TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction. 4 About Timo Kiander. 6 Step #1: Slow Down Your Blogging Pace. 7 Step #2: Create a Content Calendar. 9 Step #3: Write All the Content at Once *. 11 Step #4: Pick Your Core Blogging Activities. 17 Step #5: Work in Chunks. 19 Step #6: Hire Some Help.............................. 21 Conclusion. 24 APPENDIX 1: Action Step Reference. 26 APPENDIX 2: Allow Guest Posts on Your Blog. 27 APPENDIX 3: Crowdsource a Blog Post. 32
APPENDIX 4: Schedule for the Content Creation. 35 APPENDIX 5: When to Start Writing the Posts in 2014. 38
INTRODUCTION In the early part of 2011, I was living a pretty regular life: I had a day job, I spent my time with my wife and with my hobbies. I was also building my blog on the side. I loved every aspect of blogging, but I was thinking of content creation all the time. Since I had very limited time on my hands on a daily basis, I felt that I wasn t able to work on anything else than just my blog s content: By writing posts, creating videos and recording podcasts. In the autumn of 2011, things changed as me and my wife got a baby. That started a new era in my life and it was quite obvious that the available time for blogging decreased. As I had so much going on in my life and I wanted to turn my blog into a real online business, I realized that I had to make some changes in my blogging strategy. This new strategy lead to hiring a coach, which was one of the best things I have done to date. With his advice, I wasn t just able to grow my blog, but also to focus on other blogging-related projects as well. Thanks to my coach, I was able to find time for other aspects of blogging - like improving the conversion rate of my landing pages or doing extra research on productivity. Also, in September 2012, I started working on the biggest blogging-related project I have ever done and I needed all the extra time for that. 4
Along with some other productivity strategies of my own, I was able to streamline my blog s content creation while giving enough time for my book project. This small report talks entirely about that - how I was able to keep my blog up-to-date with fresh content while being a family man, a full-time worker, a triathlete and a marathoner and a book writer. It also gives you the strategy - in a step-by-step fashion in how you can do it, too. I hope that you find this report valuable and that you can implement this strategy in your situation as well. And although I m now using a slightly different strategy when it comes to creating content for my blog, the system that I describe in this report works - no matter if you are blogging part-time or full-time. I tried to keep the content of this report short. Yet, it contains all the elements to improve your blogging productivity. I encourage you to make your own adaptation of this strategy. This is the one that worked for me, but if you find any of the parts unnecessary or find room for streamlining the process, that s totally fine. In fact, that s how you define a strategy that s tailored just for you. Cheers, Timo 5
ABOUT TIMO KIANDER Timo Kiander runs a blog called Productive Superdad, where he teaches busy online entrepreneurs how to save time and become more productive. He also works on web design projects on a freelance basis. Timo is a marathon runner and a triathlete. He s finished 18 marathons to date (and has pretty much lost count of how many half-marathons and triathlons he s completed). He has a family a wife and one son with whom he likes to spend his time. Getting married and being present at his son s birth are two of the most important experiences in his life so far. Timo s a friendly and approachable type of person with a strong sense of humour. He always tries to find the good in everything and is very optimistic in nature. Don t hesitate to connect with him e-mail timo@productivesuperdad.com or follow him on Twitter: @ProductiveSd. 6
Step #1: SLOW DOWN YOUR BLOGGING PACE In 2012, right after hiring my coach, the first piece of his advice was to slow down my blogging pace. So instead of publishing a blog post on every Monday and a video tip on every Thursday, he suggested that I should publish content only on a bi-weekly basis. At first, I was horrified with this advice. Why should I slow down my blogging pace and was it going to do me any harm when growing my blog? It turned out that this advice was definitely good. All of a sudden I had more time to do something else than just creating content for my own blog. If you have been blogging for any longer, you start to generate these great ideas that you want to implement at some point: Writing an e-book, running a contest for your audience, create a simple membership site, having exclusive webinars just for your audience The list could go on and on and one thing is common amongst them: They all require time. Unfortunately, if you are just creating one post after another, your time is very limited for additional projects. However, you definitely need to do these additional projects, because that s the only way to grow your blog into a full-blown online business. 7
