How I organize my blog

Hi guys! Today I want to share with you some tips to help you get more organized and make your blogging more efficient. Back when I had just started this blog, I didn't plan ahead much and would write post sometimes only a few hours before they were due to be posted. Now, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of spontaneity but with life getting more hectic later during the year, I quickly found that this freestyle approach to my blogging was becoming a little strained. So, after a few months of blogging, I began to change the way I plan and organize my posts. 

Whether you're a new blogger or you've been blogging for some time now and want to make things more efficient, I hope you'll find these tips useful ^^

Keep a blog journal

It doesn't have to be anything fancy so long you have something where you can jot down blog post ideas and quick post drafts. I use this beautiful cloth bound journal covered in dragon patterns that I bought in Hong Kong during my 2014 Christmas vacation there. The purpose of a journal is to give you a place where you can store all your ideas and bits and pieces of writing that cross your mind. Once you have all of your thoughts and ideas in one place, later, it'll be easy for you to reference to them when writing a blog post. Like I said, your journal doesn't have to be overly fancy. However, things that visually appeal to us are more likely to motivate us. So if you're going to be using a journal, you might as well pick one that'll motivate you to use it ^^

Make lists of ideas

You can list down all the blog post ideas that come to your mind in your journal so that when you need to write a post, you only need to pluck an idea from your list. You can add to your lists ideas inspired by other blogs and YouTube videos, Pinterest boards and things you come across in your everyday life. You can have different lists for different categories of posts. You enjoy doing tags? Why not make a list of all the cool tags you enjoy? Thus, whenever you feel like writing a tag post, you'll can have your pick from all those in your list. You can have different lists of ideas to cover as many topics and post categories as you choose. You can use color tags or sticky notes to index your various lists in your journal to make the referencing easier for you.

Use a planner or an agenda

Once you have all your ideas in one place, it's easy to allocate specific posts to specific dates. Aside from my journal, I use a planner where I write the specific post titles I want to publish on specific dates. I usually publish around 7 posts every month. So whenever I'm planning a particular month's post schedule, I simply pick out 7 post ideas that I'd like to do from my journal and decide on which day I want to do each of them. Thus, when I open my planner to a particular month, I know at a glance what are the posts I need to write for that month.

Write your posts in advance

Having your posts already planned for the month makes it simple to write them in advance. You already know what you need to write about so there's no need to spend hours browsing Pinterest boards for blog post ideas. I usually have around 4 posts written in advanced and ready to be published. I spend a couple of days during the week working on the upcoming month's posts and then I take a break from writing during the remaining days of the week. I use that free time to catch up and comment on the posts of other blogs I enjoy reading. Whether you're still studying and you have assignments creeping on you unexpectedly or life suddenly just gets crazy, having at least one or two pre-written posts can help you account for those days where you simply don't have time to sit down and write a full post.

So those were a few tips on how you can organize your blog to make it more efficient. I hope you found these useful. If you have other tips for me, feel free to share them with me in the comments! Happy blogging guys ^^

Source

Cover art by Of Stacks and Cups via Pagemodo