Have you ever been to a blog, only to find they haven’t added a post for months, or randomly update it in batches? Will you ever subscribe to a blog like that?
I won’t – and most other people won’t, either.
In fact, Joe Pulizzi (
@JoePulizzi), the founder of Content Marketing Institute, published an entire hour long podcast about the importance of consistency in blogging and content marketing.
Consistency is one of the keys to a successful blog. People will come to expect your blog posts, and if you don’t deliver them when and where you say you will, you’ll undermine their trust and lose potential customers.
Obviously, you don’t want that. But blogging is so easy to forget about – after all, you have a business to run!
All hope is not lost. There are four steps you can take to never miss another blog post, and start seeing the results you want from your blog.
Step #1: Set a Publishing Timeline
You can publish monthly, biweekly, weekly, or multiple times a week. If you want to establish yourself, setting a goal to publishing two-three posts per week seems to be a sweet spot.
The important thing to keep in mind is this: Only commit to something you know you can keep up with. Blogging three days a week for two months, then cutting it back to once a week, will upset your audience and reduce your credibility.
Step #2: Create a Content Calendar
A content calendar is, well, a calendar of when your content will be published.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a calendar – you can use Trello or a spreadsheet instead. I like Google Calendars, though.
Here’s an example of what a content calendar might look like:
You’ll notice the calendar includes:
- The publish date
- The due date (meaning the article is finished and ready to be published)
- The author (if you have multiple authors on your site)
- The topic/title
- The details of what the post should be about or include
- Keywords you want to rank for
- Personas you’re writing for
- The offers or calls to actions (CTAs) you’re going to include
- The goal of the post
- Any helpful links, such as resources to link to
You can also use your content calendar as an blogging idea bucket list so you never run out of content ideas.
Step #3: Set Up Notifications and Get an Accountability Partner
Once you have your content calendar in place, it’s easy to set up notifications to remind you when your posts are due.
Google calendar allows you to set an email or text reminder hours or days before the due date. Trello also lets you set up reminders. If you use Google Sheets or another spreadsheet, you’ll have to set reminders another way, like IFTTT.
Additionally, finding someone to hold you accountable to sticking to your schedule will help a lot. If you don’t have coworkers or employees you can ask, branch out to friends or family.
Step #4: Write Posts in Advance
If you set up your content calendar properly and built a list of content ideas, you’ll be able to write posts way ahead of time and schedule them to be posted on the correct date and time.
This step is the most important to never missing a post. There will be weeks when you won’t have the time or motivation to write. Things happen. But if you write your posts ahead of time, you can do your writing in bulk and take less time in the whole process.
Conclusion
Consistently posting high-quality content to your blog is a necessity. You won’t be able to build a loyal following or see the results you want otherwise. So set up a system to make consistency as easy as possible!
Remember, however; consistency alone isn’t enough to see results.
The other side of the content marketing coin is marketing. You need to promote your content as well!
It can be difficult to remember to share your posts multiple times and come up with unique things to say after you spent all that time writing. Automate the process of social sharing with BlogWorks!
