Decrease blogging stress by planning ahead

We have all been there…you are getting through the day and life got in the way. You want to keep a consistent posting pattern and show that you are serious about your blogging, but now you do not have enough time to put up a quality article. The stress is starting to get to you as you struggle with the idea of putting up a substandard post to keep your schedule or wait until tomorrow when you will hopefully have more time to put up something worthwhile on your blog. Tomorrow rolls around and the problems from yesterday have not quit festering, so you are presented with the same blogging emergency from the day before! What are you to do when your readers are bleeding for more of you quality content?!

First…calm down! This is a normal occurrence amongst some of blogging’s best. It is not worth putting up some crap content just to keep to your daily, 3 times a week, once a week or any other schedule you have yourself set to. While I recommend posting at least 4 times a week with quality content, it is not worth putting up something that may hurt your credibility as a blogger. Blogging schedules are great to adhere to, but do not sacrifice quantity for quality.

Decreasing your blogging schedule stress is actually a pretty easy maneuver. It just requires something that many of us like to ignore…planning. Here are some fail safe ways that you can decrease your blogging stress by planning ahead.

1. Write for the future on your blog – Ideally, I like to stay about 2 days ahead of myself with blog articles. Two days allows me to catch up during those weeks where life gets in the way and blogging takes a back seat to the real world. In most cases, I do not need more than 2 days to recoup and get back on schedule, so by keeping 2 days ahead of things…I stay on track 99% of the time.
2. In case of emergency, hit publish blog post here! – On top of a two day blogging buffer, I also try to keep a couple of emergency articles sitting in the draft pile in case things get really hairy (that 1% from above). Now, I am not nearly as good at keeping the emergency stash filled as I am about keeping the workload 2 days ahead, but I try my best to keep a couple of quality articles sitting in the wind waiting on a catastrophe. These are normally blog articles that are not time sensitive, so it does not matter when they are published. You do not want to keep an emergency stash of blog articles that may or may not be relevant to your audience at the time they are published.
3. Schedule your blogging time – Schedule and plan your time wisely. If you find yourself doing some meaningless tasks that do not increase your overall worth, use that time to write and be productive. Try to set aside time each day to work on posts, marketing, design, etc. If you have this time set aside already, then it is easier to make yourself sit down and get the job done.
4. Stay organized – This is one of the hardest things most bloggers have to go through. Since you set your own schedule, it is vastly important that you stay organized and focused during the time you are working on your blog.

Things come up in life and your readers will understand that. Just remember, crap content is not better than missing a scheduled post. Always pick content quality first and schedule second. As things come up in our daily lives, those articles waiting in the wind can mean the difference between a stressed out blogger and a calm and collected business owner…

Image by: danepstein