Blogs are fantastic tools. They’re great for businesses to use to boost traffic and engagement on their website and to establish themselves as an authority. But they’re also great for people who want to write about certain topics for an audience, whether you’re doing it as a hobby or to earn money. With a successful blog, you can get involved in sponsorship, affiliate marketing, and even Google Ads for a solid passive income.
But blogging isn’t necessarily easy. One of the most common mistakes bloggers make is a lack of routine. You need to post regularly, which means you need to write regularly. Without a proper routine, it’s hard to keep up with your blog and develop it, and it’s very easy to get burnt out.
If you don’t know how to create a blogging routine, don’t worry, you’re in the right place.
- Setting Realistic Goals
Before you get your blog started, you need to be able to set solid and realistic goals.
Some people try to launch into a blog without setting any goals at all, which means that they and their blog might be unfocused. It’s practically impossible to achieve anything with your blog if you haven’t set goals for yourself.
On the other hand, some people might try to set extreme goals, such as a huge amount of engagement in the first month or twelve posts every day. In this case, you set yourself up to fail.
Goals are meant to focus and motivate you. So if the goals you set are unrealistic, while you might be focused, you aren’t going to be motivated at all when you inevitably fail to reach them. Instead, think about first step goals that will motivate you and get you going in the right direction.
Your goals might change depending on the purpose of your blog. For example, if you want to make money from your blog, your first tiny bit of income is a solid goal to have. But if you’re not interested in earning, this won’t apply. Here are some goals you could work towards in the first weeks or months of your blog.
- Publish a certain number of posts
- Get a like/comment/share from someone you don’t know
- Get a set amount of regular readers/subscribers
- Get your blog indexed on Google
- Your first guest post on another blog
These are just a few examples, so if you have different goals, go for it!
The great thing about setting goals is that they’re a good way to track your progress. If you aren’t reaching reasonable goals, you know something needs to change. But more importantly, when you do reach a goal, it’s a huge boost. Sure, earning a few pence or getting a comment might not seem like a big deal, but it represents a first step in the right direction for your blog.
Blogs are often cumulative. We might dream of going viral and getting a huge boost of interest, and this can be great for your blog, but most of the time, it’s the slow and steady progress that builds up over time that makes a successful blog.
- Planning Your Week
Once you have goals to work towards, the next step to building a routine is to create a plan. This goes hand-in-hand with your goals.
The hallmark of a good blog isn’t necessarily more content. It’s consistent, high-quality content. The fact is that nowadays, you can generate loads of content really quickly using generative tools. But it’s not going to be good, and it definitely won’t be original or true to you. People don’t want to read loads of words that don’t say anything, but they might want to hear what you have to say, even if it takes you a bit longer to say it.
So if you can only post every couple of weeks, then plan around that. It’s better to be regular and consistent with fewer well-thought-out posts than to spam your blog with a dozen posts one day and then neglect it for weeks on end.
But what if you can’t set aside time every week to write?
If you do have a schedule that allows you to write a lot of blog posts at once, but not a few regularly, that’s okay. You can batch write content and then publish at set intervals instead. Most blogging platforms allow you to schedule publishing in advance so you can keep to your schedule without having to manually upload the post each time.
It’s often better to have a few posts waiting in the wings anyway, so if you do end up ill or on holiday, your content doesn’t have to suffer. A lot of bloggers work this way.
As well as planning when you’ll write and post, you can use your schedule to plan what topics you’ll talk about, what keywords to use, and to handle sponsored posts and affiliate links. This is great if you have multiple topics on your blog, so you can post about one subject on set days and a different subject on different days.
There are loads of free online resources you can use to improve your blog and build a blogging schedule. You can also use Excel or Google Sheets to create a timesheet for yourself. Here’s a simple template for your schedule.
| 06:00-10:00 | 10:00-14:00 | 14:00-18:00 | 18:00-22:00 | Topics | Publish?(Y/N) | |
| Monday | ||||||
| Tuesday | ||||||
| Wednesday | ||||||
| Thursday | ||||||
| Friday | ||||||
| Saturday | ||||||
| Sunday |
A plan saves you from the dreaded “blank page” moment, which is when it’s hardest to start writing a post or to work out what you’re doing. You don’t have that moment of indecision, because you already know what you need to do. All that’s left is to, well, do it.
- Creating a Writing Workflow
When it comes to writing, you’ll find that different people work in different ways. As mentioned before, some people are batch writers. While they might not be able to write regularly, once they have some time set aside, they can be very productive and can write a whole bunch of posts at once. Some people have the opposite problem, which is that they either can’t concentrate for that long or simply don’t have a lot of time set aside.
This is why a schedule is so important, and why it should be designed around your workflow. If you can only set aside fifteen minutes per day to write, then make those fifteen minutes worth it.
Setting up a blog and publishing regular content isn’t as simple as it might sound. In reality, it’s a process, and by breaking up this process and working out what you actually have to do in your routine, you can create a workflow that works for you.
The common blogging tasks you’ll need to complete are:
- Work out ideas, such as topics and titles
- Research
- Find keywords
- Set a wordcount goal
- Outlining your blog post
- Drafting the post
- Finding appropriate images or create diagrams
- Editing the draft and putting it all together
- Publishing the blog post
We talked about a common writing problem that all kinds of writers encounter, which is the dreaded blank page. Once you face a blank page, it sometimes makes your mind go blank as well.
