How To Plan Your Blog Posts

how to plan your blog posts header
~ Karalee

GIFTED PR | Lately I have been finding it difficult to plan my blog posts, but recently I was gifted the Mål Paper Daily Goal Setter Planner, and I am using it to get back on track with blogging. I wanted to share how you can use the planner to plan your blog posts. 

Set Your Goals

The first step to planning your posts is to set a goal of how many posts you want to publish within a week or month. You can publish posts once or twice a week or even more, every other week, or once a month depending on what fits with your schedule. For keeping track of your goals, the Mål Paper Daily Goal Setter Planneris great. With the planner you can include your blogging goals as well as non-blogging related long, medium, and short-term goals such as finishing school assignments, reading a certain number of books each month, cleaning your home, or crossing off an item on your bucket list such as my 30 Things To Do Before Turning 30 list. The planner is £21.95 and has 274 pages with undated dates, therefore, you can start using it at any time. The planner also has space to write 3 things you are grateful for each day, and you can use it as both a goal planner and a gratitude journal. The long-term goals pages of the Mål Paper Daily Goal Setter Planner. There is space to write 14 goals with what they are, when you want to acheive them, why, and how.

 

Plan Your Schedule

Now that you have your goal of how often you want to post, it helps to schedule when to work on writing the post, editing it, taking photos, creating graphics such as the featured image, publishing the post, and promoting your post. As I mentioned in my How To Find Time For Blogging post, I am both a mother and a full-time master’s student, and it helps to have a blogging schedule and not have to do everything at the last minute. It can be difficult and stressful to complete all the blogging tasks in one day, but with the Mål Paper planner, you can easily plan your days, weeks, and months in advance. I also want to mention that it is okay to not always stick to a schedule because life happens, but having a schedule can help reduce stress. The daily goal planning pages of the Mål Paper Daily Goal Setter Planner. At the top there is a blank date. Underneath the date is a space to write 3 things to be grateful for followed by a daily affirmation - I am... There is then space to write today's tasks and notes. At the bottom is spae to write great things that happened today.

 

Brainstorm Blog Post Topics

I like to keep a list of potential blog post topics in the notes app on my phone, and you can also have a list on your computer, tablet, journal, or the notes section of the Mål Paper planner. You can write down your ideas whenever they come to you, and you can look at your older blog posts to write a follow-up or turn that post into a series. You can look at blog post ideas lists such as my 125 Beauty, Books, and Lifestyle Blog Post Ideas. You can also look at what other bloggers are writing about, but remember it is okay to be inspired by other bloggers, but it is never okay to copy them. You can look on YouTube and social media or you can consider what holidays are coming up and posts you could write about that. For example, Christmas is next month, and I recently published my Christmas Gift Guide for Kids. Hopefully, by having a brainstorm list of blog post topics, you can come back to the list when you are trying to figure out what to write next. The Notes section of the Mål Paper Daily Goal Setter Planner. There is the word Notes written at the top the lined page.

 

Outline Your Post

When I sit down to write a post, I find making an outline first helps. I include the main points of the post I want to address without worrying about writing complete and grammatically correct sentences. Once I have my main points down, I then go back and write in complete sentences.

 

Edit and Publish Your Post

After I have written a post, I go back and edit it by reading through the post to see if it makes sense, running the post through a grammar checker, creating the featured and Pinterest images using either royalty-free photos or photos I took myself, ensuring I have the correct headings, double-checking everything again, and finally publishing the post. For recommendations on grammar checkers, royalty-free stock photo sites, and other blog resources, you can check out my The Best Free + Paid Blogging Resources post. 

 

Promote Your Post and Repeat

Blogging does not end with hitting the publish button, and it is important to promote your post as well. If you are using WordPress, the WordPress Reader can be helpful for other WordPress users to see your post, but what about others that do not use WordPress? In my How to Promote Your Blog for Free post, I include ways you can promote your posts on social media and through collaborations with other bloggers. You can also look into advertising with other bloggers for a month as they often have monthly ‘Meet the Advertisers’ posts where they link to several of your blog posts. While promoting your post, you can start the process over again and pick a topic from your brainstorming list or brainstorm for more ideas for your next post. Also, if you find that your schedule is not working for you or you need to adjust your goal of how often you post, you can change that as well. 

How do you plan your blog posts?

 

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Published by Karalee

27 thoughts on “How To Plan Your Blog Posts”

  1. Honestly as much as I would want to, I hardly plan things ahead. I did that in the past, but then real life stuff interfered and I wasn’t able to keep up. These days I do try to write posts in advance. I have now got about 6-7 posts ready to get published, and that helps too. But sometimes to no fault of my own, real life gets too busy. Which is why I’m not trying to stick to schedules anymore😊 Great post though, and I think it will be helpful to quite a lot of people 😊

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  3. I have a little dotted page planner that I keep for my blog. As I usually only post once a week, it’s easier to keep track but I do have a checklist for photos, Canva, social promotions etc. Completely agree with keeping a note of everything though, I’d be lost without mine! x

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  4. This is great, I have documents for blog post ideas, and for scheduling them out in advance etc., But lately I’ve been thinking I might prefer to have a physical journal that I can write in for this.

    I wonder, is this planner specific for blogging? Or is it for general goal setting?

    Thanks so much for the review!

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    1. That’s great you have documents for your ideas & for scheduling them!
      This planner is for general goal setting, but you can use it for anything as there is a monthly calendar & planning, weekly review & the daily tasks sections

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    1. That’s great you plan ahead & that’s interesting you take photos first!
      Sometimes I’ll take photos first because I like to take them in bulk since it’s my least favorite part of blogging.

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  7. When I initially started blogging my list looked similar to yours as to how I would plan my blog posts. It worked for a few weeks but of course, life throws curve balls and it’s easy to get off schedule.

    Now, I really like to come up with a topic and jot a few notes and simply create. I still stick to a schedule and post 3 times a week. But I am still also “ok” and accepting when I fail at this. It’s perfectly fine. No need to stress.

    xo Erica

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    1. That’s great you found what works for you & you can still stick to a schedule!
      Exactly! Blogging shouldn’t be stressful & it’s okay when everything doesn’t go according to plan

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  14. I really need to start planning my new content better. I already have good schedule for updating old content and I find it important to stay on top of it. New content is always harder. I would typically draft a couple of posts and choose one that feels the most relevant. But planning would definitely be more efficient. Thank you for the tips!

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  16. These tips are useful. I would love to try them out one of these days. But for now, I use the Notion app in plotting my blogging schedule. It enables me to group all my blog post ideas and make a section of those which I already wrote or published. Somehow, it’s convenient since it is in my phone, which I bring always with me.

    – Tina (https://totetallylegal.com/)

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      1. You may want to give it a try. It has gained popularity amobg students because it is great for scheduling and taking notes. But personally, I find it applicable to content creators, like us, too.

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