he plain truth is that to get a lot of organic traffic, you have to produce a lot of content. If you’re into building authority sites / blogs, it means you have to write consistently, preferably every day. Many people fail to achieve that, and I am no exception. What’s stopping you from adding new content every day? Well, I don’t know about you, but I know about me, and I have a feeling that many people may share the same problem.
Lack of planning
I believe I’ve identified my basic problem – lack of editorial planning.
Back in the past, I used to work for a large computer magazine. There were deadlines, and there were editorial plans – everybody knew exactly what had to be written, and when. With a blog, where I’m solely responsible to keep it updated and fresh, it’s very easy to allow distractions to get in your way.
You see, when there is no editorial plan, prepared in advance, you’re facing a great challenge when you actually feel like writing something. You have to think of a subject, then you have to plan the structure of your post, and then you have to actually write it. In the meantime, most likely you’ll check you email, someone will chat to you on Skype, or you will go browsing forums and other blogs.
Possible solution
In my case, I feel that I need to prepare two things in advance:
- An editorial calendar
- A plan for each post
For the editorial calendar, I’ve found and excellent WordPress plugin called… Editorial Calendar. It generates a very smooth calendar with drag-n-drop functionality which you can use to get an overview of your content over time, plan new posts quickly, and easily change their dates. I will use it during my planning sessions to plan content for the next few weeks.
When it comes to outlining things, I’ve always been a great fan of mindmaps. I’ve used them a lot, and now I will be using them for my content as well. I’ve actually found a very nifty tool called MindMeister. It is available online, so I can work from any computer or even my iPad, and I actually enjoy simply using it because of its attention to little details.
So, basically, I will plan a single weekly session to a) plan my post titles and put them into the calendar, including basic keyword research; b) prepare mindmaps for the next-week’s posts.
Prepared this way, I will be able to just sit down and really add new content, without any excuses any more 😀 .