This is why a lot of people prefer setting tasks to get rid of the blank page. An outline can massively speed up your workflow and can make it easier to write comfortably. It breaks up the big task (of writing the post) into smaller, more manageable tasks.
Another thing that can help speed up your workflow is to keep an eye on the time. Some people thrive on deadlines, and by using timers and other time management tools, they can be productive when they need to. This is where your schedule can come in handy. If you put aside an hour in a day to write, use a timer to give yourself a sense of urgency.
If you struggle to focus, give yourself some help. Some people like to listen to music without lyrics (like classical or lo-fi) to block out distractions. A dedicated workspace like an office makes it much easier to get into a good workflow.
You can also tweak your workflow and try new techniques until you find something that works.
- Staying Consistent
One thing that has hopefully become clear throughout this article is that consistency is key when it comes to having a successful blog.
When You Post
Posting frequently is important for your readers, so it can boost traffic directly, but it’s also gerat for SEO. Search engines will prioritise newer, fresher content and websites that are regularly updated rather than seemingly dead websites.
It’s a good idea to have regular posting days. While daily content is great, it’s not always realistic, especially if you tend to write long-form content that requires a lot of research. But if you want more traffic, more regular posts are better. It’s important to weigh up those goals we mentioned earlier and think about what your blog is actually for.
If you want to make money, either through a business that your blog is supporting or directly from the blog itself, more regular and less detailed content might be better. But if you want to do lots of deep-dives and your audience is interested in highly researched content, you might need to lower your expectations about how often you can post.
More importantly, you want to stay consistent with your content.
What You Post
Most of this section has been about consistency with when you post, which is very important. But you also want to be somewhat consistent with what you post.
Successful blogs tend to be easy to categorise. There are loads of different topics that you can write about, but this doesn’t mean you should write about everything.
When you’re picking topics to write about, you should think about your audience and your brand. If you run a business, the topics you write about should always align with your products or services. You’re establishing yourself as an authority. Let’s be honest, nobody is interested in what a plumbing company has to say about the best cheesecake recipe, and vice versa.
But the same applies even if you run a blog as a hobby or a direct source of income. You’re trying to curate an audience, and people are more interested in a niche than a general blog. There’s also the fact that you’re the one writing and researching this stuff, so it makes sense to focus on things you’re interested in and knowledgeable about.
This isn’t to say that you can’t write about different things, but if you do have multiple topics, they should make sense together and that share audiences.
And, if we go back to the “posting schedule” conversation, try to be consistent with when you post about certain things. So if you blog about cooking and gardening, try posting cooking content on one day and gardening content on a different day, so even if some of your audience doesn’t read everything you write, they will know when you update your content.
- Avoiding Burnout
Even if you love writing and blogging, one hurdle that a lot of people experience is burnout.
It’s that feeling when all your motivation just drains away. You’re not just staring at a blank page for a couple of minutes, you’re staring at it until you can’t face it. You might have writer’s block, or you might just find it impossible to motivate yourself.
Sometimes this means that you just need a break, which is why it can be good to have a bit of a backlog of posts waiting for you. But sometimes it’s a bigger problem.
Sometimes burnout can lead some bloggers to give up entirely.
Planning and scheduling are key ways to avoid burnout. You put in the work to do all the planning in advance, which gives your poor brain less work and less stress. But as well as planning what to write, when to write, and when to post, you should also plan breaks and rest periods.
Burnout is defined by exhaustion. It can be physical, mental, or emotional exhaustion, or a combination of all three, but it simply means that you’ve pushed yourself to the point where you can’t carry on. Unfortunately it can take a long time to recover from burnout.
So look after yourself. When you’re a blogger, you’re responsible for your own work schedule and breaks, so be a good manager.
Don’t be afraid to talk to other people about how you feel. One of the wonderful things about blogging is that there is a real community. This is great for monetisation, finding influencers, and growing your audience, but it’s also great for forming relationships with people who understand what you’re going through. So if you’re burnt out, talk about it.
There are also a couple of great ways to stay consistent even when you need a break. As mentioned a couple of times, having a couple of already-written posts ready to go is a great trick. Take advantage of those moments when you are more motivated. But you can also use this as a good time to ask for guest bloggers and collaborators. This is great for you, because you still get content and a break, and it can help your fellow bloggers out.
You should also work out what the actual problem is. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- Are you burnt out because of a too busy schedule?
- Do you have unrealistic expectations or goals for your blog?
- Are you burnt out because of your mental health?
- Have your life circumstances changed?
Sometimes you might be able to nip burnout in the bud by changing your schedule or setting more realistic goals. But sometimes the problem is unrelated to your blogging itself.
The fact is that life goes on outside of our blogs, and sometimes it can feel less like an escape or an opportunity and more like another form of stress. In these times, taking a break can be the best thing to do.
- Tracking Progress
Once you have a routine set up and you’ve started your blog, you still have to keep an eye on your progress.
It’s important to be able to check that you’re actually reaching your goals. You can also use other blogs as examples, or use a timeline to help you determine whether your blog is as successful as you expect it to be after a certain amount of months.
Tracking your progress will also help you to identify potential weak points. For example, if you’re getting plenty of visitors to your blog, but not a lot of people are sticking around, you know that your SEO work is good, but your content might not be engaging enough.
Many blog hosting platforms come packed with tools to help you track metrics like the amount of visitors you get, engagement patterns, sales/income, and even how long people spend on each page and where they click.
This information allows you to develop your blog and continue to set and reach goals.
