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WHOA Blogosphere, it’s the day before BLAUGUST!!!!  Who’s excited for tomorrow?  The pre-show has been amazing to see as the event hasn’t even started yet and everyone is booming ideas, posting some crazy cool stuff, and brainstorming like mad!

Here is to a PHENOMENAL month of creativity, connecting with new friends and blowing the doors off the interwebs with great content.

So….as we come down to the final hours of prep week, here is my small contribution going into the event.  It’s all about scheduling, should I blog, and how often do I post….which are all major questions for anyone who has ever stepped foot into the arena of blogging has had flash through their brain before!

Do you have an insanely busy schedule but love to write and throw those thoughts on a blog?  This post is going to break down four simple steps I’ve used for years which have helped me stay organized “CHAOS” and allowed me to do what I enjoy….WRITE!  For years I struggled to find time to write and get anything past a draft status at most.  Why you might ask….well I’m a family man and as much as I love writing, I love my family more!

I’m a husband, and father to ten year old triplets….yes TRIPLETS 🙂  I have two boys and a girl who stole my heart the moment I got to see them.  Ten years ago I had to figure out how to prioritize life, my writing, and “Adult” all those things that were needed from me as a husband and father as well.  Writing being one of my biggest passions I had to put a system in place that allowed me time for all of what life was calling, and time is the one thing we don’t get more of.  24 hours in a day and it’s so easy to fill all those time slots up if we aren’t careful.  OK, enough about me and more about these four steps I talked about earlier. It took quite a long time to get a system down of when I wanted to post, what content I wanted to do, and that system isn’t perfect by any means but it works for me, and I’m hoping it might help you as well.

It takes a lot of hard work to develop something creative that you love doing, even if it’s just a hobby, you wouldn’t be doing it if you didn’t love it…or I wouldn’t at least.

Hopefully these steps will help you outline some ways to condense the long hard efforts it takes to create content for a blog.

#1 Should I Blog, What Content, and How Often? 

First up is figuring out if you really want to blog and you are the only one who can answer that.  I would encourage you to experiment with it and see what might work for you.  Also, if blogging is something you want to pursue ask yourself exactly how much content you want to produce in a specific amount of of time.  Are you shooting for a daily post, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly per say.  It doesn’t matter how much you want to post or how often you post….what matters is what works for you.  Best advice I can give you on this is preset yourself a bit and plan out what you want so you give yourself enough time to research and pull material together. This will help so that you aren’t overloading the plate and playing catch up everyday.  I’ve been all over the board before….daily, weekly, etc and it was all due to my schedule and making those priorities fit together. So plan accordingly for yourself and you will have a lot more fun blogging.

#2 Categories, Categories, Categories!

Now that you know how many posts you need to write, come up with some working categories so you have a good idea of what you are going to be working with.  Pinpoint what you want to write about and keep those categories current so that multiple topics can be posted to one category.  If you only have a certain amount of posts you can publish in one month, you have to be selective on how you spend that time. That ultimately means some ideas go to the chopping block and some may get stowed away for a rainy day.

#3: Challenge The Organizational “CHAOS” Skills.

Now that you have your ideas formed and categories made, you may be wondering how on earth am I going to get all this organized and finished like I want.  It can be chaotic at times I know…. trust me I know.  I have triplets remember 😛

Organization, Organization, Organization.

Check the inventory every once in a while and see if you’ve got so much material planned you honestly can’t meet the timeline you originally had.  Don’t be afraid to cut back, and chop chop some things if needed.  A couple of key things to remember here are….

• Research: How much time do you need for researching topics? Will it take a considerable amount of time, or is this something I’ve already got ready to go? This step can save you a ton of time and frustration if you will do it. .
• Content and Format: Some posts are more difficult to write than others. This can be a huge frustration if not planned out well as you can spend hours getting things formatted, planned, and ready.  Do you have five posts lined up back to back that are heavy topics and take lots of research?  If so, scramble that schedule up and space those suckers out a bit.

#4 Take the Time to Review and Schedule

Take a gander at what you’ve written before you hit that submit button.  Does it play out like you want, or does it look like someone dropped a bag of scrabble letters?  It’s always nice to have things pre-planned out, but I also know that’s not always possible.  Scheduling blog posts throughout the week or whatever timeline you create is very challenging.  You put a lot of hard work into writing this content so make sure you enjoy what you’ve done.  Enjoy the process, and have fun with creating the content you are passionate about.  Once you get that down….get those posts scheduled for whenever you choose, rinse, and then repeat all four steps for next time.

I’m super stoked for the event and watching all of you blow the doors off of this years Blaugust!

Have an amazing night!

Cheers,

Detached