blog consistently

Last month I decided that beginning August 1 I would update my blog 5 days a week.

I couldn’t have picked a worse time to do this.

This month school started, which meant I’d have to juggle blogging (and freelance writing and business building) with my full-time teaching job. And the week I had to go back to work my mother also had to be put in the hospital. So after work I wasn’t going straight home to work on blog posts but instead going to take care of my mom. And to top it all off I was having health problems of my own.

But I did it, anyway.

Despite everything going on, I still managed to blog 5 days a week this month. Here’s how I did it and how you can blog consistently, too, even when life sucks.

Plan your posts. At the end of July I sat down with my blogging planner and decided what I’d post each week in August. Inevitably, some of those post ideas changed or were moved to different days, but having a plan kept me from ever having those days of staring at a blank computer screen.

Batch produce your posts. With a plan in place it was easy to batch produce content. Each week on Saturday or Sunday I’d try to write as many posts as I could for the upcoming week so I wouldn’t find myself scrambling the night before or the day of to put together a post. So take your blog on a date: Go to your favorite coffee shop and spend at least three hours working on content.

Repurpose old content. I’ve been blogging in some capacity for 9 years so I have content galore. A few days this month I revisited and repurposed content from one of my old blogs. Even if you haven’t started half a dozen blogs in your lifetime like I have, you probably have old content that you can repurpose, too. Update old posts with fresh perspective and new images.

Decide to blog no matter what. In spite of all my planning, batch producing, and repurposing, there were still days when life caught up to me and I did find myself writing a post the night before and even the day it was to be posted. But I did anyway. I simply decided that I would do this no matter what, just as each June I decide I will walk/run 100 miles no matter what — no matter how hot it is outside, no matter how busy I am with See Jane Write (which always has more momentum in the summer), and no matter how much I really want to just sit on the sofa and binge on Netflix. I had the same attitude with blogging 5 days a week. I committed completely.

And this is really the best piece of advice I could give you about blogging consistently. You simply have to commit. And it is this same level of commitment that will help you turn your blog into a business or allow you to transform writing from a hobby into a career.

So decide how often you will update your blog each week and in September commit to sticking to that posting schedule no matter what!