The hardest part about keeping a blog is posting on a consistent basis. Consistency is key because you don't want your readers to go for months without seeing any new content or grow tired of checking your blog (if they don't RSS) and then all together stop checking your blog for new posts. And of course, to continue to professional develop, sharing one's work and getting the collective comments of the crowds is key.
So here are some tips i've gathered along the way to make consistent blog posting easier.
1. As ideas come to mind I always try to log-in to my blog and write a post with the title and a few words in the body to remind me to go back when i have more time to fill the post out. Then just save the post, and wait to publish later. This way, I don't lose good ideas and i'll always have a backlog of blog posts to write and not be dry of post ideas!
2. Scheduling posts, helps with consistency. I work full time. So when I finally get home and have time to write a blog post and publish it, it's usually in the late hours of the night and the wee hours of the morning. I suppose i could just have the posts pop-up on my blog at like 3am, but there's a nice feature that I like to take advantage of. I talked about saving posts for later just before, but let say you're not just saving an idea, but you've actually completely finished writing a post? Well, I usually save and then choose a time for the post to publish, go live on my blog. I like to pick around 10 or 11 in the morning to get folks both on the East Coast and West Coast as they are starting off their days checking out their blogs. I tend to think that getting people at the beginning of the day might be better because they are more focused rather than at the end of the day when they are tired of work. But, that of course is a matter of opinion :) And to get back to the working full time thing, i'm usually too tired to write a blog post when I get home from work? So what do I do? I set aside a few hours on the weekend to write all the weeks blog posts, and then schedule them throughout the week. Isn't that great? You can schedule the time of day and the actual day you want your posts to go live :) This scheduling makes you look like a super productive individual huh? oops! gave out my secret!
3. Keep a list of templated blog posts. So let's say you've run out of new ideas and you don't have any more saved blog ideas to fall back on. What do you do? You need to keep the blog rolling right? Well, I keep a list of templated blog posts that I can write when i'm stuck. Not every blog posts needs to be the most innovative idea and in a fresh format. For example, I have a template for blogging about "event details" it usually starts with a summary of an event, then pictures with descriptions of the event details. Thus, i have a template saved that goes
[Event description]
[photo of overall event]
[description of event detail]
[event detail photo]
....and then rinse and repeat until you're done talking about the event :)
In the end, if you've taken a hiatus from blogging, don't be afraid to just jump right back in and start posting. Life happens, even with all the tips and tricks up your sleeve.
Happy blogging!
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