Blog Prioritizing – Effectively Planning Your Blogging Time

by Robb Sutton

Blogging is no different than any other successful business venture…you need to have an organized plan of attack if you want to make it big. The reality is that you can not do everything at once and you only have so much time during the day to get the necessary blogging tasks complete and published.

Many times, you are in the process of working a 9-5 while you are trying to build up your internet empire, so time is of the essence as you continually use your free time to build your blog and pump out your quality content.

If you are anything like me…you have hundreds of fantastic ideas all circling around your head just waiting to take the world by storm. However, half the time you forget the idea from yesterday in your quest for internet greatness, so you continually kick yourself as you try to remember that next great article idea that is going to set you over the top. Add to that…blogging has its own set of “must do’s” as you have to reply to comments on your blog, prepare guest posts on other blogs, comment on other blogs, work on your design, market your blog, work on new ideas and promotions…feel it all starting to add up? Looking for more time in the day as you try to build something you can call your own? Try not to stress…you answer is prioritizing your time and it can be done pretty easily.

Blogging Has A Lot Of Time Soaking Activities

Time is the only thing in your life that you can not control. There are only 24 hours in a day and a lot of those hours are already called for as you continue your pursuit of the internet lifestyle (where you get more of those hours to do what you want!). As you continue to grow your blog and put out quality content that readers are going to soak up like cold lemonade on a hot summer day…you need to use your time wisely and get rid of wasteful activities that only hurt your cause…not help.

Blogging has its own set of tasks that have to be completed.

  • Content production
  • Content brainstorming
  • Design modification or generation
  • Comment and email reply
  • Marketing
  • Commenting on other blogs
  • Submitting guest posts on other blogs
  • Research
  • Off site content (ebooks, tutorials, etc.)
  • etc…etc…etc…

Each of these tasks have different priorities for different bloggers. Where beginning bloggers need to spend 99% of their time creating quality content and brainstorming new ideas, a seasoned blogger might drop that to 75 or 60% as they look for new and inventive ways to get their established blog to a new pair of eyes. As you can already see, the precious moments that you have to work on your growing blog can be few and far between when you add family, another job or just relaxing to take a deep breath into the mix.

How To Prioritize Your Blogging Time

Prioritizing your blogging time is an activity that is going to be crucial to your blogging career as time goes on. Your priorities might change with time, but the fact that you need to organize that time will always be there. As mentioned before, your priorities as a beginning blogger might (and probably are) drastically different than an established blogger that is already an expert/leader in their respective niche.

You need to take each of your blogging activities and assign an importance to them in a list. For beginning bloggers and still most successful bloggers, the #1 priority is continuing to deliver quality content. Since this is your #1 priority, delivering this quality content should get the most time during your blogging. Then, you need to rank other activities in line. For beginning bloggers, your next activities can include submitting guest posts, working on an ebook or commenting on other larger blogger’s blogs. For the experienced blogger, these tasks might include answering emails, responding to comments left on your blog or researching ways to increase your spread on the internet.

By having this list of blog priorities, you are able to better organize your blogging time by attacking each task in order of importance. Without this organization, you can find yourself wasting a lot of time moving from activity to activity with no real direction. This creates a lot of wasted time that you can never get back. When time is your enemy…this can prove to be very detrimental to your progress.

Set Aside Blogging Time

Since you already have your list that you update as time goes on…you know exactly how you need to attack your blogging time, but…you also need to schedule that time throughout your day. For a lot bloggers, you might only have time at night or early in the morning to produce content and market your blog. You need to create a schedule and stick to that schedule. I know…for me..if I set aside 2 hours (ex. between the hours of 7-9pm) for blogging, I am a lot more efficient with that 2 hours than I am if I just have all day to mess around with things. By keeping to a schedule, you will be able to get a lot more accomplished during a shorter period of time because that time will not be wasted.

It Is Not Easy

One of the hardest tasks that beginning entrepreneurs have with building a business is being their own boss. You no longer have anyone standing over you telling you what to do and when to do it. You have to set that for yourself and have the discipline to stick with it…even if you don’t want to. As you start to prioritize your blogging activities and stick to a schedule, you are becoming your own blogging boss by managing your time and productivity effectively. That is the key to being successful as you continue to be a better manager and boss of yourself.

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5 comments

mkgraces August 11, 2009 - 11:44 am

so helpful. just what i needed! thanks so much.

Reply
Robb Sutton August 11, 2009 - 9:39 pm

Anytime! Glad I could help…

Reply
DoYouDaveRamsey December 30, 2009 - 1:23 pm

Good stuff… I sometimes do feel overwhelmed with all the activities required to build and grow my site.

When this happens I try to just write and hope the rest will take care of itself.

Thanks for sharing.
Dave

Reply
Robb Sutton December 30, 2009 - 5:51 pm

It normally does just take care of itself for the most part. That…combined with planning for the future…make up for a lot of blogging success. Standing still does nothing.

Reply
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