How to post consistently on any platform
Keep stepping. (Image by 1195798)
As a blogger, I try to not blog too much about blogging. It has that weirdly recursive quality to it, like the woman on the old Land O’Lakes butter package holding the a package of butter with a picture of her holding a package of butter with a picture of her holding a package of butter...
Or the websites that teach you how to make money by creating a website that teaches people how to make money by creating a website that teaches people how to make money...
But at this point, I’ve been publishing a blog every weekday for a few years now, and I find myself in the position of being able to offer tips for how to publish blogs (or anything else) on a regular basis.
The first thing you have to do is make sure that the amount of time you have available aligns with the amount of time it will take you to make the content you’d like to make. So for example, if you have five hours a week to set aside and it typically takes you two hours to write a blog post, your maximum output for a given week is two blog posts. If you wanted to create more content in a week, you’d have to dedicate more time, work in a medium in which a given piece of content takes less time to produce, or get faster at the creation process.
You may not know at first how long it will take you to create, but you can estimate and then test. When I first started writing blog posts, I allowed about ninety minutes for each one, and that served me well for a couple of years. These days, I’ve got it down to more like an hour.
Based on this production schedule, you can decide what your publishing or posting schedule will be. These are two different things, and understanding this distinction is the key to posting consistently. Posting your work the moment it’s ready to go means that you will never build a queue of material that is ready to go.
Building on the example above, if you are able to sustainably write two blog posts each week, you would publish one per week. Keep writing two per week and publishing one, and you will develop a backlog that ensures that you can post consistently and never miss a deadline.
If we intend to publish a lot, we may end up cutting it a bit close using only this approach. For example, if I am capable of creating twelve Instagram posts each week and I want to post ten per week, I’d only be adding two to my backlog each week. It would then take five weeks for me to get a week ahead, which means that if I got sick or wanted to take a vacation, I would run out of things to post really quickly. Therefore, another way that you can establish a backlog is to give yourself a bit of runway when you start. That means that you would create content for several weeks before you make your first post. Then, you continue to create according to your production schedule and keep that extra material handy as “insurance” in case of emergency.
Now, I didn’t do it this way, myself. I simply began posting my blog and then realized that, to keep it going, I was going to have to keep writing, every day, a lot. I wanted to “get ahead,” but I struggled to do so because writing even one post took a lot out of me. I couldn’t even come up with an idea for a second one until the following day.
To eventually escape the constant pressure of having a deadline every day, I built up my stamina for writing. Now, I can write three or four posts in one day if I have the time. Doing that, I was able to get a couple of weeks ahead on my blog. As a result, I have the time and space to begin to experiment with creating content for other platforms and adding new writing projects. As I do, I’m making a game out of how much of a backlog I can build and how far ahead I can get.
You may not have a lot of time available, but whatever time you do have can be used to do the work that you dream of creating and sharing. And you can show up and share consistently if you create a publishing schedule that honors whatever production schedule you’ve got. Have fun and keep going — it will pay off in unexpected ways.
