Site-Wide Activity Forums Tea Conversations A Simple 90 Min Exercise For Planning Out Months of Great Posts

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7 replies, 7 voices Last updated by Gingko 11 years ago
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    • #9838

      peter
      Keymaster
      @peter

      This one comes from ManageWP.com which is a company that offers an interesting product to WordPress site managers. They also happen to run one of the better WordPress-oriented blogs out there and spend a lot of time talke about blogging in general and how to do it well. I’ve come across a lot of gems on their site and this is a good one.

      A Simple 90 Min Exercise For Planning Out Months of Great Posts

      It’s a lengthy article but here are the basics to whet your appetite:

      1) Revisit your blog’s basics

      • Setup up good main topics, categories and tags
      • Have a unique selling proposition that answers the question “Why should I be reading your blog?”

      2) Get organized

      Use tools like Evernote, a paper journal, or pretty much anything to stay organized. Off-the-cuff blogging has its place, but limits you over time.

      3) Content Planning

      Figure out how you want to approach your categories or topics and think about 5-10 ideas for them. There is a lot of about tea that goes beyond just writing about tea. I can point to the Leafbox Tea blog that @jackie I did before Tea Trade. I created topic areas and really tried to hone in a focus on each on every week.

      4) Schedule  and work ahead

      I know that the bloggers at SororiteaSisters.com do this already. They use the scheduling function that is built into WordPress and Tea Trade to work ahead and schedule posts. Google loves the SororiteaSisters, not only for their content, but because of the prolific nature of their blogging habits. The face of that website actually changes everyday, but what if I told you that @liberteas only writes blog posts on Sundays? You wouldn’t know it, especially when there are multiple blog posts being posted regularly everyday of the week.

      The article talks about a plugin called Edit Flow. It is a WordPress plugin that offers some incredibly powerful features. I know it to be used by the New York Times, CNN and others. Some of the features were intended to be added in the next version of WordPress, but they’ve put that on hold.  Its primary intent is for multi-author blogs and magazine-style websites but it has a lot to offer regular bloggers too. Even though it gives so much flexibility, it is a free plugin. It is also now installed on Tea Trade and any blogger can activate it now, for free, simply by visiting their plugins page on their dashboard. Just activate the plugin and  try it out.

      Source: A Simple 90 Min Exercise For Planning Out Months of Great Posts

    • #9839

      Robert Godden
      Participant
      @thedevotea

      I shall read that later, but it looks great.

    • #9840

      lazyliteratus
      Participant
      @lazyliteratus

      Y’know, I’ve actually tried to schedule posts ahead of time on my Tea Trade blog, but it ended up posting immediately after I “publish”.

    • #9841

      peter
      Keymaster
      @peter

      @lazyliteratus here is a link to an article that clearly describes the process for scheduling posts (unfortunately, our video tutorials don’t cover this feature). Once you learn how to do it, you start noticing how it all works together. If you take a chance to try out the Edit Flow plugin, the calender module does a great job of displaying all your past and future posts on in an easy to read calender format.

      Link: How to schedule posts in WordPress

    • #9842

      Jackie
      Keymaster
      @jackie

      It’s a fine article and I see that I’ll likely never become a professional blogger since I don’t follow any of those recommendations. Good find though.

    • #9843

      riccaicedo
      Participant
      @riccaicedo

      @peter thanks for the share. I’m in the process of scheduling ahead, but it takes a bit of time to get in the habit.

    • #9845

      bram
      Participant
      @bram

      Actually I do the scheduling on my pc. Well sort of. I sometimes write multiple posts and upload them at the moment supreme. Allows me to revise it at the last moment (without forgetting to do it in time) and choose which one to publish at the moment.

      I tried the scheduling agent one time, but it made me uncomfortable, but that is me.

      Of course this means more work at the moment of publication….

       

       

    • #9861

      Gingko
      Participant
      @gingkoseto

      Ok, call me lazy. But a 90min exercise is not simple :-p

      That being said, I think these are all very good advice.

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