5 ways to blog every day without freaking out

You signed up for a blogathon and realize you now have to blog about something every day for a month. Ack!

There’s no getting around the fact daily blogging is work. But there are ways to minimize the extra effort. Writing short, planning ahead, mixing up the types of blog posts you write, creating standing features that run the same day every week –  they’re all paths to daily blogging bliss.

It may be a slog, but there’s a silver lining to posting every day. If you want to broaden your freelance repertoire, learning how to blog is the first step toward pitching yourself for paid blogging gigs. Fees for paid blogging assignments are all over the map, so it’s good to know how to write different kinds of posts, how long it takes to write a post and the basics of driving traffic to a blog, so you can take all that into account when negotiating  rates.

Whether you’re taking part in this blog’s 2nd annual May blogathon, or if you just want to learn how be a better blogger, here are 5 sure-fire strategies for coming up with posts every day:

1. Plan ahead – Let me start by saying, this is the hardest for me to do. I know some bloggers who write a week’s worth of posts at a time, and others who chart out what they’re going to write several weeks ahead of time. I don’t do that very often, normally just to cover myself for vacations. But even planning a few days worth of posts – or even just the next day’s post –  is a start. Especially if it gives you time to think ahead about what you want to say and collect URLs that might related to the subject you’re writing about. However, there’s something to be said for the spontaneous blog post, especially if you’re fired up over something and need to write about it while the idea’s fresh. If you’ve banked a number of pre-written posts on evergreen topics, there’s no harm in slipping a spontaneous post into the front of the queue.

2. Write short – If you’re blogging for yourself, you can decide how much or little to include in a single blog post. Some days you might feel like writing 500 or 1,000 words reacting to a news event or on a subject that’s close to your heart. Other days, you may just want to share a news story or blog post someone else has written with your readers, so your post could consist of a link to the original with a paragraph or two of explanation or commentary. Here are some other suggestions for writing short.

3. Mix it up – Unless your blog is set up to be something very specific – a recipe a day, a daily journal entry, all photos -you don’t have to write the same kind of blog post every time. In fact, mixing it up is a good way to get readers to keep coming back to see what you’re going to do next. In a typical blog, you could include:

• Commentary – Your POV on current events.
• Lists – Readers love ’em.
• How tos – Learned something new? Share.
• Best ofs – A handful of older blog posts on a certain topic. I’ve use this to cover for vacations.
• Interviews – Some of my best-read posts are Q&As I do with other writers on a variety of writing related topics.
• Links – Lists of links to posts on blogs you read on the same subject as your own.
• Announcements – Tell the world when your articles, books or other work appear.
• Reviews – TV shows, movies, books, music, electronics, software, services – anything related to your blog’s theme.

4. Create standing features – A standing feature is a certain type of post that runs on a regular basis. On WordCount, I have two standing features, a weekly recap of highlights from the online media business that runs on Fridays, and a Q&A with freelance writers that runs on an irregular basis but about every 2 to 3 weeks. Standing features give a blog a sense of regularity, and readers come to expect and appreciate them them – and that’s what brings traffic back to your blog.

5. Pre-publish – As writers, we have deadlines. So some days are harder to devote to blogging than others. Blog software that let’s you pre-publish posts is made for those times. Write whatever posts you need to get ahead and use the publish feature to schedule when they’ll appear. This is also a great way to avoid blogging on the weekends, because really, nobody should work on the weekend, especially if you’re not getting paid for it.

Got your own secrets for writing one or more blog posts a day? Please share.