Listen to “MIH031:How to batch schedule your posts” on Spreaker.
In blogging, there are some wonderful reasons to batch schedule, and staying ahead of the game is definitely one of them. Life gets busy for mompreneurs, and in order to keep your blog rolling in the background even when life is throwing some nasty curve balls at you, it’s a great idea to make sure your content keeps rolling out. Batch scheduling is not a new concept, and you should definitely consider making this a part of your blogging routine. Now that we’ve got the “why” out of the way, let’s talk about how to batch schedule your posts.
Clear your schedule for at least one hour at a time.
When you clear your schedule for blogging- and only blogging- then your mindset shifts to one of productivity. Think: “How many blog post ideas can I think of in one hour?” Also think: “How many blog posts can I actually write in one hour?” The truth is, you won’t actually know your productivity rate until you start this activity. Go ahead and select a day and time. All you need is an hour, and you may actually need longer as you learn how much you can accomplish. Find someone to keep the kids, clear your desk or find a good thinking spot, and get to work. Start planning your blog posts. Once you learn how to batch schedule your posts, you’ll be so excited you did, and you will look forward to these planning sessions.
Gather your topics.
Compile a list of topic ideas your audience would love to hear from you. You can add in some keyword research strategy as well, finding good topics on Keyword Planner. Write down as many ideas as you can. Try to have a goal: say- 10 topics for 10 weeks? Start with a goal small enough to be easily accomplished but big enough to be a slight challenge.
Write your first blog post.
Start by outlining your post. I like 3-step how-to posts because it’s a nice number for me. Give a topic sentence, a few supporting sentences for your outline, then fill in the juicy details. Now title your post and go in and handle your meta tags and add your image lastly.
Find your groove.
Don’t forget to time yourself. How long did it take you from start to finish to actually write your post once you had the ideas at hand? This will give you an indication of how many posts you should be able to write in an hour. Today, I can muster about two posts per hour, not including images. Media like podcasts and videos, of course, take longer. Figure out what your rate is to determine how many hours you’ll need total to get your posts completed upfront. If your goal is to post once per week on your blog and you’re able to batch schedule 5 posts, you’ve already got 5 weeks of content ready to go. This, my friend, is why it’s so awesome to know how to batch schedule your posts. It saves you time and allows you to be so much more productive!
Schedule your posts in WordPress.
There are many plugins you can use to accomplish scheduling your posts, but you really don’t need a plugin. WordPress has a scheduling feature already installed. Simply click over to “Publish immediately” and edit this to schedule your post for a future date. Plugins, however, can give you a few more options. If you’re visual like me, you might like to see your posts scheduled out in a full month calendar spread like the one offered in WordPress: Editorial Calendar.
Coschedule is a great one that offers social media sharing options as well. Scheduling your post in advance can become as fancy an event as you like it to be.
And voila- you’re done. You can sit back and take a week’s break if you like. If you want, you could even schedule out your tweets and other social media shares using platforms like Hootsuite. I really believe that learning how to batch schedule your posts is going to be helpful for you.
So…are you using the batch scheduling method to stay on track, or keep up with your blogging routines? If you are using this method, how has it helped your online business?
