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Finding Your Posting Rhythm [Part 2] Posted: 25 Oct 2008 07:06 AM PDT Yesterday I suggested 4 tips for helping bloggers to find their posting rhythm: There is no Right Posting Level Start out Slow and Work Your Way Up Monitor Your Readerships Response to Your Posting Levels Consistency is Important Today I want to share 4 more tips on posting workflows. 5. Work on Your Posting Workflow - Identify the Blockage Points One piece of advice that I give new bloggers struggling with this area is to think about their posting workflow. Look at the way that you post - from the idea generation stage through to publishing? Where do the blockages come? How can you put processes in place at those ‘blockage’ points to help free up the flow of posts? For example I talked with one of our bloggers at b5media recently who was struggling to get posts out. When I asked her to analyze her workflow she identified her main ‘blockage point’ at the idea generation stage. Once she had an idea she could get the post out quite quickly - but was spending a lot of time each day coming up with topics to write on. Knowing this we were able to develop a simple plan for post idea generation that included getting a notebook for capturing of ideas, setting aside time at the start of each week to brainstorm ideas (rather than doing it just before deadlines), setting out an editorial calendar for the week (so topics were outlined ahead of time) and finding a blog buddy to brainstorm with (two bloggers coming up with ideas for each other). Another example that comes to mind was a blogger who identified his ‘blockage point’ as what I’d call ‘polishing’ his posts. He loves the writing process but struggled to make his posts look good (finding pictures, coming up with sub headings and the title for his post, spell checking etc). He just found all of this very ‘chore like’. I discovered in talking to him that he had over 50 posts half written in a folder on his desktop! Once we identified this blockage point the blogger decided that he needed to do two things. Firstly he enrolled himself in a class at an adult education centre - the class was on copy editing. Secondly he gave his wife permission to get on his back about ‘finishing’ posts. Where are the blockage points in your posting workflow? Further Reading on blogging workflow: How to Craft a Blog Post - 10 Crucial Points to Pause Marinating Ideas into Blog Posts - My Posting Workflow My Posting Workflow [VIDEO] 6. Don’t Post Just for the Sake of Posting Sometimes as a blogger you face the choice of posting something that is second rate or not posting at all. The temptation is to put a post out there simply to meet a deadline or because you fear your readers reaction if you don’t post something. The reality is that you can do more harm than good by posting something of lower quality than not posting anything. Before posting each post ask yourself whether the post will actually enhance your readers lives in some way? Will it help them, entertain them, inform them, educate them, inspire them etc? If the answer is no - strongly consider not hitting publish. Further Reading on this topic - Does Your Next Post Matter? 7. Batch Writing One strategy that I find helps me when I need to produce 14 posts a week here at ProBlogger is to set aside time each week to write multiple posts at once. Monday mornings are a a time where I generally camp out in a cafe with my laptop and aim to get 4-5 posts written in one sitting. I also try to do this for a morning later in the week and between the two sessions can usually get one solid post written for each day of the week. I’ve written more about batch processing previously - it can be applied to many areas of your blogging. 8. You Will Become More Efficient Over Time Let me finish by giving you a word of encouragement to end on - it gets better! Hang in there. As I look back on my journey of blogging to when I first started (almost six years ago now) I notice a definite change in my ability to produce content. While it can still be difficult to maintain the posting level that I set myself it has certainly become easier. One reason for this is that with practice you tend to become a better and more efficient writer. The more you write the better you get at it - particularly if you’re learning from your mistakes and looking to improve. I suspect also that over time you simply become more proficient with your topic and as you do this are able to draw upon your growing levels of knowledge on the topic. The other thing that I think I’ve become better at in that time is coming up with topics to write about. I do remember in the early days sitting down at the keyboard and just having a mental blank. However over time you get more used to coming up with ideas - or at least your mind becomes more attuned to capturing the ideas that you get through the day. These days ideas for posts come to me in the most bizarre places (I even recently had an idea while dreaming). Share This

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