Preparing Your Blog Posts
With help from your designer or consultant, you’ve set up a WordPress website with blog, social media, and email list. Now you’re faced with the prospect of preparing your blog posts.
In this post I’ll write about how I post regularly and in the next about finding content.
You can set things up so that when you post to your blog you automatically post on social media and broadcast to your email list. This saves a lot of time and effort.
Writing
Your big challenge is to write the blog posts. They can be scheduled and so it possible to set up several posts in one session to go out over a few days.
The way I do it requires a kitchen timer. You can purchase one from a £1 shop and the batteries last for a very long time. Set it to 50 minutes. Switch off phones, email and other distractions, eg cats, dogs, babies, etc and write. Don’t worry about details just get your thoughts down.
If you finish one post, go straight on to the next. Over a few days, if you do this every day you can accumulate a lot of posts. I post on a different category each day and so I usually write several posts within one category during a single session. This way I can think within one theme without too many distractions. I use a word processor for this first draft.
Editing
The next step is a few days before posting, usually the week before, I paste the post into WordPress and carry out my first major review. As well as proof-reading, cutting out rubbish (where does that come from?) and checking for accuracy, I also add in links and other formatting.
I assign categories and tags, and write the meta description. I also set the date and time for the post but I don’t schedule it. Once I’m happy with it, I leave it for a few days.
Usually on the day before I post I read through for the last time for a final polish. I find reading a few days apart is helpful because I take a more balanced view of the writing. Some people may want a more direct and less polished effect. That’s fine if it works for you.
How do you prepare your posts?