I m now publishing content bi-weekly - on Tuesdays* and on Thursdays. On Tuesdays I publish a full-length blog post and on Thursdays (on every third week, starting in January 2014) I publish a podcast. The rest of the time I can work on the bloggingrelated projects, build my e-mail list or do some research related to productivity. * (This report assumes that you publish the posts on Tuesdays. Also, the content creation method excludes other types of content, like podcasts or videos). 8
Step #2: CREATE A CONTENT CALENDAR If there is one part of blogging that I neglected for a long time, it was creating a content calendar. At first I thought that creating one was just a waste of time. However, now I am convinced that every blogger should have one - no matter how big or small their blogs are. There are quite a few benefits when it comes to content calendars. For example: I know what type of content I m producing in the future so I can be prepared in advance Jotting down future post titles can actually generate new ideas to write about Writing down the titles can also give you ideas for the post itself (e.g. what to cover in them) It s easier to plan your future content when you see the titles for the coming weeks/months. Now, setting a calendar may take a bit of your time, but don t you worry... click this link to see an example of my personal editorial calendar template. 9
It s built on Google Docs and it s very simple in nature. It contains the following information: To be published: When the post goes live Title: The title of the post Content Type: Text, video or audio Topic: What is the general topic of this post Other: Additional information related to the post. This is not the only way to build a content calendar and in fact, you could create one just by yourself. For instance, no one is stopping you from marking the post titles directly to your online calendar, so that it s easier to see (in calendar layout), what posts are to be published and when. Or, if you are using a WordPress blog, you could install the Editorial Calendar plugin and see your future post titles visually, in a calendar-style layout. Whatever your way is, just take action and plan your content ahead of time. It ll save you time and make your blogging life so much easier! 10
Step #3: WRITE ALL THE CONTENT AT ONCE * So now you have slowed down your publishing pace and you have a content calendar - good! The next step is the blog post creation phase itself. When I talk about the content creation, I mean the following phases: Outlining the posts Writing the content Proofreading the content Sending it for an external proofreading Installing the blog posts to your blog Scheduling the autoresponder messages (* Please note: The number of posts you have to write depends solely on the months when they are going to be published. As months are not created equally, occasionally you end up writing more than 5 posts at once, instead of 4. Also, the time it takes to write the posts depends of your available time. If you have more time on your hands, you could get everything done in just a couple of days, but sometimes it takes longer - especially if you have 5 posts to write. Take a look at Appendix 5 for more info about the scheduling). 11
1. OUTLINING THE POSTS In order to get started with the actual content creation, you should create the structure for the blog posts first. This ensures that writing becomes easier and faster. I tend to create the outlines for my posts on Sundays, just the day before I actually start writing them. When I have the outlines ready, I don t have to waste time on wondering what to write about. I d rather use that time for writing the content itself. I have used the structure that Danny Iny taught in his Write Like Freddy guest post training program and you can do the same. Even if you haven t bought the course (which I definitely recommend purchasing!), you can take a look at this post on CopyBlogger, which describes the post structure he is using. The total amount of time spent: 45 minutes to one hour (on Sundays). 2. WRITING THE CONTENT Creating your blog posts is so much easier when you have a plan to follow. However, that s not the only component that makes a huge difference in your productivity. What I m talking about is the actual time of the day when you write the posts. When I was working full-time, the only available time for me was to write when my home was quiet (when the rest of the family was sleeping). That meant waking up early - around 5.30 AM - and starting to write the posts straight away. 12
During the weekends I could also write when my family was taking a nap (mostly between noon and 2pm). But other than that, writing was challenging when the rest of the family was awake. I suggest that you find a similar spot in your day when you write the posts. In my case, I wrote one post each day before going to work and within 4-5 days (from Monday till Thursday/Friday, approximately 1.5 hours per day) I was able to write all the content for the next two months. The actual part of the month when I wrote the content depended of the month itself: Sometimes I would write it on the first week of the month and sometimes it would happen at the end of the month (check out the Appendix 5 at the end of this report. It shows you the exact number of posts to write throughout the year 2014 and when to write them). There is still one thing to note regarding the content and that s basically the fact that I also wrote the introduction texts for the autoresponder and for my blog posts after I finished writing the actual blog posts. These two types of messages are the following: a. Autoresponder ones: The ones that I sent to my e-mail list when the post was published (these messages were scheduled in advance) b. The descriptions of the posts: The piece of content that is visible in Google s search results (I m here referring to the All In One SEO Pack s description field. I highly recommend that you install this free plugin). I wrote all the content in Google Docs, so if I had to access the post from somewhere else, that could be easily done. 13
