Making blogging easier: Don’t pre-plan
February 27th, 2006In version 1.0 of my blog, I spent some time planning out blog topics and even wrote a number of entries ahead of time, assembly line style. This let me knock out 4 or 5 posts in a single 1-2 hour sitting so I could just release each post every couple days to keep an even output. In the end, though, this just wasn’t sustainable.
I still feel like planning blog topics is important, especially since I often get ideas for topics precisely at the times when I’m farthest away from my computer (at church, on the trails, driving, etc.). However, I noticed that I was forgetting to write about interesting things that were happening in real time. For example, it would have been helpful if I had written about my research and thoughts about the Chipotle IPO in the weeks leading up to my investment rather than trying to recreate the whole story two weeks after the fact as I did yesterday. I’m also kicking myself for not writing summaries of my MBA courses as I completed each class for my own records as well as for this blog.
My advice to new bloggers is to find a nice balance between pre-planning entries and posting news as it happens. Planning gives you the benefit of coherent, relevant posts while keeping topics current ensures interesting, accurate content. How do “professional” bloggers do it?
