A Road Map to Blog Better

Getting inspired to write or blog doesn’t come to me often when I race against time to deal with life. Since waking up in the morning until bed time, hours pass in a blur and writing is just out of question. There are responsibilities to children, commitments to cook and clean the house and going to work…  

 Initially it was very hard to find that balance where I could get enough time to fulfill my family and work responsibilities and also set aside some time for blog related activities. But with a little more organizing and planning, I have now turned the tables around and it is a bit stress-free these days.

 

There are some techniques I adopted over past several months to keep everything clean. As a result, I am able to meet my blogging goals without compromising the commitments I owe to my family. I guess it’s good to share them here since I know it works and it could help you as well to meet your own writing/blogging agenda. 

1. Scheduling the Topic Ideas to the Calendar

As part of organizing my writing schedule, I decided to use an editorial calendar. This helped me to draw all my thoughts on topic ideas to one spot as they came. I scheduled those topic ideas to dates I want a blog post to be published and started nibbling on the content strategies. Mind you, this is not for actual writing, but only to come up with ideas. Sometimes, generating a topic idea is as hard as writing content for a blog post. So, step #1 solved that problem!  

2. Finding the ‘Writing’ Time

Next is of course, is finding the time to write the content for those ideas you have in mind OR the ideas that are in your editorial calendar already.

You could schedule this ‘blogging time’ every day or in the frequency of twice or three times or more  a week, whichever works for YOU. For me, I fixed my blogging time for 2 hours each day, usually after dinner time and all the cleaning chores are done. This time works best because my hubby could watch the kids while I will be in the home office working. Two hours is too short for them to even notice that Mommy is away and she will get some quiet time to get her writing done.

 

3. ‘Socializing’ on Weekends

So far, I don’t have any ‘writing time’ scheduled on weekends since it is usually busy. Instead,  I spend it to network with my fellow blogging friends online through social networking sites. I visit other blogs and comment on their posts. Relationship building with ‘like-minds’ is very crucial for a successful blogger. I don’t need inspiration or my ‘writing muse’ for this task, so it works fine and I still manage to do  ‘blog-related stuff’ on my Saturdays and Sundays. Not Bad!

4. ‘Lining Up’ Your Posts for Weeks Ahead

In order to meet the blogging commitments stress free, I try my best to line up the posts weeks head. I do not want to fail in posting regularly if I can and this helps a lot. For example, if I am sick or my kids are sick or some unforeseen family commitments materialize out of nowhere, this technique works like a charm!

[bctt tweet=”6 #bloggingtechniques to #blog better! “]

5. Have a Goal, An Attainable One

Some bloggers post multiple times a day, some peeps post once a day when some others only post once or twice a week. I belonged to the third category when I was a newbie blogger.  I was still getting used to the idea of it and also figuring out my niche and target audience. Once I established a rhythm to my ‘Blogging Mamma’ persona which only happened a couple of months ago, I became more comfortable in allocating at least one quality content a week, coupled with, may be a book review or a giveaway or an affiliate market posting to go on separate days on the same week. The bottom line, I only need to put in my efforts to write a single quality blog post per week, which is great!  And I am still able to get traffic to my blog with the help of ‘other stuff’ I am posting regularly through out the week. I found my pace in there somewhere and now I am comfortable with the goal I set towards my weekly blogging commitment. Posting quality content is important to get good marks from Google. Yes, this goal seemed attainable for me and that is key while you decide on how to pursue your ‘postings’ on a regular basis. Once you establish a pattern, stick to it. I promise, it is a workable plan.

6. Be Passionate About Your Niche

Last and final point (might as well be the first point in the list since it is that IMPORTANT)

 It is crucial to pick a niche that interests you on which you have reasonable knowledge.   There were  few niches I was interested in when I started out.  I think when you write about everything that comes to your mind, you will have hard time writing for your target audience regularly and this could hinder the traffic to your site in the long run. Plus, it will be hard for you to keep track of the topics you are writing and do the necessary research to write a well thought out post for your readers. If you look at my blog, I mainly blog for Moms and busy parents like me. I think that is a neat niche to concentrate on.  I will never run out of topic ideas because I am passionate about the subject. 

This is all I have got so far.

What are your blogging strategies?