Total amount of time spent: With 4 posts: 6 hours (from Monday till Thursday, 1.5hrs/ post x 4 = 6 hours) With 5 posts: 7.5 hours (from Monday till Friday, 1.5hrs/ post x 5 = 7.5 hours) 3. PROOFREAD THE CONTENT Writing the content is one thing, but before publishing it you need to proofread and edit it. I did the first proofreading/editing round myself and often I was able to make my writing tighter and better. I also created the headline for my posts by using these two resources: Jon Morrows Headline Hacks Peter Sandeen s 101 Headline Formulas The proofreading and editing (including the blog posts and the autoresponder/description texts) depended on the number of posts I had to write. If I was to write 4 posts, this normally took place on Fridays and Saturdays (1.5 hours on Fridays, 3 hours on Saturday; 1.5 hours both on mornings and in the afternoon). However, if I was writing 5 posts, I would spend Saturday and Sunday solely for proofreading (1.5 hours in the morning and 1.5 hours in the afternoon, on both days). I did this part of the process when my family was sleeping: early in the mornings, during the nap times (on weekends) or when I had an unexpected time block on my hands. 14
Total amount of time spent: With 4 posts: 4.5 hours (1.5hrs on Friday morning, 1.5 hours on Saturday morning and on Saturday afternoon: 1.5hrs + 3hrs = 4.5hrs) With 5 posts: 6 hours (1.5hrs on Saturday morning and on Saturday afternoon and the same amount of time on Sundays. 3hrs + 3hrs = 6hrs). 4. SENDING IT FOR AN EXTERNAL PROOFREADING Right after doing the initial proofreading and editing myself, I sent my document for an external proofreading (either on Saturdays or on Sundays). Especially if you are not a native English speaker (like me), you should definitely do that to avoid unnecessary typos or other grammatical mistakes in your text. The one I have been using is on Fiverr and I have been happy with his services. Total amount of time spent: Compiling all the posts as a Word document: 15 minutes Ordering a gig on Fiverr (+uploading the doc and paying the gig): 15 minutes 5. INSTALLING THE BLOG POSTS TO YOUR BLOG Once I got the posts back from the proofreader (in most cases it was the next day), I was ready to install the content on my blog. This included: Including an image to my post 15
Formatting the text Figuring out the keywords for the page, which were then used on the URL or on the page tags as well Copying the proofread description texts to the Description field in WordPress. Total amount of time spent: Installing and scheduling the posts in WordPress: 30 minutes With 4 posts: On Sundays With 5 posts: On Mondays. 6. SCHEDULING THE AUTORESPONDER MESSAGES I installed the autoresponder messages that were also proofread by the external proofreader. In order to make sure that I didn t have any broken links on my messages, I sent a test message to myself to see that everything looked OK. Total amount of time spent: Scheduling and testing the autoresponder messages in Aweber: 30 minutes With 4 posts: On Sundays With 5 posts: On Mondays. 16
Step #4: PICK YOUR CORE BLOGGING ACTIVITIES Now that all the content is written for your blog for the next 60 days or so, you are left wondering what to do next. Well don t you worry; I ve got something that I want you to do next :) Your next task is to take a good look at your blog and list all the core activities that you think are taking your blog forward. And when I talk forward, I m talking about the stuff that increases the number of visitors, the number of subscribers on your e-mail list or the connections you have with others. In addition, you could also have a big project that you are either working on or that you would like to start doing. As a result of this brainstorming session, you should now have a list of key areas that you are putting your time into when you are not writing publishing posts on your blog. In my case this particular list looks like this: Writing guest posts (making my name more known, showing my expertise and building my e-mail list) Interviewing others through podcasts (building valuable connections with other bloggers, marketers and entrepreneurs) Creating extra value for my e-mail list by producing exclusive content for my subscribers 17
