Planning and organising your blog posts

2014 has been a rubbish blogging year for me. Despite all my good intentions, ideas and plans in my head, the posts ended up few and scattered. And despite of all my good intentions, ideas and plans in my head, 2015 was precariously beginning to go the same way. The problem is that sometimes, all the good intentions, ideas and plans in your head just aren't enough. I'm great at making plans in my head, with the best intentions to put it all into practice. But unfortunately, I'm even better at procrastinating. In April I decided that I needed a proper plan if I wanted to turn things round and actually put my plans into action. I started my Blog Schedule. For me, putting things down on paper and ticking them off when they're done, is extremely helpful to actually getting them done.

I wanted to get into a regular blog schedule of three posts a week, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, sharing both my photography and my drawing and painting. I'm using the free blog planners by Productive Flourishing, and they're working well for me. I'm using the Blog Post Planner, which allows me to order my planned posts into different categories, and the Blog Post Calendar, which gives me an overview over the entire month. I like my notebooks and journals, and I like writing by hand, so I print them out and glue them into my Blog Book. This way, I have everything in one place, and also enough space for extra notes. At the beginning of each month, I write down all the 'left over' post ideas from the previous months, as well as new planned posts into the categories pages and the  calendar, and add new ones, or more details, as I go along. For example, I write PPF down for every Friday of the month, because I want to post something for and link up to Paint Party Friday each week. This also helps me to actually sit down and paint something every week, because without painting, no post. I have not only become more productive blog posting wise, but also creatively. When a post is posted, I add the date in the categories planner, and tick them off in both.

I try to work ahead as much as possible, and I almost always use the Schedule option for publishing my posts after having finished writing them. This way, I don't have to think about it anymore, which is especially useful for when posts that aren't due to be publihsed until a week or two later. And I can also keep my regular schedule even when I'm at work. And thanks to my Blog Schedule, I know exactly what and when to post each blog post. My schedule has helped me to actually post three days a week in May, and to get painting each week, and I hope to keep it up.

If you're sometimes struggling a bit too, with getting your blog posts up more often and more regularly, I hope that you might find the information useful. Or maybe you have some good tips of what works for you?

Peonies. Polaroid SLR 680