Allo polish Pals!
Today's post is a little different and
I hope you wont mind. I often receive comments about how I schedule
my blog, how I am able to post on my blog days and never miss one.
I'm not an expert, I'm not
hugely successful but these tips certainly make my blogging life
easier.
I'll be honest, I wasn't always great
at it and I'd be trying to create nails, edit and create a post all
the night before I was due to post which left me often incredibly
stressed out and rushed. Because of this I was often posting things I
wasn't really satisfied with. I'll also say since I have not been in
work since I started blogging I dedicated and treat blogging almost
like a job because it added structure into my every day life. It's
probably the last year and a half that I really got my post
scheduling under control and while I put a lot of work in – like we
all do – I now find myself with much more free time for other
things.
If you have any questions at all don't
hesitate to ask and hit the notify box in the comments section so you
can see my replies.
1. Getting Yourself
Into A Routine.
Depending on how serious you feel about
blogging it's great to have a deep discussion with yourself, You'll
need to figure out what works best for you. Sure, wouldn't it be
great to delight your readers with new juicy posts every single day?
You'd think, but so many begin blogging with this intention and more
than likely they will burn out trying to come up with decent content
before they run out of posts. Questions to help you decide when to
post could be.. How long does it take you to create a post from start
to finish? When do your readers tend to come visiting? Make a
realistic choice of how many days a week you'd like to post. You can
still be blog active in the days you are not posting, which I'll
explain later on.
2. Have A Visual
Calendar
I personally can not schedule my blog
without having a solid visual in front of me. Seeing all my upcoming
posts in a neat order makes it easy to decide when it would be to
post each of my blog posts. I also find this eases any stress I have
about how many posts I have planned for the future. Originally I used
a notebook and that worked great for a while but due to my obsessive
nature everytime I had to cross something out I felt compelled to
rewrite the whole list out which 1. is not great for paper wastage
and trees but also really time consuming. I now use my Samsung tablet
where I have a huge spreadsheet of all my previous and upcoming
posts. I use colours to indicate which stage the post is at, example:
nail art complete, pictured edited, post written and scheduling done.
It offers great ease as I can copy and paste blog post titles as and
when I need to change them.
This may not be the method that works
for you but I urge you to find a way that will make laying all your
posts out easy to see at hand.
3. Plan How You Spend
Your Non Posting Days
Have you ever heard of Buffer? If not
then say hello to your new best friend. Buffer is a great tool to
schedule social media posting. It works with Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn and Pinterest (although you must pay if you want to schedule
on Pinterest) While I still manually post on other social media sites
such as Instagram this does take a huge chunk of that away and if I
know I am having a busy day, scheduling the night before saves a
whole bunch of time. It also features a way to track how well your
posts are performing, for example you can see which tweets got the
most likes and retweets and allows you to 'rebuff' the post and share
it again.
4. Take Time To
Implement Your Schedule.
So what do you do on the days you are
not posting? My blog days are Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. In the
remaining days I focus on writing posts in advance for nail art I've
already created. I'll also do my second round of social media,
posting on sites I did not on the day the post went live, I'll post
to Flickr, Nailpolis and Amino to name a few – Of course if you
plan on doing this you need to post in places that will reach your
niche market.
5. Don't Expect To Be
Schedule Pro Over Night.
What does that even mean? Everyone is their own pro of how they decide to schedule their blogs :) Getting into a routine takes time and
you'll learn a lot on the way. What works for one does not always
work for another. My schedule currently is running about two months
worth of posts ahead of itself. When I receive review items I
prioritise those posts (I think its good practice to try and give
your end of the deal in a timely fashion.) I then get to push back
three or four of the posts I already had which then extends my blog
schedule even further – basically, that's another weeks worth of
posts – Yippie!! With all this extra free time not rushing to make
posts on demand I am able to spend more time enjoying life!
To get yourself ahead I suggest
building up a pile of post able content because while your blogging
and waiting for posts to go live you'll also have time to create more
things for upcoming posts – this way you'll always have something
in your archive to post at a later date.
6. BONUS.
The most important part of all of this
is... love what you do. Blogging shouldn't be stressful or
unenjoyable and if it makes you feel this way you'll either have to
find ways around it or consider that maybe it isn't for you. This is
a beautiful world and we only live once – you must do what makes
YOU happy.
I hope you found this post useful, I
don't know if I've said anything that will really help anyone but I
thought I'd try. I welcome your questions and I'd love to hear your
methods of staying up to date with your blog schedules!
Have a fantastic day, ya beauties!
Thank you for stopping by. I 'll catch you again on Monday!
Love,
Ithi