Working on my book project. In practice, when you are working on something big (like writing a book), you ll most likely have to quit doing the other stuff at least temporarily - especially if you have a day job. This is what I did with guest posting and with podcasting. However, as soon as I started building my blog full-time, I got started again with those things as I had more time on my hands. It s your turn to try to figure out your core areas. They may not be the same as what I have and quite frankly, that doesn t matter. What really does matter is that you are putting your energy into something which brings you results in the long-term. Since your situation is probably different compared to mine, you have to do some brainstorming on what your blog is going to be all about in the future (and find core activities that support that destination). You can read more about this strategy by checking out the guest post I wrote for We Blog Better. Although the topic is about picking your three, the post follows the same principles as I have explained to you on this page. 18
Step #5: WORK IN CHUNKS Sometimes you can have a bigger chunk of time to do your work. Although this might happen less frequently, it s still worth noting that you can get a lot of blogging work done during these times. There are two ways to get a big chunk of time for your work: You agree to spend time on your blogging projects with your family You are travelling (by doing business travelling). The first option is not always possible as if you have a family with kids, taking care of the offspring might be just too much for the one person - especially if the kids are very small. However, if you have a very important project on your hands and it s necessary to get it done, then stressing the importance to your family is imperative. For instance, I m blessed with a wife who knows what I m doing (writing a book) and why I m doing it, so at times she might give me some additional time to work on my project. When you are open and transparent with what you do, you have a better chance of negotiating larger time blocks for your blogging projects. The second works well too and I have used this method successfully. When I was working full-time, there were times when I had to travel to our main office in Helsinki. I did this by taking a train. 19
The train ride took 2.5-3 hours per direction and during that time I was able to get a lot of work done. For instance, I almost wrote one e-book during one of my trips. In addition, when I was staying overnight on my business trips, I could continue working in a hotel in my room (which was a distraction-free environment). On a general level, working effectively in chunks means that you have a time block that is long enough and that you can work without distraction. Also, in order to maximize your time you have a plan to follow. Say you have a block of 4 hours on your hands. Before you actually start working on your tasks, you should be as prepared as possible. This prevents time waste, as you are not figuring out what you should be doing next. However, when you know what tasks you should be working on and in what order, you get a lot of work done. 20
Step #6: HIRE SOME HELP Blogging if anything is team work. It s very important to understand that even if you grow your blog yourself, there are times when you need help in various blogging tasks. In order to get more done with the time you ve got, I suggest that you try out the following ways to improve your online business productivity: OUTSOURCING There are four ways of doing the outsourcing. First, you can do task-based outsourcing with a service like Fiverr. With this service, you can get people to do various tasks for you starting from five dollars and I have found this service to be very good with things like creating e-book covers, voice overs or proofreading. Second, you can get project-based help by going to sites like odesk, Freelancer or Elance. Out of these three (and there are more than just the mentioned ones), I have used ELance for proofreading a couple of e-books of mine. Also, I have used a service called 99Designs for the cover of my book. Third, you can get help by using a dedicated service like Efficise, where you buy 15-30-minute time blocks for a month. In the most inexpensive plan ($45 per month when writing this), you get 30 x 30 minute requests. 21
I was happy about the service and I used it mainly for blog maintenance work. However, even with these 30 requests of 30 minute work, I still couldn t find enough work for my VA, so I quit using the service (but I might consider using the service again later on). Finally, you can hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) - whether he/she is a full-time one or a part-time one. As I don t have any personal experience with working with a VA, I can t give any exact recommendations on which service to use. However, if you want me to mention some sites which offer these services, you can take a look at for instance Zirtual or Virtual Staff Finder for more information. If you decide to hire a VA - whether through Efficise or a fulltime/part-time one through different providers, the same principle applies: You need to be ready to document your processes well enough, so that an outsider can take care of them for you. In fact, in the beginning you ll be spending more time on doing the documentation than you would like to. Yet, the more detailed instructions you have, the less error-prone the results are going to be. It s also worth noting that you should really think in advance whether you have enough work for a full-time (or even a part-time) VA. Otherwise you end up paying for the services that you ll never fully utilize. COACHING The last thing that I recommend is that you seriously consider hiring a coach. I did this myself and it has been the best move I have made related to my blogging. 22
