You will only master consistent blogging after doing these 2 things
I consistently blogged for 1 year, wahoo! I posted twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays without fail for 1 year straight, definitely something I'm proud of from this past year.
I was paid back handsomely with a massive uptick in traffic which I 100% dedicate to my consistency. (You can peek at the exact traffic numbers 1 year of consistent blogging earned me over in this post.)
There were two vital strategies I employed to ensure I stuck to my schedule and today I'd love to share them with you!
1. Schedule time to blog
I've learned from experience that when I want to start a new habit there's one vital piece to making sure I follow through.
Scheduling that thing!
And I don't mean saying some vague 'I'm going to blog every week' statement. That doesn't count as scheduling.
I mean taking out my planner or now project management system (Asana), which is basically my new, fancy, planner on the interwebs, and adding a task to write a blog post on a specific day.
Some people schedule their days with 'from 9 AM - 11 AM I'll blog'.
I'm more a person who gets to the day, and then puts my tasks in order and then I just work through them until they're finished as opposed to setting specific hours for specific tasks.
If you're a time scheduling type person, I'd also suggest writing your blogging time into a time slot. If you're like me, ensure you actually have the task set to a specific day.
While yes, if a day has been insane and I haven't had time to blog, I'll move the task to the next day. But having to move it makes me feel guilty, and therefore encourages me more to get to it the next day.
If I hadn't had the task in my planner and didn't have to move it, it'd be a lot easier to skip.
I don't know about you, but guilt works wonders in terms of me getting things done.
2. Always write days in advance & have completed drafts scheduled
Y'all, this was the BEST strategy I've had for ensuring I never missed a post date in a year.
Back in January I was reading ConvertKit's State of the Blogging Industry report and noticed something which was massively valuable.
"In every case, the average number of posts published for all respondents was less than the intended number of posts published... Everyone struggles to meet their publishing goals, including the pros...
Of the respondents, 52% of bloggers write either the day before or on the same day as they plan to publish. No wonder there’s such a large discrepancy between how often bloggers plan to publish and how often they actually publish!
This data shows us very clearly that bloggers could unlock an entirely new level of consistency by increasing the gap between when they write and when they publish."
Bam!
Write your posts further in advance, schedule them and then when life happens (which it always will) your blog will stay consistent.
I write 1.5 weeks in advance, my goal is to always have 3 posts scheduled and ready to go.
And let me tell you, this has saved me on multiple occasions in the past year.
One day my MacBook gave me the black screen of death and it was off getting repaired at the Apple store for 10 days.
I was a web designer and blogger without a laptop for a week... Nightmare.
My top priority is always my client work. I hit up every friend and family member around, hopping on their computers any minute they weren't using them to ensure I met my deadlines for clients.
The blog is always of secondary importance to my client work, so in those 10 days I didn't blog once, and used up all 3 posts that were scheduled. The second I got my Mac back, I was right back at it whipping up a few posts to get back on schedule.
I also took 4 weeks this year abroad on vacation where I wasn't blogging. Sometimes if life allowed I blogged in advance, other times, I caught up once I got home. I also had family and friends come to stay with me and visit for weeks at a time too, which is a massive distraction from work when I get significantly less done.
So yes, life did happen to me on multiple occasions this year, but the blog never suffered because I spaced out the time between when I wrote a post and when it was published.
I gave myself a buffer and planned for the unexpected, and I highly suggest you do too if your goal is to stay consistent!
I hope those two tips help get you well on your way to a consistent blogging schedule as well! Best of luck friend!
