Is Your Blogging Schedule Too Ambitious?
So, what’s your Editorial Schedule?
Blogging, Ezine Publishing, Article Marketing — it doesn’t matter what you call it — what makes your words work in Web media is frequently and continually updating your publication with fresh, original, valuable, useful content.
In order to successfully manage a blogging schedule, you need to know what that schedule IS — and you need that schedule to be incredibly do-able — easy, not difficult.
The challenge in creating original content — writing articles — blogging new posts — may vary slightly from one individual writing or brainstorming session to the next, but finding your rhythm and MAINTAINING it is the Real Game. Blogging is a long-term commitment — a test of endurance — pace yourself.
Your Editorial Schedule is the critical pace-maker of periodical publishing. Defining a general formula that suits your audience, your authentic voice — not to mention, fits into your LIFE (You do still have a life outside blogging, right?) — will make or break your success as a self-publishing author.
Choose to Succeed
First you need to define your Editorial Schedule, so you can succeed at fulfilling it. Don’t be overly ambitious — success breeds more of itself.
Would you rather tell yourself every week that you’ve failed again at posting three new articles, or high-five yourself for succeeding at posting one?
We have a tendency to blast off with big energy at the beginning of a project, then lose steam, and punish ourselves for failing. If you even so much as THINK you might be able to run a marathon, then walking half a mile ought to be a real piece of cake.
Practice handling success for awhile. If you want to win, play games you’re good at. The secret to your success is NOT taking on a big challenge, it’s NOT racing the big guns in the fast lane, it’s not a high dive into the deep end — the REAL secret to success is picking the dinky task, cruising in the slow lane, and dog-paddling in the kiddie pool.
Set Up an Editorial Schedule at Which You Can SUCCEED:
Lower the Bar
Instead of setting the standard by which you define your blogging success too high, consider setting it just at the bare minimum of what you KNOW you can handle.
How often would you ideally LIKE to publish? Define that quantity and then chop it down a notch or two. Figure out the High End of Your Ambition. Would you ideally like to post new articles 3 times a week? Okay, cool, what’s the LOW End? What’s the absolute minimum blogging schedule that you can manage and just barely escape shame and self-abuse for what a loser you are? Is that ONE post per week, or per month?
Compare the High End Ambition and the Low End Threshold of Shame — and pick a quantity BETWEEN the two ends — preferably closer to the bottom!
Publish Consistently (at the Low End)
More important than how often you publish or the length of your articles is the CONSISTENCY with which you publish. It is more effective to post like clockwork — even less frequently — than it is to carry your readers along your personal roller coaster of feast-or-famine creativity /productivity.
Publishing on a consistent schedule trains regular readers when to look for you. Don’t make your subscribers search through their inbox or feed reader at random — teach them when to find you, and stick with it.
Google indexing robots also adjust to visiting your site according to a pattern of updates.
Stockpile Material — Pad Your Deadlines
Do not post just to satisfy some kind of quantity. Better to post nothing — skip a cycle — rather than to publish an article of inferior quality.
Your Drafts folder should have a couple of extra posts handy for that rainy day, crazy work schedule, personal emergency, vacation — evergreen, not time-sensitive, potential posts — that reinforce your overall message — that you can pull out in a pinch and publish in a matter of minutes.
When you ARE on a roll and the posts are flowing — keep writing — but stop at your Low-End Minimum Posting goal — if you have an extra post in you one week, write it and save it as a draft in your stockpile. If you write a particularly longer post than usual, bust it up into a two-part or even a series.
Pad that distance between you and the deadline, in advance. You don’t just want to meet your goals and deadlines, you want to be ever-increasing just how far out AHEAD of that minimum you can remain.
I honestly would LIKE to be posting new articles twice or even three times a week — but I know I can definitely comfortably handle one. So, on weeks when I can post an extra, I just pat myself on the back for doing MORE than what I’ve promised, rather than raising the bar of my blogging schedule in general.
Set the bar LOW — simplify your Blog Ambition — and then exceed it every once in awhile. Success breeds more of itself. Play the easier blogging game — the one you know you can win. Once you can manage that consistently for say, 6 months, THEN consider if you can take it up a notch.
Resources
Andy Wibbels has a posted a Blogging Calendar Worksheet created by Yvonne Divita from Lipsticking.com — as well as an audio download of their telephone interview, discussing this topic.
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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[...] Too Ambitious? The regularity and the day(s) of the week you choose to post on — your editorial schedule – is more critical than the quanitity of your posts. This is to say nothing of the quality [...]