Currently, I m working with Danny Iny and I m happy with the advice he gives. I have been working with him since the beginning of 2012 and with his help, I have been able to take my blog to another level. Thanks to his help, I have been able to focus on the most important areas on my blog (such as building my e-mail list) and pretty much ignore the rest of the non-essential stuff. Before you decide to hire a coach, take a look at this interview and give this topic a good thought. If you really want to take ethical shortcuts in turning your blogging into a business, then coaching is a great way to do that. 23
CONCLUSION I hope that you have enjoyed this short report on how to become a more productive blogger. As mentioned, I have used this same strategy myself and it has worked well for me. Although I now have more time available for my blog, I still continue to use many of these principles in my daily blogging work. Please put these action steps into practice and test to see if they work for you or not. In many cases when trying the advice imparted by others, we might have some personal tweaks which make this advice even more practical. Feel free to send me an e-mail to timo@productivesuperdad.com and we can talk further about this topic if you like. I m happy to hear your feedback and what you think about this strategy. Spread the word about Online Business Productivity by clicking the Tweet button below: Kind Regards, Productive Superdad aka Timo Kiander 24
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APPENDIX 1: ACTION STEP REFERENCE Step #1: Publish content on a bi-weekly basis Step #2: Write all the content for the next two months in advance Step #3: Pick your core activities related to your blog, for instance building your e-mail list, connecting with experts and other bloggers in your industry and guest posting Step #4: Work in an distraction-free environment (either early in the morning, during the naps or late in the evening - especially if you have a family) Step #5: Dedicate a longer-time block for content creation and do nothing else during that time Step #6: Hire a coach, delegate simple tasks (through Fiverr, SpeechPad) and hire some external help related to recurring tasks (through Efficise). 26
APPENDIX 2: ALLOW GUEST POSTS ON YOUR BLOG If you have been blogging for any amount of time, you have probably already realized that blogging requires a lot of effort on your side. You have to be able to create blog post after blog post on a continuous basis. In addition, you need to have plenty of topic ideas on your topic list, so that you don t run into the dreaded writer s block. If you are publishing on your blog many times per week, the demands grow even bigger. The audience expects you to provide new content, and you have to give it to them. And even if you can create the content, there may be moments when you feel that all this content creation is just too much. WHAT S WRONG WITH ALLOWING GUEST POSTS? Then at some point, you decide to allow guest posting on your blog, as the workload is getting too heavy. You want to free up your time, so that you can work on other projects related to your blog. Also, this way you can have more people visit your blog and promote the content for you. After opening the gates to guest posting, the results are more or less a disappointment. Sure, you get a lot of propositions for posts, but most of them are just rubbish. Unfortunately, sorting out the good posts from the bad takes up a lot of your time. 27
The situation has turned into a burden instead of a relief. Allowing guest posts has generated more work and additional stress, and that s not what you want. WHERE ARE THE INSTRUCTIONS? Letting others write for you is a fine way to get solid content on your blog. Unfortunately, without proper guidelines you can make guest posting a source of stress if you are not careful. What I m talking about are the instructions for the potential guest posters. If they don t exist or they are on a very vague level, the result is not going to be pretty. You ll soon realize that there are going to be a lot of people trying to get their posts published on your blog - and the post quality is far from adhering to your standards. A missing guest post policy is one thing, but another issue you have to deal with are the e-mail conversations that you ll have with potential guest posters. Especially in the case of declining or giving negative feedback for the guest poster, you should be ready to handle those kinds of situations as well. Otherwise you start procrastinating on sending the declining e-mails and things won t move forward. With those two missing components on your side, you make guest posting harder than what it is. SPEND TIME TO GAIN MORE TIME If things are getting more and more stressful, it s probably because you never took the time to create clear policies in the first place. If you always felt busy doing something else and perhaps overlooked this simple task, this is the result. 28
