As bloggers, we waste countless hours online doing things that don’t help promote and build our sites or our businesses. Avoiding wasting time and always being productive are often hard tasks to accomplish, but with the right organizational skills saving time on all of your tasks and using the extra time to get ahead of your competition is easy.
1. Take a notebook or binder with you wherever you go.
Sometimes during the day a great idea pops into your head for an excellent article topic or something you’d like to implement on your blog, but you have no way of remembering it and soon that idea is lost. So you never forget any ideas, keep a notebook with you at all times. Keep it beside you when you sleep, when you’re in the car, or during whatever daily activities you attend.
2. Have some backup posts ready for emergencies.
Sometimes tragedy strikes with no warning and there is nothing we can do. Whether you’re going to be away from your blog or the internet for an extending period of time, or whether a horrible case of writer’s block has plagued you, it’s always important to have some backup posts ready that you can publish without worry.
3. Create a weekly posting schedule.
For some bloggers it’s difficult to constantly have ideas for articles that need to be published the next day. Grab a piece of paper (or your notebook, as mentioned in point one) and make a chart that contains every single day of the week. Then think about which posts you’re going to publish on what days, and write it down. Jot down potential post titles and main points these articles might include. By planning ahead you can save several weekly hours of thinking and stressing over content.
4. Subscribe to your favorite blogs in an RSS reader.
Subscribing to the blogs you read can keep you organized and save many hours each week. Not only does it take at least two or three times longer to visit and read each site by going to it manually, but you might also forget to check up on a blog or two. By using an RSS reader, such as Google Reader, you can read many more sites in less time and keep track of them all without doing any extra work.
5. Use spam protection for your comments.
Some blogs can get dozens to hundreds of spam comments per day, and deleting them all manually eats up the valuable time you could otherwise spend coming up with new content. Instead, use the few extra minutes it takes to install and activate some spam protection that’ll do the work for you and save you hours in the future.
6. Quit checking your stats all the time.
Why do you check your blog statistics or earnings ten times a day? They’ll keep going on whether you look at them or not, so all you’re doing is wasting precious time. Limit checking your statistics to just once a day or every other day, and don’t get carried away. It’s still important to know how well you’re progressing, but your blog will only go downhill if all you do is check your stats.
7. Organize your priorities.
As a blogger, you obviously have plenty of tasks. You have to respond to all of your emails, comment other blogs, and log in to your social media and networking accounts. Believe it or not, you can spend all day doing these tasks and then look at the clock and realize you have no time to write a new post. Instead, learn how to get through all of your daily blogging errands quickly but sufficiently, and when you’re done at a certain site exit out of it so it won’t tempt you while you should be working.
The internet is a huge place, and it’s easy to get distracted and carried away from your blogging duties. Take some time to sit down and think about how you work best, and don’t be lazy and procrastinate. Get yourself and your blog organized, and then all you will see is improvement.
