How I Plan for my Blog

This year I’m kicking of Blogoween by doing a post specifically relating to my blog and how I plan for it. People plan posts for their blogs in many different ways and it took me awhile to find a way that really worked for me. I remember when I first started my blog, I went in with virtually no planning. I read a book, wrote a review, and posted it at the time I wanted (I didn’t use the WordPress scheduling feature!). When I started posting more (and forgetting to post at the times I wanted), I knew I needed to develop a better system for my blog.

At first, I used hashtags for my weekly posts such as #TeenTuesday to review young adult books or #ThrowbackThursday to review books for younger readers. However, I also participated in Top Ten Tuesday and did tags for my blog. I wanted to space out my review and put them on days that I didn’t participate in weekly memes to spread out my content over a longer period of time. As a result, I developed the system below to plan out my blog using Google Calendar.

 This is a sample of planning for my blog for last month. While my posting didn’t exactly look like this after a few tweaks, this is a general idea of what my calendar looks like. In the fall, I typically post four times a week (Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday). I try to spread out reviews (usually on Sundays and Thursdays) so I don’t have the same type of post appearing right next to each other on my blog. However, sometimes I don’t follow this as documented on the picture above.

There are some weeks where I post more often, like the first week in the calendar, which was in August. In the summer, I usually post more often in the fall. Another example is September 22 where I wanted to complete the Birthday Tag specifically on my birthday which was not in my usual posting schedule.

I also like to color code my blog posts. The blog posts highlighted in light blue represent ideas for blog posts that haven’t been written. If a title is highlighted in yellow that means I have written the post, but still need to create a header image and schedule the post on WordPress. Like I mentioned earlier, I didn’t use this feature when I first started my blog. I think it’s because the scheduling tool was different then (maybe it was in military time?) and I feel like I always messed up the time or date somehow. However, I can’t imagine planning my blog without it now! Finally, the blog posts highlighted in red signify a completed blog post that is also scheduled.

In the picture above, most of the “yellow” blog posts are book reviews. Typically in the summer I read around 15 books each month, so my reviews for these books are sometimes posted months after I read them. Even though there are several posts in blue still unwritten before these posts, I still try to review books that I read soon after reading them even if they are planned for months later. It makes me so happy when I get to a month mostly in yellow!

How do you plan for your blog! I would love to hear your process or any tips that you have for an easier way to plan!

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