I am from an IT background, and I am used to well-planned work.
There are dedicated project managers in every organization to plan monthly or yearly deliverables for all the team members.
Also, everyone tries their best to finish the assignment because of the accountability. If you don’t finish your tasks on time, you will end up in trouble.
But, when you work alone as a blogger, it is not the case. You will end up procrastinating because of no accountability.
And when it comes to blogging, you tend to get distracted if you don’t have focus and planning.
In this blog, I will discuss how I plan my blog publishing and the tips and tricks I use to finish my scheduled blog publishing tasks daily.
What didnt work for me?
Following are the things which I tried and didn’t work for me.
1. To-Do List
I started with a to-do list and ended up having a huge list in which I couldn’t prioritize which tasks to do first.
Even if I managed to pick some tasks I would get distracted by so many things and most of the posts would go to draft.
Here is a screenshot of one of my tech blogs where I have 41 posts in draft. Most of the posts are half-written.
This happens because, when you start writing, you might stumble upon other blogs and ideas. This will distract you from learning or write about another topic. So I was not able to stick to the one blog that I was writing.
2. Bookmarks
Blog ideas come from things that you work on or things that you read or watch online.
So when ever I read or watch some cool stuff related to my niche, I would bookmark it to write about it in my blog.
And if I see my bookmarks today, it is a endless list of blogs posts and videos.
Do you want to know how many I referred back? Zero!
3. Using Project Management Tools
Project management tools are great!
For good planning, a project management tool can help in organizing all the tasks and track it as per the deadlines.
But it didn’t work for me. Again I ended up having so many tasks on the list (backlogs) and doing nothing.
I wasn’t using the tool in the way I should.
Here is How I plan My Blog Publishing Now
After trying out several methods, I came to a conclusion that, I dint have a proper plan in place.
If you don’t have a concrete yearly/weekly/daily plan, you will spend a lot of time in your blog without considerable output.
So here is what I do and it works out very well for me.
1. I Plan My Monthly Goals:
I started planning for a month. I set specific goals in terms of how many blogs I should publish, and I should update.
To avoid decision changes, I will make sure, I am covering the important marketing contents and publish it as per the plan.
I use a tool called Taskade to do my monthly planning. You can use any tool to do this.
So the idea is, set realistic goals for a month and list down the topics that you feel are important. No matter what idea comes in between, you should stick to the plan.
2. End of the day, I plan for next day
I spend 15-30 minutes planning for the next day.
Form my monthly planned tasks, I pick them as per planned priority and move them to my daily task list.
The next morning when I start the work, I follow the list I planned the previous day and I will start the tasks in order.
I have set a strong rule to myself on not moving the next tasks until I finish the ones in order.
3. Optimize Calendar for Important Tasks & Events
When it comes to blogging, there are many recurring tasks.
For example, promotions & social media publishing.
If you want to grow your social media audience, you need to be consistent in sharing content.
I started a habit of adding recurring tasks to the calendar and stick with the calendar schedule to do that task.
For example, I set up a specific time a week to schedule all my social media content through Buffer. It a one-time task in a week. If done correctly, you will eventually have a great social media following.
Optimizing the calendar for all types of events will make us stick to the plan.
What’s next?
From my experience, planning is very important when it comes to blogging.
You need to treat it like a business from day one and make yourself accountable for unfinished tasks.
If you have planned and picked a task, don’t deviate from that. Finish it fully and pick the next. You should have your full focus on that task,
I will keep updating this post on my learning and strategies that work for me.
I have shared my learnings on blog planning.
What strategy do you use to plan your blog publishing? or maybe you will use a to-do list?
Either way, drop a comment below and let me know what you think!
