Organising yourself as a blogger

I have to be honest. When I started blogging, it was sporadic. I didn't put any thought into what I was actually writing. It was just "Oh, I saw something cute on TV last night. I'll blog about it" and then the next day, I'd blog about whatever else popped into my head. Then I wouldn't post anything for another week. I'd see all these articles about the importance of organising your time, about editorial calendars and scheduling, and I'd just think it didn't apply to me. I was happy with my own ways, so why worry about the boring stuff.

Well, Becky circa-April 2012, because the boring stuff actually really helps. And it's not as boring as you might think. (If you're a loser like me. If you actually have a life, you may find it boring, but it's necessary, so stick with me, OK?)

Once I got my organisation on, my blog benefitted hugely. My traffic shot up, my visitors increased and, more importantly, my productivity multiplied by a million and twenty-eight percent *Figures may not be entirely accurate.

Being organised is actually pretty simple. I have a crazy 60+ hour week workload, and I manage to stay on top of things with minimal effort. There are two principles here: Planning and scheduling.


Planning
Editorial calendar. You've probably seen it a million times, and you're probably bored to the back teeth of hearing about it, but trust me guys- It works! It doesn't need to be anything fancy. Just a little notebook with scribbles in it will do. Mine is a colour-coded spreadsheet, because I have no social life.

Pink: Published. Green: Scheduled. Yellow: Drafted. Blue: You WILL start this today. 
No fill: Eh, maybe another day. 

This is handy for several reasons:

• I can see at a glance which posts I need to work on and which are finished.
• I can make sure I space out posts that are similar in content.
• I can fill in post ideas for future dates so I don't forget them.
• I can plan around events or holidays that are approaching.

As you can see, my calendar also has a book for my statistics, my sponsorship research and an archive where I stick every month when it's finished with. This way, I have a year-long overview of what I posted. I figure this will help me if I'm stuck for ideas next year. 

Scheduling
"But I have no time to post!" This is where scheduling comes in handy. It's a pretty basic concept, so I won't waste your time explaining it. Take photos when it's light, edit them and write up the post when you have time, and schedule it for the future.

Of course, you have your editorial calendar so you know exactly what your next posts are going to be, and therefore what you need to take photos of. I use the weekends to schedule for the week ahead, sometimes longer if I'm on a roll, and school holidays to go all out and schedule, schedule, schedule for as far in advance as I can. Then, I can indicate on my calendar which posts are ready to go.

I also schedule my promotional tweets. I use Hootsuite to do this, and I aim to get one tweet out every 5 hours or so, so that it hits people in every time zone. Am I a genius, or what?