Yes, the dream of every blogger, to be productive, efficient and to make the most, out of the least. The phrase “I’m going to be a more productive blogger this year” comes around, well quite frequently this time of the year.
As the holiday season and celebration of the new year approaches us, we find our self reflecting back on what we have accomplished, who we have become and perhaps set goals to do a better job next year. Whatever your “better” needs to be, we need to recognize ways to increase our time management allowing more time to focus on our improvement, and not the task.
Start Scheduling
As a blogger we have several ways to be more productive and the first major game changer is to start scheduling everything. Schedule your blog posts and also schedule your social media sharing. WordPress allows you to write your blog posts and schedule them for later dates. This helps you to write posts in advance opening up and clearing your schedules during busy times of your lives. If you can write in bulk, do it!
Schedule Your Social
Go Social With Buffer or HootSuite and start posting your Tweets and Facebook shares in advance. It’s very easy to use these services and for most of us we get away with the free version. If you have a need for more than the free limited accounts offer, then use both Buffer and HootSuite together to manage all your social media accounts. Scheduling your social media will help you save so much time as a blogger, in fact in my opinion it’s a must.
Separate Writing From Editing
If you can manage to schedule your posts in advance, it will also allow you to separate the writing from the editing. Proof reading and editing takes a lot of time from a bloggers perspective, typically done in the same sitting. If you can separate these elements it makes for a more productive writing session. When I’m at my best I set posts for Wednesday and Friday 8am. I have these posts written 48 hours before hand allowing me to edit 24 hours prior to going live.
Stick To The Plan
When you make a plan, try and stick to it. If you were honest with yourself when making the plan it should work. If you start to feel the stress and start to hit failure within the first two weeks you need a new plan, one that’s more realistic with your commitment level. Be fair to yourself and set goals you can achieve not goals that will create stress and failure. Read my latest post on why bloggers fail. Let’s make sure this doesn’t become you by following these basic tips on being a more productive blogger.