So you’ve started your blog with lots of energy and put up some posts and set your goals. And then you realize something. Blogging is taking more time than you expected. Suddenly this hobby or freelance job becomes a drain instead of an exciting way to bring in some money. We all want to be part of this great blogging adventure, but we have to realize that we need to tackle it in a professional manner, regardless of whether it’s a profession or a hobby.
Structuring your blogging work can help you keep the blog from eating your life. Now, I’m not just talking about structuring your day, though that does help, but the work itself. I write a minimum of 8 blog posts a day, but that’s just the writing part. I then have to post them, and that also takes time. So I structure my blogging tasks by type to make the most of my efforts. Since writing is the largest part of the task, it gets the biggest chunk of time, but I also schedule in breaks so I don’t feel overwhelmed. But I don’t just write today’s blog today. I look for a good source of inspiration or research that lets me draft out a number of blogs in advance.
Which brings up another part of blogging work – research. This is one of the tasks that can lead many of us astray because we start research and get so caught up in it that we forget to stop and write. So don’t try to research one article, write, research another article, write, etc. Block out a chunk of time for research. Plan it for when your writing energy is low, perhaps the end of the day. Then gather research and make notes for a chunk of blogs that you can write all at once.
Posting can feel like another time drain. Learn how to schedule your posts on your blogging software. That way you can take the articles you write in advance and do a big posting run and schedule them for publishing rather than needing to set aside posting time each day. And if you have the articles written in advance, you can also set aside a block of time for tasks like finding photos or researching supporting links or articles.
Manage the blog, don’t let the blog manage you.