Write and Schedule Posts Ahead of Time
by jim on December 23rd, 2009One of the biggest pressures bloggers feel, and mostly it’s self-imposed, is the need to write every day. The logic is that people visiting each day want to see new content and if you disappoint them too many times, they won’t return. While this pressure is at times unfounded (with RSS, more of your fans are pulling your stories along with dozens or hundreds of others), I can understand the motivation to keep moving the chains.
You can reduce the pressure to write every day if you batch your work and schedule posts ahead of time. Right now on Bargaineering, I have posts scheduled until December 29th (two a day, with one interactive “Your Take” post on Friday). This frees me up to be more flexible with my writing. If there’s a topic that catches my interest, I can take the time to research it and put it next in the queue. If I want to focus on other aspects of blog promotion, I can without feeling like I’m sacrificing quality of content.
One obvious downside to this is that you lose some flexibility. Unless you adhere to a strict schedule of two posts a day, this is a downside you can overcome simply by posting whatever interests you whenever it interests you. There is no rule that says you can only publish one post a day, or two, or three.
One thing to remember is that people are only able to read so much in one day. If you write one meaty, educational post a day, you will do well on that schedule probably forever. If you write one meaty post and then a few entertaining or list-y type posts, your readers will be able to handle that too. It’s not required reading, so people are free to skip articles that don’t interest them. 
I find it’s easy to schedule them using 8.5″x11″ calendars. I just use the Calendar template in Microsoft Word and print it out on some scrap paper. We had some pink paper lying around and I printed it on that, it makes the calendar very easy to find on my desk. Since my schedule is two a day, I write a B in the upper left when I have my morning post and a B in the lower left when I’ve scheduled the afternoon post. It’s as simple as that.
Give it a try, you’ll find it very liberating.
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December 30th, 2009 at 5:42 am
I’ve definitely not got my content flow right yet. After I finish writing one of my 1000 word epics, I feel burned out for a couple of days.
I should probably sneak in some smaller posts as you suggest, but I worry it would put off the 650 RSS subs I’ve already happily picked up along the way?
December 30th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Monevator,
I feel the same way you do. Most posts I write are about 1000 words, and at most I feel like I can do two of those a day. After 2000 words, I feel like my brain has to stop. But if you think about it, 1000-2000 words a day is a lot. If you’re proofreading and all that, it’d be the equivalent of at least 800 pages for a book every year (or maybe 2-4 decent sized books a year). That’s a lot of writing.
I’m starting to incorporate some smaller posts in my writing (<600 words), but I know lots of people do less than that. I leave comments that are larger than some people's posts (FreeMoneyFinance for example).
December 31st, 2009 at 12:00 am
Consider shortening your posts, 1000 words is a very large post. You may find that a large % of your readers never make it the whole way (or they may scan most of it), try to break it up if you can. 2,000 is simply absurd… too many words to maintain a reader’s attention unless it’s a reference type of post they can return to often.
FreeMoneyFinance is a bad example for post length because FMF writes a lot of summary type of posts where he digests news stories and links to them.
December 31st, 2009 at 12:10 am
That’s the thing – most of my posts have been reference type posts I think. I’ve not had many get close to 2000 though.
Maybe 3 or so
I don’t really do summary type posts of news stories. Are those useful?
Is 600 words considered small? Or should I go even smaller?
I want to adequately address topics without always having to do it in a series format. Maybe I’m just long-winded
haha
December 31st, 2009 at 9:16 am
I personally don’t think they are useful unless it’s an article you found that likely doesn’t have wide distribution. For example, I wouldn’t summarize a NY Times front page story but if some local paper had something relevant, I might talk about it. If there was a story I felt strongly about, I’d also share it.
600 should really be your average with the majority of posts around that number.
Series format can be very compelling.
December 31st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Do you think a series should be broken up with other articles, or is it fine to do it all in one swoop?
The only problem I see with doing it all at once is that current readers might not be interested – so your blog would be pretty useless (in their view) until your series is over.