Jul 10, 2013 / Beginner

Going Serial: The Power of Intervals

Going serial — introducing an element of repetition and regularity into your writing schedule — can go a long way toward ending a blogging slump.

Blogging gives us absolute freedom to create content and publish it on our own schedule, at the click of a button. The same freedom, however, can sometimes become a blogger’s Achilles’ heel. With no set deadlines to meet, you might feel less pressed to post regularly. Your readers, too, might stop expecting a steady flow of fresh material from you. It’s a vicious cycle many writers have encountered.

Good habits, happy readers

When you decide to post (something, anything) in prefixed intervals you make a double pact. First, with yourself: as the person who sets the pace, you choose how to manage your time and your blog’s schedule. Your pact is also with your audience, though: with a schedule in place they know they can trust you, and have a reason to come back for more of the good stuff.

Anti-Gravity, by bmakphotography (from his Project 52, a weekly photo series)

There are many ways to serialize your blog — in part or in whole — and bloggers have been tremendously creative with structuring their blogs to fit with their busy schedules. At WordPress.com, we, too, have taken advantage of regularly scheduled features, from Theme Thursday to Friday Faves — to say nothing of our Daily Prompts, designed to motivate bloggers to post something new every single day.

A daily dispatch? A weekly wave?

For those who want to personalize their own post-a-day project, the options are limitless, from a 365 Project featuring a photo diary, to a daily foray into a fashion-obsessed blogger’s closet. (Yes, you can post your daily Lego creations, too, if you wish!) Some daily blogs go for a more diverse program on their sites. For example, Should Be Reading, a book blog, offers a weekly menu that includes Salon Sunday and Teaser Tuesday. Another blog,  What’s for Lunch? came up with a smart idea for busy writers: its seven collaborators are each responsible for content one day a week.

Some bloggers want to have more flexibility in their schedule, while still anchoring their writing activities with a weekly feature. How about About-Me Mondays?  A Cover Crush Tuesday (or a Texture Tuesday photo post, for the Tuesday lovers out there)? A What I’m Listening To Wednesdays, perhaps? There are really no rules other than making a rule. You can base your decision on your own work schedule, or try to match your strongest, most reliably popular content with days on which you get the most traffic (how can you do that? A quick look at your stats will do the trick!).

Jellies, by Melinda Anderson, from her Texture Tuesday weekly photo series. Texture by Kim Klassen.

Many bloggers prefer greater liberty in their topic selection or in their publishing frequency. Others might be worried about exhausting their chosen subject. Even so, enterprising writers have found creative ways to maintain a regular schedule and encourage a healthy, loyal readership.

Your time, your blog

A weekly photo post might give an audience just enough time to want more. A weekly song challenge inspires one blogger to compose an original song every week, while another artist uses a weekly post to report on the progress of his different projects. Their respective readers don’t know in advance what they’ll encounter in each post, but they know it’ll be there.

You shouldn’t be intimidated by the need to create original content on call — in fact, some of the most interesting weekly features out there use a repeated feature as the space for some curation activity. You may have heard of Freshly Pressed, but what about Freshly Pegged? That’s where Peg, from Peg-o-Leg’s Ramblings, allows one favorite blogger every week to present his or her best post. One blogger, focusing on books, presents readers with a monthly reading report, while another gives a best-of list of links to her favorite content of the previous month.

A timely hook

A regularly scheduled post can serve one more useful purpose: showcasing your own best (recent) work. How about a weekly summary of your posts, accompanied by an attractive photo mosaic? Or a monthly digest of your blogging activities? Both are great ways to prolong the shelf life of your posts and ensure that new visitors get a glimpse of your archive, even if they had just stumbled upon your blog for the first time.

Creating a steady tempo of posts is but one aspect of serializing, and we’ll cover others, like longform and fiction writing, in later installments of the series. For now, though, tell us about your own experiences: how have you serialized your blog? What has worked for you?

Enjoy serialized blogs? Looking for more ideas? How about…

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  1. I started out in 2009 with no particular direction to my blog. Health issues interrupted it several times.

    I recently chose a new, more visual theme and a new direction (“…surviving retirement with two cats) that revitalized the blog. Though I don’t post every day, some days I post twice. What can I say?

    If you like what you write about, your blog writes itself! Having a way to post photos and videos that illustrate what I’m writing about also adds interest to the activity. My cats are adorable! That’s my opinion, of course, but it’s true! =(^+^)=

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  2. Thanks for linking to me! I’ve definitely found that an editorial calendar and set posts (my monthly round-up and always posting a photo of my pup on Saturdays) helps me maintain consistency.

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  4. Despite one-a-week and two-a-week frequencies my two blogs are having trouble get a single reader. What’s wrong? Please help. scienceandartblog.com and abriefhistoryoflife.com

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    1. Hi Michael, a couple of general things to think about:

      1) Nurture your network: visiting, reading, and especially commenting on others’ blogs is probably the best way to encourage readers with similar interests to yours to visit your blog. Participating in weekly challenges here on The Daily Post doesn’t hurt, either. In other words, try to raise your community visibility.

      2) Better tagging: I notice on your blogs that you use both categories and tags, which is wonderful. I wonder, though, if your tags might be too specific. Don’t get me wrong — specific tags are a good idea — but it’s even better to mix them in with broader terms to let different types of visitors to stumble on your blog on the Reader.

      3) Finally, even when you do everything right it can sometime take some time to build an audience. I see your blogs are both a couple of months old; that’s already great in itself, but it might just be that you need some more time to gain traction. With better tagging and more interaction in the community, I’d be shocked if your readership doesn’t improve.

      If any fellow blogger wishes to chime in, your thoughts are most welcome.

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  5. Thanks for giving me the push I needed to come up with an idea for a regular themed post. I’ve been blogging sporadically for about 5 years and this year decided to try and get more systematic about it. I’d been trying to think of ways to regain momentum on my blog, and this post was very helpful.

    I sometimes participate in the weekly photo challenge and I try to do special posts for special days like World AIDS Day or anniversaries, but after reading this I came up with the idea of doing a regular weekly post on music – so starting from today I will be doing Monday Music (http://maamej.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/introducing-monday-music/) posts. The beauty of it is I can plan ahead and schedule posts, match the content to what’s going on in my life and the world, and keep the blog alive in between other,longer posts on my blog’s ‘core business’ which is life in a bicultural family (and related issues).

    So once again, thanks, I am really appreciating the wonderful ideas and support in the WordPress community.

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  6. Thats a great idea! I think I should try this for a period of time and see if it works. Maybe it would also solve my problem, too many ideas and too little time to actually write them down and get the pictures done.

    Most of the time I am writing my posts in my head. And I must say I am stunned at what I get there! Sadly, readers do not have access to it…

    But hopefully pretty soon there will be software that would type my thoughts I virtually type in my head for my blog and post it in black on white accessable to everyone.

    If you happen to already know such a software, please be so kind to let me know, deal? 😉

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    1. Ha! I see you over here, Darpegla. Taking time out of your “5 most brilliantly funny bloggers of the universe” life for little ‘ol me? Aren’t you a sweetie!

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