Oh, the excuses keep coming in! Before you get upset, hear me out! The number one complaint I’ve heard over the past two weeks is that there’s just not time to do everything. Facebook is easy. (sorry, but given the number of complaints I hear about that site, I beg to differ) Today, I’m sharing another key to growing your blog.
Plan What You Want Your Site to Look Like
Sit down and think about what your readers would enjoy reading. What can you post that will bring them in, not only the first time, but keep them coming back for more? Next, think about how you can plan your blog posts to save time and get yourself on a schedule so readers know when you’ll be posting.
Get Organized
If you’re on self-hosted WordPress, this is super simple! The screenshot above is of a plug-in called WordPress Editorial Calendar. If you’re on a different platform, you can still do this with Google Calendar or even an old-fashioned paper calendar. I love this plugin because not only can I see all of my posts a glance, but I can drag them to a different day if I need to. If I mis-schedule something, WordPress will reschedule it when I drag it.
After sitting down and thinking about the direction I want this site to take, I put a plan in place. Every day that I post (and you don’t have to post every day of the week), there will be a theme of sorts. Some of them I’m not quite ready to reveal, but I can tell you that teasers and excerpts of my projects will be posted on Tuesday, blogging and social media tips will be Thursday, and spotlighting my fellow authors will be Fridays.
This helps because I don’t have to think about what I’m going to post in the morning and find time to do it. If I have an hour some afternoon, I can write blog posts and schedule them for the next day they need to go out. Typically, I spend one morning each week doing nothing but writing blog posts for at least the next week. This way, life can try to throw me for a loop, but my blog goes on.
Themes Will Help You!
Yes, I touched on this above, but try to find themes for your blog. Teaser Tuesday seems to be fairly universal, so why not ask an author if they have a teaser you could share? If you reviewed a book the previous week, this is a great opportunity to link back to that review and gain more visibility.
Throw Back Thursday is another popular social media hop right now. Why not dig back to find content that’s older but still relevant and post that out rather than digging for a picture from your junior year of high school? Seriously, how many of us want to relive the days of Aqua Net and the poofed bangs?? If you come up with something original, why not ask your friends to follow along and create your own hop? With a little time and dedication to doing it every week, you might have the next big hop on your hands!
Figure out what works for you and think about your blog more than one day at a time.