Oct 2, 2014 / General Advice & Pro Tips

Three Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

Pro tips for blogging success!

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It happens: you resolve to blog regularly, but life gets in the way. Now is always the best time to recommit to a blogging habit.

In that vein, here are a few tips for how to organize and support your blogging efforts for maximum efficiency. Think of it as your back-to-blogging prep list. 

Create an Editorial Calendar

The best way to maintain a regular blogging habit is to come up with a plan and stick to it. Creating an editorial calendar is a great way to commit yourself to regular content for the next however many months. Plus, it’s a lot easier to sit down and write if you already know that you planned to post a photo essay on the second Monday of November, then if you just know you really ought to post something sometime.

An editorial calendar also helps you establish regular features — for example, maybe you post a recipe every Tuesday and a DIY craft project every Thursday. This takes some of the guesswork out of what to post, and it also gives your readers an idea of what to expect.

And if you’re in the zone on a snowy Sunday and knock out five or six upcoming posts,  you can schedule them according to your planned calendar, and they’ll post themselves when it’s time.

Use an App

Ideally, every time we sit down to write, we’re seated in a well-appointed library overlooking the beach of a private island, in complete silence, a steaming cup of perfectly brewed coffee at hand.

In reality, though, if we waited until our surroundings were ideal to sit down and write, we’d be waiting a long, long time.

Phones and tablets make it easy to blog from wherever you are, whether that’s on your commute, at your kid’s music lesson, or in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. With the WordPress mobile app, you can blog on your mobile device anywhere. This frees you up from the ‘must be at my desk to write’ mindset, and you might find it also extends your creativity in new ways.

For example, maybe you typically write long, thoughtful posts, but you notice a funny sign or an interesting painting while you’re out and about, so you snap a photo and dash off a few lines about it right there. If you look for inspiration wherever you go, you’ll notice your surroundings more, and honing your observational skills will enrich your writing overall. Plus, you’re less likely to forget about an idea if you jot down a few lines about it when it first strikes you.

If you’ve never tried out the mobile app, download it at home and get familiar with it. Then, next time you’re not at your desk when the muse arrives, you don’t have to tell her to wait.

Follow Topics

When it comes to expert blogging, writing is only half the work. For traffic building, it’s just as important to read and comment on other blogs (and just as hard to get around to). To make it easier on yourself, build reading and commenting time into your editorial calendar.

Then, try following some very specific relevant tags in the reader. For example, if you blog a lot about speculative fiction, you could follow books or scifi to find other bloggers with your interests, but you’ll probably get more bang for your buck if you follow more precise tags, like speculative fiction, alternate history, or dystopia.

By doing this, you’re essentially creating an ongoing reading list for yourself, so that when you have the time and inclination, you don’t have to hunt around for what to read. And remember — you can easily use your Reader in the mobile app, so the next time you’re stuck in line somewhere but don’t have the energy to write, fire up your WordPress app and start reading! If you find a post you like, you can like it, comment on it, and follow the blog, all from the app.

I hope these tips will kickstart your fall blogging productivity. If I missed a good one, share it with us in the comments!

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  3. I do believe in your advice to read and post comments on other blogs. I have multiple blogs on different topics, though, and I haven’t seen a way to connect readers of my comments to the corresponding blog. My identity is connected to my primary blog. So, for example, although I comment on cooking blogs mostly, I am driving traffic to my professional portfolio blog, not my cooking blog. I wish I could choose when making a comment so I drive traffic to the blog where I need those readers. Thanks for the tips.

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  9. I always searched for the things which describes how to grow traffic….These are good tips. I have also got some tips from Jerkaway.wordpress.com

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  12. I still enjoy, after many years, looking and finding that nice little notebook that either looks like a diary, has a beautiful front design or has a set of decorative pens to match-they implore me to write hehe* In fact, saw one of those today!

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