How I Make a Blog Schedule

In August I shared with you guys why tbr’s work for me and how I make my tbr. Since you guys seemed to enjoy that I thought I’d share how I make my blog schedule. I’m sure others have posted about this in the past but everyone has their own ways of doing things. I always find that interesting and sometimes eye-opening to read.

Tools

First up is something that people might look over but finding the right tools to put your blogging schedule down in writing is very important to me. I have gone through a few different ways. At first I would just make a little note in my planner. Later I started writing it down in my blogging notebook.

But something I noticed at the end of last year was that it didn’t give me the oversight I needed. At that point i switched to a desk planner. A desk planner is basically a calendar, with each page a week, where you can add in the dates yourself. So you don’t have to start at the start of the year for instance but whenever you first purchase it. There is still a lot of room to make notes or even to cross out something that doesn’t end up working in your schedule and still write something else down.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I need visual things and I prefer them to be hand written down on paper. But if you don’t mind either way, I know a lot of bloggers who use google calendars or other programs on the computer as well.

Making a List

When you make a schedule you need to have some idea of what to post so making a list of things you would like to discuss or write about are good things to start with. I write down random ideas in a notebook and also work out my ideas in a notebook well ahead of time, even for top ten tuesday prompts.

How Much Can I Post?

Something that is important to a blogging schedule is knowing how much you can post. I always prefer to sit on the cautious side with this. It is easier to add things to your blogging schedule than to take things away. I blog ahead quite a bit and have a reasonable amount of time to work on the blog so I have decided to sit on about four days of blogging with room for a fifth and even a sixth day if needed.  Lately it has been more of five-six days as review copies need places to be planned in but at its core my blogging schedule is four days.

Picking Blogging Days

It is helpful to pick blogging days. I have with a schedule of four days Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Those days work pretty well for me and I make sure those days I always have something filled in. But you can also do that you post every 2 or 3 days. Or every day if you can make that work.

Plan in Reoccuring Items

The first thing I do when I make my blogging schedule is plan in reoccuring items. For me that is Top Ten Tuesday, monthly wrap up and reviews. Top Ten Tuesday is of course always on a Tuesday and I check to see how far ahead the prompts have been listed. Than I look what prompts I can make work. Sometimes I can’t and I leave the Tuesday open for a different kind of post.

Monthly wrap ups are always on a Sunday so I always plan that in on the last day of the month (if it is a Sunday) or the first Sunday of the month.

Plan in Reviews

Reviews are mostly planned in on Thursday and Friday, but having a review on Wednesday and (rarely) Monday are possibilities as well if the schedule is full and it is a review copy. As soon as I have a review copy I give it a day for the review in my schedule, which is usually a week before publication if possible. That way I can also see in which order I easily need to read everything.

Look at list and/or Brainstorm for Open Days

After that I start looking at what days I still have open. I generally leave Thursday and Friday open for reviews that might still come as I read. I fill up open Tuesdays and Sundays first. This can be with book tags, book hauls, dancing vs if I have one, discussion posts or any kind of list posts. It just depends on the ideas I have.

Sometimes if I don’t have a lot of wiggle room in those Sundays I might move a Dancing vs or a book tag to a Thursday or Friday or even a Wednesday if I have already filled the days up with reviews. One of the downsides to blogging ahead sometimes is that you can’t be quite as spontanous with blog posts you feel like or that are relevant to the blogging world so that is why I try to keep days like Monday, Wednesday and Saturday open as much as possible so there is still room to post something else if I want to.

How do you go about your blogging schedule?