It s also not enough just to write the guest posting policy - you ll also have to keep it up-to-date. Your standards may change along with the type of content you want. That s why you have to reflect these changes on the policy as well. Finally, if you haven t defined the exact topic areas to write about, this can be another source of confusion. For instance, if your blog is about marathon running for beginners, should you allow a guest post about how to train for 100 meter dashes - no matter how well it s written? Probably not. Even if the proposed guest post talks about running, it still doesn t align to your blog s topic, which is different. TIME BLOCKING TO THE RESCUE It s time to use a traditional time management method to tackle all these issues: time blocking. It means that you use a dedicated time block to do some work and in this case to create the guest post policy page. And while you have created the policy page, you also figure out the rest of the procedures that are related to guest posting on your blog. The key is to just get started and get the initial version of the page done. There is always time to fix and improve the guidelines as time goes on. It s the same with defining the processes (how to reject a post, how to accept a post). Once you have these tasks ready (and they should be after your time block), you are much better prepared for guest posts - whether they are good or bad. 29
HOW TO HANDLE THE GUEST POST PROPOSALS - THE GOOD AND THE BAD 1 Use time blocking. Decide to work for one hour on this task - in a place without any distraction. If you finish your work before the one hour mark, that s totally fine. In general, one hour should be enough for the initial version of the policy page and the associated processes (see step #3). 2 Create the explicit guidelines. OK, so you pretty much got this point already: create clear instructions on what kinds of posts you want. If you don t know where to start, you can take a look at my guest posting policy. 3 Send a reply back with three different variations. I use three types of reply e-mails when people submit guest posts for my blog: a b c I accept the post and I tell the person when the post goes live I reply with a link to a policy page. This happens when someone submits a post or pitches me an idea which I like, but the person clearly hasn t read the guidelines Reject it. When the post has nothing to do with the topic I blog about or I spot that the guest poster is an SEO company working for someone else, I reject the post. The sooner I say it the better, and this prevents any procrastination on my part. 4 Link to your policy page on your contact page. This is a single reminder for anyone who wants to post on my site. I have a link on my contact page to my guest post policy page. 30
That way whoever is submitting the posts for my approval has to read the policies first. Of course, this doesn t guarantee that the person reads the policy page, but at least he/she has been informed that a policy exists. 5 Do your part of the promotion. If I accept the post, I also promote it - both on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, BizSugar) and to my e-mail list. I also let the person know that the post is live (with a link to a post) and I remind him/her to read and reply to all the comments. 31
APPENDIX 3: CROWDSOURCE A BLOG POST A good way to get fresh content for your blog with less effort is to initiate a crowdsourcing blog post. Crowdsourcing might work with other content types as well, but a blog post is perhaps the best example of crowdsourced content. For example, if you are operating in a geo caching niche, you might want to ask the various geo caching bloggers the most important tip that you need to know before getting started with this hobby. In order to have a crowd-sourced content, take these steps: a b c d e Start interacting with the bloggers whose blogs you regularly read by leaving comments and getting in direct contact with them; Ask politely for their willingness to participate to a crowdsourcing post. Remember to introduce yourself if you are not a regular visitor of that blog; Send e-mails to 15-20 blog authors asking the same question; Receive the answers and consolidate them into one big post (be aware that not all of the people are going to reply to your message); Give credit to the people who answer the question (a picture, blog URL, Twitter name ); 32
f Let the people know when the blog post goes live by sending them an e-mail about it and mentioning their Twitter handle in your tweet. WHY THIS IS SUCH AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO CREATE CONTENT? You save time because someone else is creating the content for you. Naturally, your job is to initiate the task, compile the post and let people know when the post goes live but, in some instances, this may be easier than writing a blog post from scratch. There are also other major benefits in creating a crowdsourcing post. First, you create relationships with other bloggers in your niche, which can lead to even more interaction later. Also, asking the same question to several people provides different points of view. You not only learn about the topic yourself, but your readers will also be interested in the opinions of others. If you d like to get started with a crowd-source post, use this template I used when I did a crowdsourcing post on my blog: Hi [Blogger s Name Here]! My name is [Your Name Here] and I m a reader of your blog. I love the content that you provide on your site. I have my own blog at [Your Blog s URL Here] and I blog about [Your Topic Here]. My blog is still quite new and this is my [X] month of blogging. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to participate to a crowd-sourcing post that I m creating? This post is going to be part of my blog s launch on [Date of the Blog Launch]. 33
