Better Your Blog in a Week: #4
As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, this week is all about me helping you improve your blog. Maintaining your blog is a never ending cycle of tweaks, posts, layout changes, squashing bugs, writing comments, etc… But some days it’s just not in your schedule.
#4: What to do When you Have Little Time
Today is all about making the most of your time when there isn’t much of it for you. First, set your priorities. The first thing I need to do when I wake up is write this blog post. This reaches the top of my list for several reasons:
- It’s a weekend; numbers go down on weekends due to less people reading feeds and stuff, so I always do my best to get fresh content out.
- I’m continuing the 7 part series.
- Following an increase in readers (aka no downtime…) I like to keep content fresh.
- I like to keep content fresh anyways!
So I’m writing this, just minutes before you will be able to set eyes on this and there’s a couple things I’m doing to keep my time in check. Simple stuff:
- Put Adium (MSN, etc…) on invisible. I’d normally turn it off, but there’s always a change in plans when you plan something, so some third parties need to be informed.
- Must… not… open… Bloglines… I know there’s hundreds of stories, news, lolcats and things overheard for me to see, but it’ll have to wait.
- Put music on. I know how long the songs are approximately, and it’s a mental not of how long I’ve been writing. Most of the songs are 10 minutes or more anyways, so it’s not hard to keep track.
- I woke up a little early to allow for some more time.
While you can do all these things, what you write should reflect the amount of time you have. I have quite a bit considering, but you may not.
With very little, write a simple link roundup post. Personally, I don’t like writing them that much, even though I tried to start, but readers can like them. Sharing is good.
An awesome post is the “what’s coming up” or a post about the future of your site. Readers love to know what’s going on, and potential readers might subscribe for all this stuff coming up. Don’t lie, though. Don’t make it a politician’s promise for new features 
You actually have to come through in time. Quick and easy, which is what your schedule begs of.
In dire need, when you’re literally shutting your computer down to leave, nothing happened that week and you have nothing planned for the future, there’s always the video post. Just fill in the title, category, paste the code to your funny or inspirational video and post away.
With all that said, it took me 50 minutes to write this. I just couldn’t stay away from the RSS and Adium’s invisible function never works. I’ll survive.
Leave a comment
Chris Juneau
August 19th, 2007 at 11:33 AM
There is one word that could sum up this whole article.
DISCIPLINE
I know it’s hard for lots of us to find time to put out quality posts and comments, but I believe if you have discipline you will surely succeed in everything that you do. Most of us can find and extra hour in the day to commit to our online activities. The biggest challenge for me was to change my online time from passive to active. Before I was just an observer, now I’m a contributor.
The first month or so of running your own blog is fun and exciting. After all it’s new and uncharted territory. With discipline you can keep it fun, exciting, and new. The worst thing you can do is let the “blog lag” kick in and trust me it will.
Connor Wilson
August 19th, 2007 at 12:21 PM
That one word could change so many lives and prevent so many things, but to obtain it and posses it seems to be hard for people.
Great comment, Chris.
Joey Primiani
August 19th, 2007 at 2:07 PM
Very very nice round up Connor. Keep up the good work. BTW, I revamped my blog so you should check it out. Peace!
Ryan
August 21st, 2007 at 7:46 PM
A great post. I thought it was worth a mention Google Docs allows you to post to your blog from a mobile device so you could, in theory post while you are on the go. There are probably dozens of ways to do it. It may not be easy but its just one more thing.
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