In the weeks before and now the weeks since the arrival of our beautiful fifth child, I have found that I have significantly less time for blogging that I used to. This has meant that I have had to become far more efficient when I am online. I thought I would share a few things that I have found helpful in increasing my effectiveness of time spent on the blog:
1. Determine Realistic Goals
I needed to work out how many posts a week that I could manage with the time that I would have available. For me this was three posts a week on Planning With Kids.
2. What Themes To Write On
Knowing that I was aiming for three posts a week, I determined what days I would publish on – Sun, Tue and Thu, and then set a theme for each day – Menu Planning, 10 Tips, General Planning respectively.
3. Write A Blog Post Plan
I sat down in December and wrote a three month post plan. Using an excel spreadsheet with the dates in one column, topic in the next and then any additional notes or references in the last column. Once I started on this process, I found it actually helped me to have an organised approach to what I was going to write about.
4. Bulk Post Writing Session
On either Saturday or Sunday, I allocate at least 2 x 2hr blocks that I use solely for the purpose of writing the next week’s post. I make sure that the sessions are as early as possible during the day. Since I am operating on reduced sleep, I find that I am not very effective writing at night as I am too tired. Since doing this I have found that I have begun to write posts much quicker than I previously used to. I also close all other applications that I do not need for this purpose, to eliminate as many distractions as possible.
5. Limit Social Media Activity
I use social media like Twitter, Stumble and have over 100 blogs in my Google Reader. At this time in my blogging life, I have to spend time on these media, only once I have completed my weekly posts. There will be time to build up my profile later.
6. Enjoy What I Am Writing About
I do love blogging and want to make sure that this continues, by writing on things that I am interested in or like.
How do you keep up your blogging when you have less time for it?
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I’ve only been blogging a short time and didn’t even realise the social networking side of things would be so full-on. For me, writing is what it is all about so between writing new stuff for my site and minding my family I have found networking a little tough to squeeze in. Maybe a few years down the track when my small boys are a bit older I will get time ‘tweet’ more than once every couple of days!