18 Blogging Time Management Tips

Intro

Blogging has exploded in popularity over the last few years. With so many people vying to create a blog of their own and make it successful, the exact steps for accomplishing this have been brushed over.

One of the leading causes of why new bloggers fail is the fact that they fall victim to writing fatigue. Essentially, it’s hard to actually stay dedicated to writing on your blog and posting consistently.

How to accomplish perfect time management alludes to most bloggers, but there are a number of tips that can help you stay on track. This guide will feature 18 prominent time management tips to help you succeed.

Let’s jump right into it:

Set Goals for Your Blog

A blog without goals is already off to a bad start.

Ask questions such as, “What’s the point of this blog?” or “Who do I want to read this blog?”. Both of these questions will help you narrow down the topics you discuss on your blog and let you find your niche.

Additionally, identify how many readers you want to try and reach each month. It doesn’t matter if you reach them or not, but setting the goal can help keep you motivated to write.

Be Organized

Organization is everything when it comes to time management, and utilizing employee time tracking app can help plan your writing schedule and topics beforehand, ensuring optimal productivity.

It’s difficult to think up a topic on the fly, let alone write a powerful blog post.

Organizing yourself and your thoughts prior to actually writing can help you manage your time.

Work When You’re Productive

Are you a night owl? Do you function best in the morning? What about right after your daily nap?

Identify the time of day where you are the most productive and focus on working during that time. Certainly, don’t work during periods of the day where you lack any energy.

Focus on Your Difficult Writing First

If you have a complex topic that you know will take a large amount of research and much time to write, do it first.

Going through the day and writing a number of smaller posts, only to realize you have one massive project left, will leave you feeling drained and less likely to produce the piece.

Manage your time by getting your hardest tasks done first.

Create a Post Schedule

Do you want to post bi-weekly? Bi-monthly? Every single day?

The answer doesn’t really matter. Pick a posting schedule and stick with it. Besides keeping you accountable, it’ll help give your readers something to look forward to. They may log onto their computer, see the day, and know that it is one of your posting days.

Additionally, by creating a clear schedule, you will hold yourself accountable.

Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin

Niche bloggers succeed because they have one single topic that they can write on effortlessly. They never seem to get bored, and there’s always something to talk about.

Bloggers who focus more on the big picture can be just as successful, but sometimes having too much content can be your downfall in time management.

After all, having 30 topics picked out is great, but think about the time and research that needs to go into each post. It’s best to pick a general niche or a few topics you can become an expert on and exclusively post on those.

It’s fine if an exciting new idea comes out and you want to write about it, but only make the exception every once in a while.

Forget Editing (For Now)

Don’t bother editing while you write your posts.

Come back to that task later. For now, focus on spilling as many words onto the page as you can. A great tip is to use an editor, whether built-in or third-party, that can spot errors in your work as you go.

If you try to edit as you write, each post will take you twice as long.

Remove Desktop and Phone Notifications

From a more general time management standpoint, turn off all phone and desktop notifications.

The fewer distractions you have at your desk, the better.

Social media dings and email notifications are only going to keep you from finishing your blog post. Once you go down the rabbit hole that is social media, it’ll be difficult to get yourself back on track.

Create a Powerful Workspace

An often overlooked way of bettering your time management is by creating an effective workstation. Writing at your kitchen table may be productive, but getting yourself a desk space is even better.

It’s about the separation of spaces.

By always writing in one spot, you will condition your brain to realize that this is your writing area. After all, you know your table is for eating, and your bed is for sleeping. Condition your brain so that a space in your home or office equates to writing.

Don’t Look at Your Stats

Seriously. Just don’t.

At least not at first. Your views and reads may be quite low when you are just starting out, but that’s no reason to get dejected.

Obsessing over your stats, even when you gain traction, isn’t going to help you stay on track. For example, you may see that one of your posts didn’t do as well as you expected and lose your motivation to write another piece.

Know Your Limits

Everybody wants to believe they can do more than they are capable of. And everyone is in a rush to make as much money as possible. Yet, knowing your limits is just as important.

Acknowledge how many articles you can write per day at a comfortable pace without sacrificing quantity for quality. Budget your time accordingly and map out which articles you will be writing on certain days.

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Audit Your Time

An effective way of fixing your time management when blogging is to audit the time you spend now. Are you making the most of your time or are you wasting it in certain areas?

Focus on identifying areas of improvement before trying to think of strategies to improve. Perhaps you know you spend too much time on social media, or perhaps you always try to get more done in a day than you are capable of.

Whatever it may be, look at the time you spend now and think about how you can fix it.

Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize

As with tackling your biggest challenge first, always be focused on prioritizing which articles and posts are more important than others. A timely piece based on news that just broke is far more effective when you post it close to the day the news broke.

Prioritize your blog as best you can and which articles will make the most impact.

Delegate if You Can

If you aren’t the only writer on your blog, consider delegating to someone else who may be more of an expert. This will save you time by not making you research the topic, and the article will also probably be better.

Alternatively, if you really want to have a post about a topic on your blog but aren’t comfortable writing on the topic, reach out to another blogger and see if they’d like to do a guest post.

Create Outlines

This tip goes along the same line of thinking as organization.

As best you can, create outlines for all of the blog posts that you write. It’s easiest to write about a topic when you’ve already mapped out a general idea for where you want to go with it.

Use Content Optimization Tools

Content optimization tools help optimize website content for higher search engine rankings, by identifying keywords, analyzing content for SEO, and suggesting changes to improve the visibility of the content.

These tools help to maximize the productivity of your blog content creation by streamlining the process and providing insights into what works best for your audience.

Popular content optimization tools include Moz, Yoast SEO, SEMrush, and Ahrefs. Moreover, you may discover other options like Clearscope or the most popular Clearscope alternatives.

Bottomline is, whichever tool you use, it’s a guarantee that it will double your blogging productivity and efficiency!

Stop and Think

Seriously. Take a minute to breathe. It can be easy to lose yourself in your writing or to become overwhelmed with everything on your plate. Taking the time to slow down and think about what you are writing can save you a lot of time in the long run.

Focus on what you want your blog post to look like or who you’re trying to reach with your blog.

Borrow Ideas and Tackle High Performing Topics

There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by someone else’s post. Don’t copy their post, obviously, but if they wrote about an interesting topic, feel free to write on the same theme.

Go on sites like Google and check which topics are performing best. Check out reference material such as 21 Most Popular Types of Blogs for inspiration and new creative channels to explore. See if any of those topics apply to your niche and write on them if they do. These are great ways to increase your blog traffic and save time overall.

Conclusion

Blogging can be a rewarding but challenging journey.

Take the first steps on that journey by getting some sort of writing onto your page. Remember not to overwhelm yourself, as hard as that may be with someone new, and focus on building a genuine audience of readers.

Consistency is everything when it comes to blogging.

As long as you’re writing great content, the readers will come to you. Create a schedule and stick to it. You’ll be blogging like a pro in no time at all.