If you have been following my Bloggie Wednesday series, you’ll know that I preach a whole lot about planning your content and the importance of having an editorial calendar. I’m obsessed with mine. I use 3 calendars to plan my editorial content: my Erin Condren Life Planner, the Editorial Calendar WordPress plugin and the CoSchedule WordPress plugin. They keep me organised and significantly reduce the amount of “shit I have nothing to blog about” days.
Having an editorial calendar is great for planning your content and the ability to be able to schedule blog posts and even social media content in advance frees you to do other things. When I have my content sorted out in advance, I can move on to other projects.
Suffice it to say, my blog cannot live with an editorial calendar. Or three.
Having said that, I realised something about all the planning and scheduling of content in advance. It takes away the fun and joy of blogging at the spur of the moment. That’s what blogging used to be about; heck, in many instances, that’s what it’s supposed to be about. Blogging allows us to update when we like and how we like.
When I was using Blogger, the “draft/schedule” feature was not introduced yet and blogging was really free and easy. Sure, I would sometimes have posts typed out in Microsoft Word (when work got really dull and I needed a quick creative outlet, I whipped out a blog post. As I was using Word, colleagues thought I was writing a report. Shhh!), but I was able to post at the spur of the moment as well. That also meant needing to update posts several times to rectify typos and grammatical errors but for the most part, it was, again, pretty free and easy.
I’ve been scheduling content for so long now that I can’t even remember the last time I actually blogged and published something at the spur of the moment. This blog works on a schedule and I keep to it quite firmly. To be honest, I do miss throwing caution, typos and grammatical errors to the wind sometimes.
Of course, this isn’t to say that I resent the ability to schedule content in advance. Oh no, quite the contrary. God forbid if those functions are ever taken away from me because I really would be running around like a headless chook if I’m no longer able to have an editorial calendar. My paranoid personality wouldn’t allow it.
Still, it would be fun to just whip out a blog post and publish it just like that, wouldn’t it?
What about you? Do you use an editorial calendar? Or do you prefer to wing it and blog at the spur of the moment and only when you feel like it?
PS: This blog post was scheduled 2 days in advance. Typical.
I operate according to a schedule and schedule posts in advance where possible. But if I feel the need to really REALLY blog about something (usually a complaint/rant) then I bump off the scheduled post and wing it. BUT it still gets scheduled for the next day because I only do 1 post a day so hmmm.. not really winging it am I? Darn 😛
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Hahahah I know what you mean! I’m with you though; if there’s something I really need to blog about (either a huge sale, big promo or best of all, a major complaint), I’ll bump the rest down. Having said that, I’ll still be scheduling it though so erm, my point is …? 😛
I don’t usually plan my posts and at the most I plan about a week in advance – usually though I end up writing a post on the same week I’m publishing. Sometimes I even let that week’s posting slide just because of Uni commitments! I guess I’m really not all that organised haha
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Hey planning a week in advance is better than no planning at all! It’s still being organised. 😉
I keep a calendar out of necessity: Both to keep track of sponsored post dates (which are usually firm) and things I want to write about soon, but honestly I do end up switching around a lot of stuff at the last minute depending on my mood and/or if new, interesting things come to my attention. I keep my calendar in MS Word (old-school) and usually write the things that have firm “due dates” in red. Other stuff is usually black or purple. Super modern, I know. 😛
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Oh yeah I definitely need a calendar for my sponsored post dates, that’s for sure. Hahaha I like the idea of your super modern calendar! 🙂
I miss the days of what blogging was about, publish what you have in your mind at that moment – anything, anytime, anywhere. Blogging seems so complicated nowadays comparatively – besides the need to look after your reader, you need to worry about things like planning, traffic, keywords, SEO etc etc.
I only started using Calendar when I relaunched my blog a few months ago using WordPress, simply because the previous blogging software I use doesn’t come with a Calendar plugins and I couldn’t stick to my plan. I find it useful I can spread out my posts evenly across the days so that it still looks like I blog regularly. But I still miss what blogging was like (ok, I have to admit I’m getting old because old people like how things used to be!)
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That’s how I feel too. For sure my blog now cannot function without an editorial calendar with lots of planning, keyword research, SEO, etc etc but I definitely miss how blogging used to be. No pressure at all. Just publish when I feel like it. Ahh those were the days …