Do you blog often, or do you want to blog more often? Are you interested in blogging, but don’t know where to start?
There is a way to make blogging daily easier. It just takes a little work up front.
I have two running blogs that I write on Saturday and Sunday. I use this approach with them every weekend.
How do I do it?
What I have done is create a template in Word with key items that I want to happen every time I blog.
I have a title and subtitle for the blog. The title is something catchy and the subtitle is more descriptive. I actually have a blogging outline plan for each blog and all that is listed is the title and subtitle. That’s enough for me to generate my blog every week. An important point is to keep your title to under 75 characters. This ensures that when you tweet the title, the URL that is generated doesn’t cause the title to become shortened. Since all of my blogs automatically post to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, this is important.
The next section is a short synopsis of the article. I don’t write this until I am done writing the blog. After I publish the blog, I use the LinkedIn button at the bottom of the blog to share it with several key groups on LinkedIn. I copy the subtitle in the title blog and the synopsis in the detail block. This provides enough information to see if the reader is interested in the blog. Sharing my posts to these groups is what generates most of my readers to my blog.
Then I have the body of the message. Since I have a running blog, the opening and the closing are always the same and are prewritten. I link back to the first blog in the series so readers that come in later in the series can still follow the line of blogging.
The first thing, after the opening, is the subtitle. Then I write the body of the blog. This is where the magic happens.
At the bottom, I have a section for related links. If I don’t hyperlink items in the body of the text, then is find at least three related links for the audience.
Last, I have a section at the bottom for meta tags. I type in the regular tags and save the template, but then I add tags to the list after I write the article. This ensures I get the spelling right on the tags and I come up with as many as possible.
When it is time to write a blog, I open up the template and save it as the title of my blog for the week. Then I just start filling in the blank areas and updating information as required. After it is written and proofed, I copy it into WordPress, add graphics, and publish.
Makes the daily blogging activity pretty easy.
If you professionally blog, this will help you with daily idea generation, sticking to a line of thought and on topic, and ensure you keep a record of your blogs for potential use later.
For both of my weekend blogs, at some point, I plan to combine all the posts and put them into a book. Having all the posts helps to make this happen.