12 Tips To Improve Blog Time Management

Get Your Blog On Track For Success

When it comes to blogging, time management is critical. Otherwise, you’re writing posts at midnight or going without publishing for weeks. If this sounds like you, don’t worry because you’re in good company. To ensure you don’t continually wind up short of time when you need a blog post, implement a form of blog time management.

Time management is consciously planning your time to ensure that you maximize your productivity. To achieve this, organize your work by tasks, create blocks of time where you can focus your attention and set goals to help you stay motivated.

To improve your blog time management, streamline your blog content creation and publication. This requires planning for blog success, not waiting for the idea fairy. To this end, capture inspiration when you get it, not hoping that it’ll return later.

Here are twelve blog time management tips to get your blogging on track for success. (Additionally, here are thirteen tips to help you find time to blog.)

1. Set blogging goals.

   • Determine what you want your blog to accomplish. Goals are necessary to assess what’s most important for your time management and to do lists.
   • Select relevant success measures based on your goals.

2. Plan your blog content.

   • Create an editorial calendar to ensure you cover your blog’s major categories on a regular basis because publishing consistency is an important element in building your blog readership.
   • Develop themes related to your target audience and blog topic.
   • Craft column formats so you know what type of content is expected for specific  posts such as article round up, examples, or opinion.

3. Determine search optimization focus for each post.

   • Concentrate each post around one or two keyword phrases. Decide these in advance so they are naturally incorporated into your content.
   • Select relevant links, both internal and external.

4. Research topic (if necessary).

   • Gather information about the post topic if needed. Use variety of sources so you don’t appear to be a mouthpiece for a specific organization. Include links to show the information source.
   • Include charts and other images where relevant. Ensure you have the right to reuse the content.

5. Draft working headline.

   • Start with the best title you have and further craft it later.
   • Include a keyword in the title, where possible. You can have a built-in-format like 12Most.com where every post starts with 12 Most and includes twelve points.

6. Select photos.

   • Gather potential photos you think are appropriate while you’re working on the post.
   • Ensure that the images can be used on your blog. Here’s where it’s useful to use your own images.

7. Collect article thoughts as you get them.

   • Gather ideas related to your column in one place. Don’t believe you’ll remember the content when you sit down to write. Jot them down on a pad or your computer.  The benefit is that you aren’t starting with a blank computer screen.
   • Keep ideas for other posts and related articles as well.

8. Compose blog content.

   • Write the draft post. This is where you have to sit down and crank out content.  For improved time management, learn what works for you. Writing every day or once a week. (Personally I think it’s a good idea to create a writing habit.)

9. Polish draft.

   • Copyedit the post after you’ve written it. It’s a good idea to have someone else check your work to catch spelling and grammatical errors. Further they can capture anything that doesn’t make sense. If you don’t have a copy editor, at a minimum, let the content rest and give it a final read before you publish it.
   • Include technical details such as links, images and search optimization.
   • Improve the title to maximize attention.
   • Incorporate a call-to-action to ensure that each blog post will achieve maximum results.

10. Publish and promote blog content.

    • Maximize blog results by promoting your content on different platforms such as RSS and email as well as by posting on social media.
    • Include social sharing to allow readers to expand your post distribution.

11. Plan for future content use.

    • Use your blog posts in other formats to streamline content creation efforts such as presentations and ebooks. Need tips? Here are fifty-six ways to reuse content.

12.  Measure results.

    • Track your blog metrics to assess your success towards achieving your blog success.
    • Reassess your goals and process based on your results.

The key to improving your blog time management is to plan for success since more goes into a great blog post than the basic text. Writing blog posts takes significantly less time when you think through the concepts in advance and have an outline ready before you start. This allows your mind time to consider the ideas. While there are many different forms of planning, you need to find what best meets your needs and timing.

What other tips do you have for improving your blog time management? What have you found to be most effective for you?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen

Here are some related articles.

• Stephen Covey’s Inspired 7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers
• Why your blog is guaranteed to fail
• 3 Secrets to Being an A-List Blogger [Infographic included]

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tijszwinkels/3988939596/