I thought it would be a good idea to be a little transparent and tell you all how I plan my blog for the week. First, I should mention one thing; I didn’t actually do my pre-planning for this week. I know, I screwed up. In my defense, I was doing, um, “other things”. I’d say I’m sorry, but I guess I’m not, because those other things were kind of important. Anyway, normally, when I don’t do “other things”, I pre-write most of my blog posts on the weekend and schedule them to post Monday though Thursday.
How I Plan My Blog
Basically, the routine goes like this: on Saturday I wake up and I get coffee, do my morning teeth brushing and cleaning up, then I put on my pajamas. Yes, I do these things in that order. Then, I sit at my computer for an hour or so and I pre-write.
When pre-writing, I basically think up “topics”, or blog post titles, and write a few paragraphs about each. These blog posts are not in their final form, I just sort of go ahead and get them started and titled. Then, I go ahead and schedule each one for Monday through Thursday. I use Things 3, a to-do list app on my iPad (and Mac) to keep up with this task and a few others.
How I Schedule My Blog Posts
I mentioned that I use Things 3. Things 3 is pretty central to my planning process because I work full-time and was recently in grad school as well. Without a to-do list, I simply do not do things that I’m not thinking about. I’ve attached a screenshot of what I’ve got going in the app to this blog post.
In addition to the blog posts, I also plan some of the tweets for the week – these are the important tweets that are for “marketing” my short stories that I post on Fridays. I do the same thing for Facebook. I know Facebook has a reputation, and I personally don’t like to use my personal account very much, but my Facebook Author page generates me the most traffic some weeks so I kind of can’t let it go yet.
What I Do Monday through Thursday
Hopefully by sometime on Saturday, I’ve got a good little set of first drafts for my posts on Monday through Thursday. I try to remember to look at each post the day before and do a touch up on what I’ve written, plus add some details about my life that day that I can tie into the topic. Then I take a picture of something, usually my iPad on my desk if I can’t think of anything else. I put in tags and then I save the post again and go on about my week.
The Friday Short Story
This is the only post I don’t pre-post, because I’m usually working on a few short stories through the week. I try to pick the story by Thursday so that I don’t have to freak out Friday morning about it. I’ll do a quick, awful, horrible drawing for it in Procreate the night before and get the post scheduled before I go to bed. I spend all day Friday overthinking things like the title and toy with the idea of changing it. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I just let it go. Letting things go is kind of hard for me so I’m trying to do that more. The reason I’m posting these stories on Fridays is because I want to make myself write more throughout the week. Eventually this will hopefully lead to a second fiction collection.
By the way, you can read my first fiction collection, Crushes, for free on Kindle Unlimited for a limited time. You can also buy it in print if you’re really feeling generous.
And That’s How I Plan My Blog!
Then I wake up on Saturday and do it all again. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing throughout January and so far it’s been working. Have you noticed any issues this month with how I’ve been doing things? Are my stories awful? Am I blogging too much? Let me know in the comments.
Your stories are not awful, and you’re blogging at a good pace. Here’s an idea for future blog posts if you can’t think of anything: write about your favorite things (like foods, movies, places in Louisville, etc.)
Thanks! Definitely viable options!