Does this sound familiar?

You’ve finally launched your blog and you’re SO EXCITED. You’ve posted announcements about your new site on every social media channel and sent emails about it to everyone on your contact list. You even had business cards made and maybe even designed a blog branded T-shirt. Perhaps you even had a blog launch party!

Six months later your blog has been abandoned. You had plans to publish new content once a week, but you felt lucky if you updated your site once a month. So eventually, you gave up — not because you’re lazy, but simply because life got in the way.

I’ve been blogging consistently for over a decade. Through the years I’ve changed jobs and even time zones but my commitment to blogging has remained. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way…

Be a Woman with a Plan

In order to create content consistently, you have to be a woman with a plan. You need to plan out your content ahead of time. I’ve found that I’m more likely to do this if I make planning fun by using a tool like The Content Planner.

Created by photographer, graphic designer, and entrepreneur Kat Gaskin, The Content Planner is designed specifically for content creators to help you plan your blog posts, email campaigns, social media posts and more — all with the help of fun stickers!

The Content Planner will be available for pre-sale on September 12 at 4 p.m. CT. If you’d like to get on the pre-sale list, here’s what you need to do: Click here (affiliate link) and then click on ‘Free Resources’ and enter your email address so you can access a library of PDF planner downloads. This will automatically get you signed up for the pre-sale and you can use these downloads to start planning your content now. September 10 is the last day to sign up for the pre-sale. The pre-sale ends September 15.

Through my many years of blogging, I’ve learned it’s easier for me to come up with blog and social media post ideas if I have a theme for the month. The Content Planner has suggested themes and post ideas for each month of the year, space for you to set your theme of the month, and space for you to brainstorm more ideas. For example, the suggested theme for September 2019 is “Back to School,” which could include topics such as organization, morning routine, and things to do before the end of summer.

Let’s Get Social

I use The Content Planner to plan my social media posts and email campaigns, too, which, of course, are meant to help promote my blog posts.

Promoting your blog posts is an important step that too many bloggers skip. Once you click “Publish” that is only the beginning. You can take catchy quotes or tips from your post and turn them into tweets for Twitter. Use images from your post on Instagram or Pinterest. Take compelling passages from your post to use on Facebook.

Of course, you don’t want blog post promotion to be the only thing you do on social media. Social media is like an online cocktail party so using social media to only promote your blog would be like going to a party and only talking about yourself the whole time.

On Twitter, for example, you want to schedule a time to reply to and retweet other people’s content. And you want to share links from other sites.

On Instagram, you can share images, graphics, and captions meant to educate or inspire. Share posts that show your transparency, too. Show your followers that you’re not perfect.

The Content Planner has lists of holidays and marketing dates to help you brainstorm social media content ideas. Then you can use the calendar pages to plan when you will publish each social media post.

Stay Consistent by Staying Ahead

To create content consistently you need a plan and a process that helps you to produce blog and social media posts before you need them.

First, decide how often and when you will publish new blog posts. So, let’s say you decide you will publish new posts each Tuesday.

Second, you will brainstorm post ideas for the next month. There are five Tuesdays in October, so you’ll need at least five blog post ideas. (Try to have a few backup ideas, too.)

Third, decide when you will publish each blog post.

These three steps will help you create an editorial calendar, but this is only half (actually one-third) of the battle.

Next, you need to schedule when you will actually create your blog posts and then you have to actually do it.

Consider all the steps it takes to publish a blog post. You have to brainstorm, research and outline, write, select images, format, edit, publish, and promote.

Use The Content Planner or another planner to schedule when you will do each step. Perhaps you’ll work on one step each day or perhaps you’ll block off a weekend each month to batch produce several posts.

Be sure to include time for planning and producing social media posts, too.

So to get ahead for October you could take spend one weekend day this month writing your five blog posts and another day planning your social media content.

If devoting an entire weekend to blogging is out of the question, just do a little each day before work, during your lunch break, or at night after you’ve put the kids to bed. Try to stay at least one week ahead.

Here’s a sample schedule:

Monday: Outline your blog post.

Tuesday: Write your blog post.

Wednesday: Choose images for your blog post.

Thursday: Format and edit your blog post. Schedule when it will publish.

Friday: Brainstorm social media content to promote your blog post.

Weekend: Create and schedule social media posts.

If you’d like to use The Content Planner to finally create content consistently, be sure to sign up for the pre-sale. Just visit the site here (affiliate link) and then click on ‘Free Resources’ and enter your email address. This will automatically get you signed up for the pre-sale and you’ll get access to free downloads to help you start planning your content now. The pre-sale begins September 12 at 4 p.m. CT. September 10 is the last day to sign up for the pre-sale.