Basically, I would like to hear your opinion on this question: [Your Question Here]? I understand that you are busy with your blog and other commitments and if you feel that you are not able to participate, that s OK. However, if you are going to participate, please reply with a couple of sentences. With the answer, please provide a picture of yourself and your Twitter account address (I already have the link to your blog, so that part is covered :). These pieces of information are going to be included within the crowdsourcing post itself. I ll be contacting other bloggers with the same question as well and after I have received the answers, I will consolidate them to a single post. Your answer will be part of that post. Once the post is finished and published [The Publishing Date Here], I ll let you know about it. Anyway, thanks again for providing valuable content on your blog :) Cheers, Timo Kiander [Your Blog s URL Here] [Your Twitter URL Here] 34
APPENDIX 4: SCHEDULE FOR THE CONTENT CREATION WITH 4 POSTS: Sunday: Creating the post outlines Monday - Thursday: Write the posts Friday: Write the autoresponder messages and the description texts; proofreading Saturday: Proofread the posts; send the posts for external proofreading Sunday: Install and schedule the proofread posts WITH 5 POSTS: Sunday: Creating the post outlines Monday - Thursday/Friday: Write the posts Friday: Write the autoresponder messages and the description texts Saturday: Proofread the posts Sunday: Send the posts for external proofreading Monday: Install and schedule the proofread posts 35
1. OUTLINING: The total amount of time spent: 45 minutes to one hour (on Sundays). 2. WRITING: Total amount of time spent: With 4 posts: 6 hours (from Monday till Thursday, 1.5hrs/ post x 4 = 6 hours) With 5 posts: 7.5 hours (from Monday till Friday, 1.5hrs/post x 5 = 7.5 hours). 3. PROOFREADING: Total amount of time spent: With 4 posts: 4.5 hours (1.5hrs on Friday morning, 1.5 hours on Saturday morning and on Saturday afternoon: 1.5hrs + 3 hrs = 4.5hrs) With 5 posts: 6 hours (1.5hrs on Saturday morning and on Saturday afternoon and the same amount of time on Sundays. 3hrs + 3hrs = 6hrs). 4. SENDING TO AN EXTERNAL PROOFREADER: Total amount of time spent: Compiling all the posts as a Word document: 15 minutes Ordering a gig on Fiverr (+uploading the doc and paying the gig): 15 minutes 36
5. INSTALLING THE POSTS TO YOUR BLOG: Total amount of time spent: Installing and scheduling the posts in WordPress: 30 minutes With 4 posts: On Sundays With 5 posts: On Mondays. 6. SCHEDULING THE AUTORESPONDER MESSAGES: Total amount of time spent: Scheduling and testing the autoresponder messages in Aweber: 30 minutes With 4 posts: On Sundays With 5 posts: On Mondays. 37
APPENDIX 5: WHEN TO START WRITING THE POSTS IN 2014 This appendix describes when to write your posts (and how many at a time) with my system in 2014. This schedule assumes that you publish your posts on a bi-weekly basis, on every second Tuesday. Also, as all the months are not created equally, you may find yourself spending more on the content creation process than just one week (sometimes you can manage with 4 posts while sometimes you need 5 posts to cover the next two months)... JANUARY - FEBRUARY: Post published: 31st December, 2013 Post published: 14th January, 2014 Post published: 28th January, 2014 Post published: 11th February, 2014 Post published: 25th February, 2014 5 posts total 38
Start writing posts: On 16th December at the latest (you may want to start writing even earlier on this week, as you have 5 posts to write and as it s Christmas time. Normally I would recommend starting the writing process on 23rd, but who wants to blog at Christmas time ;) MARCH - APRIL: Post published: 11th March, 2014 Post published: 25th March, 2014 Post published: 8th April, 2014 Post published: 22nd April, 2014 4 posts total Start writing the posts: On 3rd March at the latest MAY JUNE: Post published: 6th May, 2014 Post published: 20th May, 2014 Post published: 3th June, 2014 Post published: 17th June, 2014 4 posts total Start writing the posts: On 28th April at the latest 39
JULY AUGUST: Post published: 1st July, 2014 Post published: 15th July, 2014 Post published: 29th July, 2014 Post published: 12th August, 2014 Post published: 26th August, 2014 5 posts total Start writing the posts: On 23rd June at the latest SEPTEMBER OCTOBER: Post published: 9th September, 2014 Post published: 23th September, 2014 Post published: 7th October, 2014 Post published: 21st October, 2014 4 posts total Start writing the posts: On 1st September at the latest 40
NOVEMBER DECEMBER: Post published: 4th November, 2014 Post published: 18th November, 2014 Post published: 2nd December, 2014 Post published: 16th December, 2014 Post published: 30th December, 2014 5 posts total Start writing the posts: On 27th October at the latest 41