Schedule, queue and stockpile your way to better binge blogging

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I go to great lengths to make it seem like I’m not but I am a total binge blogger. When I have some spare time to sit and write a post I end up writing sometimes half a dozen in the same sitting. From a creative output setting, this makes perfect sense. Once you turn on the part of your brain that writes blog posts, it’s hard to shut it right off again.

And you probably do try to shut it off, right? Because who wants 5 blog posts from you in one day when you haven’t posted anything all week? You hold back because you’re afraid you’ll have nothing do with all those extra posts and it’ll be wasted work.

But instead of fighting this urge to overproduce, why not embrace it? If the mood has struck, write as many posts as you can! There’s three ways to take advantage of these random bursts of productivity:

Schedule. Every blogging platform out there gives you the ability to schedule a blog post for a future date. Get our your calendar and set those extra blog posts to post in the days ahead. Not only does this save you from having to write more later in the week or month, it also lets you get ahead on work. (Think about it… if you write just 4 blog posts and schedule one to post a week, you’ve made sure your blog will be active every single week for a month in one sitting’s worth of work.)
Queue. Some blogging platforms, such as Tumblr, give you the ability to queue posts for future release. Even if your platform doesn’t have this feature, there are a number of add on plugins that will automatically pull a blog post from a predetermined list of posts and post one on a schedule you set. The advantage to a queue over scheduling is that you don’t have to keep track of what days you already have posts scheduled for, it does it automatically. The downside to this, however, is that posts will go up without the human element of picking what would fit best on what day.
Stockpile. Why bother with scheduling or queuing? Just save the extra posts as drafts as you write them. Then, whenever you don’t feel like writing a post or need some instant content, you can just set that draft to published without any need for fancy tools or advanced planning. Sure, it’s a bit more manual work and you need to remember to do it but you have to love the simplicity of this no frills method.

But what about that timely content, the kind that’s date relevant or related to current events? No problem! Those are the posts you post as you write them. But most posts wouldn’t be hurt by a delay of a few days and some (like this one) are downright timeless and can really post at any time.

It’s tempting to want to share what you wrote the second after you write it but a little patience and planning ahead can help you keep your blog active with less direct input from you.