I started this blog three years ago. I had a one year old, a full time crazy demanding job, but I felt like I was missing out on remembering all of the things that I didn’t want to forget about motherhood and raising Harrison. It was born out of wanting to have a creative outlet that was just mine, and encouraged me to write about the things that I cared about or found interesting. And while I couldn’t tell you the first thing about monetizing blogs, I have learned a few things that have worked for me when planning posts.

-1- I try to post regularly and on a schedule. I found that Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday posts worked best for me and my work schedule. Do I sometimes miss a day? Or even a whole week when I’m feeling uninspired? Yeah. But for the most part, I try for three posts a week that are scheduled to post super early in the morning, for all of the morning blog readers. I know you’re out there 🙂

-2- Once a month, I plan blog post topics for the upcoming month. I have an Outlook calendar just for my blog posts, and I add my blog post topic for the day to the calendar. There are certain days that I join link-ups, which I set as recurring calendar events. And then I always look at the month ahead and note any special posts I want to do that could be tied to a special event. I tend to do letters to my kids posts around their birthdays, and 7 Quick Takes twice a year per kid at least usually around the birthdays and half birthdays. I do something “marriage” related around our anniversary…you get the picture.

-3- I work on the rough outline of posts a week in advance of them posting. I’ll write a rough draft of the posts for the topics I have coming up the upcoming week. Then I’ll go back and edit, re-write, and add pictures before they get scheduled to go live on the blog. If I need particular pictures for a post that I haven’t taken, I’ll add it as a reminder in my phone for the next time I’m most likely doing that activity.

-4- When I can’t think of any topics to cover in a blog post, I usually look back at the previous years around the same timeframe to see if there’s a thematic post that I could build on or refresh for the current year. Or I use other bloggers for inspiration. There are so many great prompts and topics! I’ve also found that Storyworth, which I had a subscription to and was sort of the jumping off point of wanting to start a blog, has great ideas for posts as well.

-5- While I generally stick to my topic planning calendar, there are times when something pops up that I want to write about in a more timely fashion. I just move the other idea to later in the month or even the following month.