Maybe An Editorial Calendar Would Help

forestacorn

A thousand years ago when I started blogging people used to complain that I updated my blog too frequently. They said my pace made it impossible to keep up with and I said there was never an obligation to read everything I write.

They said my pace made it impossible to keep up.

I always appreciated the sentiment but found it funny that they felt obligated to read it all.

Today I rarely update two or three times a day, every day the way I used to and it is no longer unusual for me to take the weekend off.

Reader Expectations

Some of you might wonder how much weight I give to meeting my reader’s expectations, especially after I mentioned some people complained about how frequently I update.

The answer is I don’t let my readers guide all I do nor do I disregard their wishes entirely.

I do my best to produce and publish content that interests me based upon a schedule that fits my day.

The idea is that if I am bored by what I am writing I can’t expect you to be interested either. And I figure that if you like my writing you’ll figure out what my publishing schedule is and respond accordingly.

All that being said I realized that since I’ll be gone for a few days the content I post before I leave will go stale and that is not good for retaining readers.

Had I thought about this in advance I could have planned for it and written a couple of posts to fill the gaps.

Maybe An Editorial Calendar Would Help

In concept it could keep me more organized and help prevent minor problems like the one I just described.

However I prefer to let the content here generate on a more organic basis so I have avoided using the calendar. Thus far that has worked pretty well for me but there may come a time where I am too busy to write without mapping it all out in advance.

Since I haven’t done it yet what you are reading now is a five-minute post I wrote Monday morning. It is scheduled to go live on Wednesday and to potentially serve as a placeholder until Friday night…maybe.

I might find time to blog and decide that I am willing to do so with my phone in which case this post won’t hold the same weight as it would if I didn’t update.

But in case I don’t you have this and the links below to keep you company until I return.

See you soon.

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7 Comments

  1. Tim Bonner April 30, 2015 at 9:31 am

    Interesting that you mention how much weight you give to meeting a reader’s expectation. That’s a post I have in draft to write about. The subject comes up from time to time on my blog so I thought I’d talk about it at some point!

    I don’t write on my blog as often as I used to. I still publish once a week or as much as I can. I use CoSchedule as my editorial calendar but in all honesty I could get away without using it. I like the fact that it publishes posts to social media too though so for now I’ll keep it.

  2. Birdman April 29, 2015 at 4:34 pm

    I tried scheduling posts before when I knew I would be driving for a few days. I didn’t like it that much, so I quit doing it. I guess I didn’t know you when you were posting several times a day, but like you said, we don’t have to read all of them.

    • Jack April 29, 2015 at 6:02 pm

      I don’t update with the same frequency and haven’t in a long while. But for a while I had one reader in particular who would complain and I would always ask them why they felt obligated to read everything.

  3. Jens-Petter Berget April 29, 2015 at 12:10 pm

    I was about to ask you if you schedule your post, but I discovered the answer close to the end of the article.

    I use a editorial calendar (CoSchedule). I use it to schedule posts, and to have an overview of my posts. This helps me stay productive, and it helps me write a variations of posts.

    I don’t think you need to be publishing at specific times and at specific days of the week. It’s very easy to keep up with everything now that you’re using Postmatic.

    • Jack April 29, 2015 at 6:03 pm

      I suppose if I get busier I might choose to look at a calendar as a tool to help me stay organized, but up to now I have managed without it. Might check out CoSchedule just to see what it looks like,

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