How To Keep Your Blog Business Running Even When Life Goes Crazy

This week is NUTS.

I’ve got:

a spring program
field day
a massage
to get the oil changed
book club

oh yeah… and a party to throw for the kiddo this weekend (that I’m 95% unprepared for as of now).

All of these things are totally “cutting into my work time” Thank goodness I have the flexibility to run my schedule the way I want… but when the week gets crazy I still have to find a way to make it all work!

That’s what I’m sharing with you today… an inside look at how to keep running your blog business even when life is CRAY CRAY!

Right now it’s Monday morning.  Today is really the only day I don’t have a unusually large time constraint, so here’s the plan.

Do it all today. 

Yep, I’m doing everything I would usually do each week day morning… today. (Well, not today when you read this lol, Monday morning).  I’m going to show you how to pull together quality content quickly.

1. Roundup Post.

Yep… roundup posts are awesome. You can create them from other people’s posts, or you can go into your archives (like we talked about on #blog workshop this week)

My favorite tools for round up posts (as well as for creating a great content curation plan)

Feedly.com and swayy.com

Feedly is basically an RSS reader. It allows me to add all the blogs I love and separate them into topics. This makes it really easy to share posts to social media, as well as curate content on my favorite topics.

Swayy is a resource that will provide you with articles based upon your social media following. You can set it up for FB or Twitter, and it will look at your community and provide you content they will like. (which is super cool).

For a good roundup post come up with a fairly specific topic and then curate content that relates to that topic. Sharing helpful, actionable content with your community, whether it’s yours or someone else’s, is always a great idea.

For this crazy week I pulled together some of my favorite resources to help people build community and get clicks from social media. 

2. Video

In a pinch, and/or a crazy week there’s literally NOTHING better than video! You don’t even have to do it! Youtube is filled with amazing videos on every topic you could possibly conceive.

Identify your blog topic for the day, and then go hunting on Youtube to find something that says what you want to say. It’s that easy… and provides amazing content without you having to create it!

That’s what I did yesterday… I found some awesome tips from my “go to” James Wedmore on making the perfect youtube video and shared it in my blog post!

3. Call on your archives.

You’ve got posts in your archives that ROCK. I know you do!

Problem is… your new blog readers and social media community probably NEVER even see them. It’s so sad. 🙁 But, when you’ve got a nutty bonkers week it’s a perfect time to bring them out, and show them off again! If you’re like me and you’ve had multiple blogs in your career you can even pull in content from another blog that was awesome.

I did this last week (for my birthday).

Now that you’ve got all your posts taken care of, you’ve got to share them! You’ve also got to make sure you’ve got content going out to your social media communities so you can stay engaged!

My newest and most favorite tool EVER is coschedule. 

Coschedule is basically an editorial calendar for your social media sharing. As  I said earlier, I’m writing this post Monday morning. I’m going to schedule it to go out on Thursday. It will seem no different to you, but I will actually be out and about doing other things. 🙂 I will have scheduled social media shares via coschedule to go out as soon as this post is published, as well as a few hours after it’s published, a day, 3 days, a week and a month after it’s published.

I can barely remember to make dinner… so not having to remember to go back in and reshare old stuff is a miracle to me. 🙂 I am still surprised when I look at my analytics and see people going to an old post. I think hmmm what’s going on there?! And realize coschedule just posted a link for me somewhere on social media. 😀 YAY!!

Tweetdeck: 

This is my other fantastic best friend. With tweetdeck I am going to be scheduling all my tweets for the week (Monday morning). I will schedule other people’s posts (my posts will go out through coschedule). I will schedule some tips, tricks and quotes.

This leaves me open to share “lifestyle content” as I’m out living my life. It also allows me to simply engage, using my phone from wherever I am, now that the content itself has been scheduled.

Hootsuite will do the same thing for multiple platforms, but I personally like to keep my Facebook stuff in real time… for crazy weeks most of the content I will share on Facebook will be “lifestyle content”… stuff from my life, pictures, and updates on whatever we’re doing at the time.

With my blog,  coschedule and tweetdeck, doing all the heavy lifting for me, I’ll be able to simply interact and engage from my phone.

With a little planning, and a little cramming you can totally keep you blog business running no matter how crazy things get. It’s been a revelation to realize how easily I can schedule things and how I can put a lot of this business on autopilot which leaves the little time I do have to engage… which is what it’s really all about.

This is a great plan for those of you who also work and are blogging part time… take a little weekend time, and schedule out your whole week.

It is possible to keep your blog business running even when the rest of your life is completely crazy. It just takes some commitment and a little bit of planning. Here’s hoping not all the week’s of your life are completely nuts… but for those few you’ve now got a plan!

 

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