Better Blogging Habits: The Daily Post, The Short Post, and The Future Post.

A-Post-Every-Day.

That’s the goal here at MindTweaks - and not just a post, but a quality post, something that adds value to the blog, something that makes it meaningful for readers.

Daily posts are a good thing.

• They build up the mental momentum , both for me and for my readers. Plate spinning, baby!
• They keep any new subscribers interested and engaged. I’ve noticed that if I have a jump in readership one day, and fail to post for 2-3 days, I lose most of the new subscribers.
• The more frequently I post, the more topics I’m likely to cover - which means more appeal to a wider number of readers.
• Daily habits are simply easier to form and keep up with.

But actually blogging every day means making some serious changes to my blogging habits.

The sorts of posts I most enjoy can take hours to research, develop, and layout. I just can’t spend that kind of time on a daily basis — sometimes real life demands my attention. This week, for instance, I had family obligations over the weekend, followed by a time and attention eating work project, and I just couldn’t find the time for posts.

The solution? I see a number of options…

Shorter, simpler, quicker posts: These don’t need to replace the in-depth introspective rambles, but to serve as an additional style and type of post. I’ve been working on this, but I haven’t mastered quick, short and sweet. Maybe I can view this as a task in and of itself?

Learn to love the Future Posts feature: Wordpress allows me to set up a post for the future, so that it will automatically be published on a specific date and time. It’s a great way to keep the blog active on weekends, vacation time, and just busy spots on the schedule.

Learn patience: I’m an instant gratification junkie. The reality of writing something, hitting publish, and knowing that someone will probably read it within the hour (if not minutes) feels great. But many times it’s better NOT to hit send, and save a post for the future.

Break up longer articles more often: Many of my long posts could easily be separated into a series, and spread out over a number of days. Often they’re more effective that way. This does add time to the posting process, and I need to finish installing the “In Series” plugin to automate the process of linking a series of articles.

Create a backlog of posts: To effectively keep up with daily content, I need a backlog of 1-2 weeks of posts. The topics should be free standing and not time-sensitive.

________________________

A combination of these will probably work best. Breaking up longer posts seems the most difficult to me, for now, so we’ll sidestep that one for the moment.

And while I can learn to create short posts, its sometimes difficult for me to predict which topics will have a life of their own, and expand from 250 words to 1000. (some subjects are just disobedient)

I don’t expect to get over my instant gratification addiction, either — so while I’m creating that backlog of posts, I need to be actively publishing current writing, too.

So here’s my idea… to make a daily habit of short, quick, non-time-sensitive posts. This will be a separate task from my normal blog posts, and most of them will be added to a backlog of future posts.

Let’s see how I do.

MindTWEAK: Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
- Robert Collier