If you’ve been considering starting a blog for your business but feel overwhelmed by the thought of planning it, here’s a simple solution. Create a calendar.
Really? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?
Yes. See ya next week.
Just kidding.
Let me lay out how a blog post calendar can help you get organized, hit deadlines, improve your blog process and generate post ideas. It can be magical. Really.
1. Boost the impact of your blog posts
If you don’t plan, you won’t know where you’re going. Planning posts at least two to three months at a time allows you to make the most of other things happening throughout the year. Let me explain.
Say you own a furniture store, and your sale calendar is already planned for the coming year. Great! Use that to your advantage when planning posts.
Mattress sale in January? Plan to post a blog about selecting the best mattress one to two weeks before the sale.
Or maybe you want to feature the fact you sell custom draperies. When is the best time to post a blog like that? Probably when you’re running a fabric sale.
You can also plan posts around holidays or other events happening in your area. You could schedule a post about choosing a dining table close to Thanksgiving. If there is a home show in your area, plan a post to help attendees get the most from the show.
See how that works? Planning this way helps new ideas flow and helps you schedule posts at the most advantageous times.
2. Improve your blogging process
If you find yourself banging out a blog post at the last minute each week, you need a new process for getting this done. Unless you like stressing out, staying up late and downing gallons of coffee. Then, by all means, keep the process you have.
On the other hand, planning your blog posts ahead of time allows you to see what’s coming. You can think about what you want to say in each one, make notes or even write a paragraph or two when you feel like it.
To truly improve your process, you could try scheduling when you’ll outline, write, edit and post each blog on that same calendar. My process unfolds over roughly four days. Here it is:
- Day one: outline topic with subheads
- Day two: write the beginning, flesh out each subhead, and write the end, creating a rough draft
- Day three: edit the rough draft
- Day four: proofread and post
This process works for me because I have built-in time away from my writing. After I make the outline, I have time to think about the topic and start “writing” it in my head. If I hit on something I want to make sure I’ll remember, I make a quick note about it.
The writing comes to me more easily if I’ve had time to think about it, even for just a day. The first draft is better and easier to edit later.
Allowing a day for each step also gives you needed time away from your writing to have fresh eyes for editing. It’s difficult to edit your own writing but getting some time away from it gives you an open mind to accomplish the task.
3. Don’t miss deadlines
Planning your blog posts ahead and implementing a process to complete them makes deadlines a breeze. After all, your readers are expecting you at the same time on the same day every week. They depend on you making those deadlines. So does your business.
My process typically starts on Thursday or Friday of each week. I post my blog each week on Tuesday morning, so I need to have that baby written, edited and scheduled by Monday night. I like to write over the weekend. I know, weird.
You might not like to write over the weekend. If that’s you, schedule the release of your posts later in the week, or plan to write and edit during the week to avoid spending your weekend writing blog posts.
And if something comes up that throws off your schedule, or you have a vacation planned, simply adjust or condense your time frames. No problem. It’s all in your control.
4. Team members know the plan
Whether you’re the marketing manager or business owner, you might have others on your team helping with the blog. A blog calendar guides everyone on the team who needs to know what’s going on.
Say you need another team member to contribute to an upcoming blog post. Since you already know when that post will be released, you can give them plenty of heads up to get their part taken care of.
No scrambling at the last minute.
Everyone involved will feel less stress and be more creative with their assigned parts—and the blog will be better for it.
5. Never run out of ideas
I have personally struggled with this when writing my own blog. Maybe I’m too close to the information. I don’t know. However, since I started planning my posts with a blog calendar, ideas flow more naturally.
I’m convinced this has happened because I don’t have my back against the deadline wall. Ideas are generated organically from previous and upcoming posts. They just seem to fit better somehow. It’s been a welcome side benefit of planning posts.
Organization makes your life easier
So what are you waiting for? Jump in and get your posts organized and planned out. Make a blog calendar in Excel, pop one into OneNote, or go to a site like CoSchedule if you have a team to coordinate.
And if you don’t want to write the blog yourself, drop me a line. We’ll get things rolling in no time.