An Experiment: Develop an efficient blogging timeline

Thanks to Darren and Skellie for the inspiration behind this, but I’ve decided to do a little experiment with my blogging.

For those of you who might not know, along with the work I do that comes in for Ginkgo Consulting, i also blog on two sites for b5media, my personal weight loss blog, a personal finance blog (because hey, it’s popular right now), and a few other blog projects I have going on. Yes, I’m a busy girl!

One of the biggest problems that I’m finding myself and other bloggers go through is how to develop a good routine with blogging. I’ve talked to some bloggers who just post whenever the mood strikes them. They get an idea, write it, hit publish, and move on. Other bloggers do loads of research and writing and re-writing before they’re happy enough to publish something – bringing their frequency down to even less than once a week.

It’s a pretty well known fact that posting frequency is one of the many crucial elements to your blog’s success. If you post too much, you might “flood” your readers and annoy them. If you don’t post enough, you risk losing their interest, which is super hard to get back once it’s gone.

I’ll point to the two “inspirational” posts now, but I’ve decided to do an experiment to see if I can, first of all, get myself on a good routine, and also see how it affects things like readership, traffic, and income.

Tips on Finding Your Blogging Rhythm by Darren Rowse at Problogger
How to Develop an Efficient Post Frequency by Skellie

So here’s my plan:

Ginkgo Consulting – 3 posts per week
Weight Loss Blog – 5 posts per week
b5 Blog #1 – 4 posts per week
b5 Blog #2 – 6 posts per week
Personal Finance Blog – 5 posts per week
(I’ll worry about the other projects once I get these nailed down, but only because they’re not really “live” yet anyway.)

So, that’s quite a bit, eh? 23 posts per week. It sounds a lot worse than it is, because by my own nature, I’m more of a get the thought, blog it, social media mark it, and be done with it type. Not that I don’t respond to comments on the posts (because I do), or that I just forget about the post once it’s done, but rather that I can sit down for two hours and crank out some decent quality stuff most of the time. Other times it takes a while, given research and so on, but I fancy myself a decent writer, so 23 posts per week doesn’t sound so scary to me.

Besides, if I can do that many, plus manage all the “regular” work through Ginkgo, and YOU, dear reader, have only one blog and/or a full time job… well, you can see where I’m going with this! You’ll have no excuses!

My goal is to mark out chunks of time to write for each site throughout the week. I love WordPress’s post-dating feature, so I can sit and write three posts and post date them for throughout the week, and be done with it until either something newsworthy comes up, or I reach my next chunk of time writing for that blog.

So, starting Monday October 27th, I’ll be posting weekly updates on “The Experiment” through the end of the year. We’ll see how things go, I’ll post traffic results and so on, and we’ll go from there!

Wish me luck, and let me know your thoughts in the comments…

• Do you have a regular blogging schedule?
• Are you a researcher/rethinker or do you just write, publish, and market as you go?

MSNBC Zeitgeist insults bloggers with “a plant that blogs”

While I agree that the story seems fishy, I’m not keen on the “living in it’s parent’s basement” comment… What do you guys think?

ZenHabits: Productivity 2.0

I’m a huge fan of Leo Babuta’s Zen Habits blog. I’ve mentioned it before (My quarterly office checkup), and will surely do it again. I just read an AMAZING post about productivity: Productivity 2.0: How the New Rules of Work Are Changing the Game, and I wanted desperately to not only put this stuff into action for myself, but to share it with my clients and colleagues.

The topic basically goes into “old school” versus “new school” philosophies on work and productivity, and it clears up a lot of misconceptions of what really works versus what doesn’t. They can apply to blogging, your 9-5, web design, or basically any job you can think of where you have a little bit of freedom to manage your time (which unfortunately isn’t always the case for certain professions). I’m sure with a little tweaking, you can apply these “new school” habits to your career, and I know I’m going to work hard trying to accomplish that for myself.

In brief, as quoted from the post:

Don’t crank out tasks — learn to work with a deeper focus. Don’t plan and hold meetings and form committees — just launch the software or product or service and keep improving it. Don’t spend time organizing — you’ve got more important things to worry about.

I’ve been really focusing on time management for myself, and it seems the more strict I try to get, the more frustrated I get, but still the less I accomplish than I wanted to. Rather than focusing on “Finish. Now.” I’m going to work harder at getting each task on each project done, one at a time. For ongoing stuff like copywriting or blogging projects, I’m still going to have to work on deadlines and such, but for other things, it’s just a matter of focus.

In a newsletter to clients about the change in the company (Re-branding your business.) I mentioned a new payment system I’m implementing for ongoing projects. I promised a maximum 48-hour turnaround on requests, for the sole purpose of helping me stay on top of my tasks in a more manageable way. I’m using technology (Outlook 2007) to help me with this. Rather than calendars and post-its, I check my to-do list via email requests that have come in when I check my email first thing in the morning.

Do you have any productivity challenges you’re trying to work on? What do you think of Leo’s concept of “old school” versus “new school” productivity?

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Interviewed by Shashi from Network Solutions at BWE

Hey all! *Big Wave* if you’re here by way of the Network Solutions blog where you saw the interview I had with Shashi Bellamkonda.

If you didn’t see it there, well I have it right here:

Thanks for the interview, Shashi!

Re-branding your business.

After nearly four years as “Anubis Marketing”, I made a decision to grow my company outward. It started as a simple design, SEO, and internet marketing business, but has since grown to so much more than that. It was time for a change.

I explain my logo here, which really has a lot to do with the naming of the new company, but what it boils down to is that I felt I needed a better representation of myself and my company than “The Egyptian God of Death and Resurrection”. Haha, that wasn’t my initial goal, but since Anubis has the head (and sometimes the body) of a hound (greyhound), it was something that meant something to me. The problem was, it was only a positive meaning to me, as a greyhound owner, and to the rest of the world well… not so much.

Ginkgo trees symbolize longevity, wisdom, and life. That’s more what this business is about, more what I’m about. I love the leaves, so it made sense to me. It should make more sense to others now, too.

So here I sat with this idea to change my company name, and now I have to deal with four years of incoming links to my old site. With the posts and pages and information on that old site. One good thing is that it was built on WordPress, so I can import the old posts over here, but now comes the trouble of letting my RSS subscribers know about the move and doing a permanent redirect from there to the new site, so that the search engines know where I am now, too.

Not that this is all that much trouble, mind you. It’s just a little scary sometimes. There are chances I could lose subscribers if I don’t write that post on the site compelling enough. There are chances I could lose new visitors who click a link expecting to see Anubis Marketing and find themselves at Ginkgo Consulting. There are chances that I won’t, too. So it’s a little unnerving, but it’ll be okay.

Other Changes

Along with the website changes, there are other things I’m implementing into the new business, like fee structure, payment programs, and services offered. Since I’ve had so many new experiences and projects, I wanted a new way to manage everything to help make it easier.

Eventually, I plan to offer “one stop shopping” for programs. If your site needs a “cleanup” on design for example, you’ll be able to come to the site, pay for it, and we can then hammer out the necessary details via email. Rather than spending my time “selling” a package or price, the goal here is to make it smooth and seamless by letting you know up front what’s included in full detail.

I’m also planning on offering premium WordPress themes that can be purchased right from the site and will be emailed directly to you upon payment. This is for people who might only need a “base” layout for their site, but prefer to do all the customizations and implementations on their own without paying additional fees for programming or development.

So, it’s an exciting time for me! I’m looking forward to our growth and expansion, and I’m seeing great things to come!

Have you ever put your blog or business through a major overhaul like this? Please share your story with us in the comments section!

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