Make a Blogging Plan – Day 31

Well we’ve reached day 31 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and you should find yourself with many tools to use on your blog. Some will fit better than others, some will be used more often. All are important parts of a good blogging arsenal.

One of the things I talked a lot about in my Ten Habits of Successful Blogging series was the need for a PLAN. And this is what the challenge today is about.

Get out your calendar. Makes a list of the blog related things you want/need to accomplish in the next month. And now start plugging stuff in.

If you have an hour every night after the kids go to bed to dedicate to working on your blog then you will look at your list and start planning what to do in that daily hour time frame.

Maybe the first day of the month will be a brainstorm session to create two or three dozen blog post ideas. Two days per week will be publishing blog posts. That leaves two day per week to promote your blog via Twitter, facebook, forum posts, and comments. And another day per week (excepting the first week) for site maintenance, guest posting or statistics analysis.

Or maybe your blog has a theme so you’ll be planning your Monday Marvels, Tuesday Tips, Wordless Wednesday, etc.

Or maybe you have private clients that you’ll need to schedule in research and writing time. Administrative tasks like pitching new clients, invoicing, etc.

Whatever your unique situation is, you need to include those tasks on the list for you to schedule in the time. I’ll be honest you guys. I hate schedules. I hate writing down when to work on what on the calendar. Mostly because I tend to fail within three weeks enough to just drop the system entirely.

But then the chaos is too stressful and I plan stuff out again and things are much better for a couple weeks again. Sad, but true. With four children and a husband who works odd days, that’s the simple truth of my life.

What I have found is that having a flexible, but outlined schedule tends to work the best for me. I can’t plan things down to the second because, well – dirty diapers happen. But I can plan a day-by-day plan that tends to be followed more or less. Email day (catching up on the emails that need to be addressed and weren’t taken care of right away), administrative day, writing days (I get two, sometimes three), etc. And I’m always sure to include a catch-up day that is for any extra projects or last-minute things that come up.

But that’s what works for me. The challenge for you is to discover your OWN plan and that will be uniquely yours because you are uniquely you in a unique blogging situation. But I’d love to hear about it!