Defining a content creation game plan

I have been inconsistent with posting blog content on my own website. I have legitimate reasons that include two small kids demanding of my time, a house that needs a little cleaning, paying customers with writing deadlines and expectations, and a weekly soccer league. I mean, isn’t it obvious that the soccer league takes precedence to blogging?

I know what it takes to stick to a blog post schedule for me. Either I have a content creation plan or I have deadlines that an editor or client holds me to. Since there’s no editor or client for my personal site, it’s painfully obvious that I’m long overdue for setting up a plan.

I had a plan, years ago, for posting on my personal blog. I had themed days each week. Because of that, I often posted M-F, a short post each day. I used rather quirky themes. Friends told me my “therapy Thursdays” was strange. Fine, whatever. It was my favorite because it was a fun writing exercise with a specific format. I had a pretend therapy session with a doctor and wrote it out as a scripted conversation between the two of us. I feel like it helped hone my ability to write dialogue. I did, however, retire it.

Therapy Thursdays wouldn’t work on this site. Obv. Here’s my game plan, instead, for setting up a plan. I’ll try to revisit it again in a few months and see how well it’s working and what needs tweaking. Share with me your game plan so I can add the bits and pieces that I like most.

1. Get a calendar. I did this recently at a nice, little trip to T.J.Maxx, everyone’s favorite grab-bag store. I never know if the item I’m hoping to find will be there when I waltz through their doors and yet, I leave with a cart full. Last time, I left with dry shampoo, two pairs of shoes, and three workout tops. I went in to look at rugs.
2. Write a monthly posting schedule and plan content ahead of time. For me, I chose to include both my personal blog and this writing blog on my calendar. Sundays are for personal writing, Wednesdays are for this site. Let’s see if those days work okay. For coming up with my content ideas, see numbers four and five below.
3. Hang the calendar near my computer. I affixed a good ol’ command strip to the brick wall behind my desk. Done and done.
4. Have a theme for the month. For my personal blog, I’m continuing my 2017 theme, #yearofbeautiful, writing posts about things that help me feel more confident, connect with others, and living authentically. For this site, the next two months will be dedicated to my content creation planning, this being the first post of that theme.
5. To get the specific ideas, I refer to my saved ideas, which come from my “secret” Pinterest board. I wrote about that in a past post, “How I use Pinterest to create blog posts”.
6. My last step is to work on understanding my website stats. This will involve everything from tracking past posts with the most traffic to coming up with keyword strategies. I’ll be doing more research on this and creating a content post about it in a couple of weeks. Exciting, right?

For me, once a week is enough. Some people, especially if they’re pushing for a lot of traffic to monetize their site, would need multiple posts a week so planning that a month or two in advance would be a big help in making it a doable goal. We’ll see how easy it is to come up with content each month. How does your plan compare with mine?