SOCIAL MEDIA

Friday 2 June 2017

How I Plan My Blog Posts For Each Month

Seeing as I’m getting back into blogging again after the month away (read here if you want to know why), I wanted to share with you guys what I do before my blog posts go live. 

I work quite a bit and find that if I’m not on top of organising and scheduling I tend to panic and stress. There are times when I love being able to just write and have it published, without the whole process of what I’ll describe below, but on the whole I love that I’m on top of my posts and know that I have content being produced every week. 

Tools
Kikki.K Planner | iCal 

Plan When To Write
I won’t go into my planning system much (I’ll be writing about that in another post) but yes, I do use two different planners to plan for my blog. It may look excessive, but the reason I switch between a paper and digital planner is because each has its own purpose. I use iCal to plan out the month and my Kikki.K planner to plan out the week in detail.


At the end of the week, usually Sunday, I begin to prep for the following week. I tend to go through what I’ve planned for the week and see if the posts I’ve lined up are still what I want to post or if I have to change things up. Then it’s a matter of deciding when I’m going to start writing them. 

Draft
Recently I’ve changed over to using Evernote to draft. Originally, I was using OneNote but I prefer Evernote’s preface and know how to use it better. I've set up different Notebooks for the different "series" I have on the blog. I also like being able to highlight sentences/words, which I do when I find phrases feel awkward or don't read as well, to change later on. Checklists and reminders are great as well, if I’m in the middle of a post and need to remind myself to search something up later or put a due date for when the post needs to be up.


Sneak peek of a post coming up

At the top of my drafts is where I just dump all my thoughts before I start to write, especially when I’m writing a review. I try to put down all my initial thoughts of a novel right after finishing it so when I go back to write the review I know what I originally thought compared to at present. Also means I won’t forget things, which has happened before.

Finishing Touches
Once that’s all done it’s onto proofreading - or try to, sometimes I just never get around to it - and adding graphics or images to the post. I use Canva mostly for my banners and PicMonkey for putting images into rows to fit the post. A good example are my Top Ten Tuesday posts, where the images are evenly spaced out and have text underneath. I’ve tried the Pro versions for both but think the free versions are just as good. They both have mobile apps as well, which I really like for on the go editing. 

I copy everything over to Blogger, add my share buttons and any other links necessary then schedule! 

How do you guys plan out your posts? Which tools do you use?

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