Planning your blog posts is the most vital part of your writing. What to write about, how to write it, what to include in your posts. But how do you plan for your blog posts? Well in this post I would like to discuss with you the ways I use to plan my writing.
Below are three techniques that I use in my process of future planning tools.
Capturing ideas
One of the most useful tools I have on my iPhone is the "Notes" application.
Inside my notes app I can create new notes and while I am out and away from my computer when ideas come to me. To this day it gets used daily and still I have many notes and blog topics that I have ready to transfer over to my computer.
On my computer I have a folder called "Ideas". Inside that folder are five other folders, one for each of my blog topics: Blogging, Social Media, Making Money, SEO and one for miscellaneous ideas.
Inside each of my folders are many text files for articles that I am in the middle of writing or an introduction or even a full draft post. Each text file for a different blog post. These files normally begin their journey to my blog at random times of the day when I am thinking about completely different things and an idea pops into my head. The secret is to catch them quickly, record them in a way that they can be found again and develop them into a winning post. This is why I record them on my phone while I am away. Sometimes, if I have the time, ill work on ideas straight away. If I am waiting for an appointment at the doctors surgery or anything like that. Most of the time I just jot my ideas down and save them for another time.
This is great because when I sit down to write I have a number of great ideas that I can write about without getting any writers block.
Mind Mapping (Spider Diagram)
Or whatever you want to call it. One of the most powerful techniques for coming up with blog posting ideas to write about is mind mapping. You may choose a different method of brainstorming but I genuinely set specific times to come up with ideas. Mostly twice a month. This gives you an endless supply of ideas that you can choose to blog about. If you keep it up you will never run out of ideas.
Normally once I have finished mind mapping I will convert the best ideas that I have come up with into text files to save into my ideas folders as we have mentioned above.
Calendars
I’ve used a variety of approaches to creating editorial calendars over the years. I’ve adapted my approach over time to suit the different stages of my blogs. These days as I’m actively editing two decent sized blogs with up to 30 posts a week I find that I need to map out what posts I’ll be doing ahead of time.
In doing this you’re able to develop content that builds momentum (posts that build upon each other), take your readers on a more thoughtfully planned journey and give them a more balanced run of content.
I found previously that if I wasn’t planning ahead in this way that I’d end up with too much of one kind of content all in a row which didn’t really benefit readers as much.
The other good thing about this approach is that you know what writing you need to have done by certain times of the week – deadlines work well for me in motivating me to work.
I’ve shared 3 of the techniques I use to help me keep fresh content coming on my blogs – I’d love to hear from you on how you do it in comments below!
Below are three techniques that I use in my process of future planning tools.
Capturing ideas
One of the most useful tools I have on my iPhone is the "Notes" application.
Inside my notes app I can create new notes and while I am out and away from my computer when ideas come to me. To this day it gets used daily and still I have many notes and blog topics that I have ready to transfer over to my computer.
On my computer I have a folder called "Ideas". Inside that folder are five other folders, one for each of my blog topics: Blogging, Social Media, Making Money, SEO and one for miscellaneous ideas.
Inside each of my folders are many text files for articles that I am in the middle of writing or an introduction or even a full draft post. Each text file for a different blog post. These files normally begin their journey to my blog at random times of the day when I am thinking about completely different things and an idea pops into my head. The secret is to catch them quickly, record them in a way that they can be found again and develop them into a winning post. This is why I record them on my phone while I am away. Sometimes, if I have the time, ill work on ideas straight away. If I am waiting for an appointment at the doctors surgery or anything like that. Most of the time I just jot my ideas down and save them for another time.
This is great because when I sit down to write I have a number of great ideas that I can write about without getting any writers block.
Mind Mapping (Spider Diagram)
Or whatever you want to call it. One of the most powerful techniques for coming up with blog posting ideas to write about is mind mapping. You may choose a different method of brainstorming but I genuinely set specific times to come up with ideas. Mostly twice a month. This gives you an endless supply of ideas that you can choose to blog about. If you keep it up you will never run out of ideas.
Normally once I have finished mind mapping I will convert the best ideas that I have come up with into text files to save into my ideas folders as we have mentioned above.
Calendars
I’ve used a variety of approaches to creating editorial calendars over the years. I’ve adapted my approach over time to suit the different stages of my blogs. These days as I’m actively editing two decent sized blogs with up to 30 posts a week I find that I need to map out what posts I’ll be doing ahead of time.
In doing this you’re able to develop content that builds momentum (posts that build upon each other), take your readers on a more thoughtfully planned journey and give them a more balanced run of content.
I found previously that if I wasn’t planning ahead in this way that I’d end up with too much of one kind of content all in a row which didn’t really benefit readers as much.
The other good thing about this approach is that you know what writing you need to have done by certain times of the week – deadlines work well for me in motivating me to work.
I’ve shared 3 of the techniques I use to help me keep fresh content coming on my blogs – I’d love to hear from you on how you do it in comments below!
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comments. They are much appreciated. Come back soon to see a reply.