I’m so proud of myself. I’ve been in a writing mood the last few days and I’ve managed to write up several articles for five of my blogs. In some cases I’ve written a couple of weeks worth of articles!
I’ve set up several of the articles to publish on dates in the future. On some of the blogs the articles will be published daily, on others there will be a new article every second day.
The first year or so that I was blogging I always had a few draft articles stored up. I usually tried to complete the articles so I could publish them whenever I had writers block or felt too ill to write that day although sometimes the stored drafts were only outlines or ideas for posts that I could easily complete when needed.
As I got busier and added more blogs to my little network I fell out of the habit or perhaps lacked the time to prepare articles in advance. For me, this was one of the worst things that could have happened. I enjoy writing, but there’s always that pressure – mostly self pressure – to write something new each day and for the article to hopefully be informative, entertaining or both.
When you are juggling several blogs and perhaps a website or two as I am time management is very important. I feel like I’ve been running in circles the last few months trying to answer email, maintain blogrolls and mailing lists, write new posts and visit other bloggers and all the rest of the stuff that goes along with being a webmaster.
As a result I was beginning to have trouble prioritizing my tasks. I was constantly asking myself – should I be visiting other bloggers and trying to comment on their sites? Should I be spending the next hour or two answering the emails that have built up? Answering blog comments? Adding new blogs to the Do Follow list, my Green Thumb Sunday blogroll or the other blogrolls that I maintain? Look for a new way to monetize my site? Change the theme or layout of one of my blogs? Arghhhhh …. With so many websites I could literally work 24 hours a day maintaining them and networking and still not get everything done that I should be doing to promote my sites.
So I’m sure you can see why I’m so happy that five of my blogs have a number of new articles preset to post on future dates over the next two weeks or so. Maybe I’ll be able to finally write a few articles for some of my very badly neglected blogs!
I think that I would be more organized and not have fallen so behind in my site maintenance if 1. I was healthier and 2. if I didn’t have so many websites. Perhaps it’s time for me to think about shutting down my neglected blogs?
How do you blog?
Are you organized or unorganized?
Do you just write a post when the mood strikes you? Or do you write up articles in advance and set them to publish on future dates?
Do you have one or several blogs?
Whatever your answer, do you schedule time to do certain tasks related to blogging? Networking, promoting, commenting on other blogs, writing posts and so on?
If you do have a blogging schedule I’d love to hear what yours is – how you plan your tasks and how much time you allot to each task daily, weekly or monthly.
If you’ve never done so, I’d highly recommend writing a few draft articles when the mood strikes you. You’ll find they come in handy when you’re not up to writing or have no time to blog. It does take a while to get into the habit of blogging in this manner, but once you start doing it you’ll find that you’re able to do other blogging related tasks and likely that the articles you publish are of a higher quality because you weren’t under pressure to post “something” when you were writing it.