#31 WBGB ~ Week 12 ~ Editorial Calendars


I am following Tonia's Roots as she brings several GeneaBloggers through 31 weeks of working towards a better blog, prompts written by Darren Rowse. 


The following is an (altered) excerpt from the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook ~

Last week our challenge was to come up with a list of at least 10 post ideas for our blog. The idea was to
spend time, before you needed posts, coming up with ideas. Doing this can release you later on to just write instead of having to brainstorm ideas every day.


How to Develop a Weekly Editorial Calendar [or at least how I do it]
This weeks task is to take the list you created last week and to plan your posting schedule (or editorial calendar) for next week.
1. Calculate how many posts you want to post in the coming week on your blog.
2. Set up a spreadsheet or table in a word document that has a slot for each post and the date and time that the post needs to go live on the blog.
3. Take the list of ideas that you’ve previously brainstormed and begin to slot them into the empty slots in the table. As I do this I often get other ideas that I’d not previously thought of for posts that might make good followup posts to those I’m planning. I slot these into the schedule too.
4. For each post that you slot in write a sentence or two about what the post is about (so you’re able to remember later in the week). I often also take a moment or two at this point to brainstorm some main points for the post. If any examples, illustrations, pictures or related posts that I’ve previously written come to mind I make note of these too.
Let me say at this point that what I come up with after going through this process is not always the way that I roll out posts in reality. My blogging style is a little more fluid than this and I tend to add new posts into the mix, reorder posts and extend single posts into series.
However – going through this exercise is fantastic because it means I’ve got a week’s worth of post ideas at my finger tips. It also means that for each post I’ve got ideas that I can use when writing the post – this gives me a real head start and means that I can usually get right down to business and start writing on the days I need to do the writing of posts.

Another Editorial Calendar idea to Consider

Another way that some bloggers approach editorial calendars is to come up with a weekly rhythm for their blog. They assign a different type of post for each day of the week and stick to that rhythm over the long term.
For example Mondays might be ‘list post’ day, Tuesdays might be ‘link post’ day, Wednesdays might be ‘opinion/rant’ day, Thursdays might be ‘review’ day etc. In this way they know the style of post for each day and then just have to slot in topics that fit each style.
my Heritage Happens Editorial Calendar ~

I really like this idea of scheduling blog posts a head of time on a calendar. I love being prepared and I've actually been having a difficult time getting organized with blog posts for a couple of months. Like all of us, sometimes I feel pulled in many different directions and trying to do a post at any given time, without preparing, takes a lot of time. Usually, just trying to think of a topic to write about takes a lot of time. Then, writing and preparing the post, adding photos etc. takes a vast amount of time also. If I don't have as much time as I would like to prepare a post, I may actually feel stressed. If I haven't written a post for a few days I can start to feel stressed also. Being prepared and organized, with thoughts and ideas would actually be a major stress relief for me during those difficult times.  I am actually tied up for a few weeks and can not really participate with this idea yet, but I plan to implement it just as soon as possible! In fact, I am very anxious to do so!

Thanks for stopping by!

Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!





 Copyright © 2011 By Cheryl Palmer All Rights Reserved

Comments

  1. I like the idea of doing a different style pf post on certain days of the eeek. I do themes but post styles hadn't crossed my mind.

    Like you I think a calendar will help with stress relief in addition to organization.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree Michelle, one of these days I will get back to a rhythm and routine of some sort.

    ReplyDelete

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