Balance

How do you balance blogging? That’s a good question, and for every blogger out there you’re going to get a different response. I am trying a new system this year, using Tumblr instead of Blogger.

I think the most useful feature of blogs is scheduling posts. This can a great time saver if used properly. Tumblr has a queue system as well, where you can line up your posts to be posted up to 50 times a day. Once a day is enough for me, thank you very much. I wish Tumblr offered the same thing but on a weekly or monthly basis. You can also schedule the posts, but that takes more effort because you have to type in the day and time for every scheduled post. With the queue system, you just mark it as ‘queue’ and you’re done.

Having topics in advance is wonderful. There isn’t anything much worse for a blogger to say “I have to post something today, but what am I going to write about?” There are many websites and ebooks that offer blog prompts. I copied many, more than a year’s worth, into Evernote, and just pick one at random. Any time I have an idea for a topic, I write it in Evernote.

Writing ahead is one of the best ways to balance blogging, in my opinion. Depending on the topic, some posts don’t take long. If you can afford an hour or two to write a novel every day, take an hour to blog. The nice thing about this is that you can write several posts then schedule/queue them for the week. Once you give yourself a little leeway, you don’t have to hurry yourself with a topic idea and a post to get up by the end of the day.

Also, all those scheduled posts can be edited. If you want to add more to a topic, or you found the perfect picture to go with the post, you can still add it before it hits the Net.

My advice: plan ahead and write as often as you can. If you can write more than one post at a time, do it.

As always, thanks for reading.