting helps with being accountable and really seems to push you to put out your content on the days you have identified.

My only saving grace right now, is that no one is out there waiting with bated breath for my thoughts :-).

That’s a wrap!

So, if you’re now starting, don’t beat yourself up if you drop the ball now and again. The goal is to keep going. Eventually you would develop a rhythm.

And with that, I wrap up my final tip for today. Hope this helps someone out there and if it did, let me know I’m not alone.