The Blogging Process
I love to share what’s going on with Proof & Parchment through blogging and I have so many posts I want to write in order to bring you all in more and help you out in all the ways I can. However keeping a blog up and running is definitely a lot of work and doesn’t always come natural to me, at least not the writing part. So I wanted to share a little more insight today on my blogging process. I have mentioned more about being organized as a blogger in a past post but hopefully this can give you a little look into what goes on behind the scenes of writing an actual post and help you out if you run your own blog whether for fun or for a business!
Lay the Groundwork
Before I start working on each blog post I have a few things that keeps me organized with my blogging process from the get go, which makes it easy every time I go to blog.
The blogging process groundwork includes:
- Google sheet organizing all of my posts
- Trello editorial calendar with blog workflows
- Graphic templates saved for headers & imagery
- Blog article template in Google Drive for all of my drafts
- Big ideas list of all blog topics to write about in Trello
- Graphic and imagery library
Step #1: Pick A Topic
Now that I have the groundwork set up for blogging success I can actually start the blogging process. When I go to pick out something to write I refer back to my spreadsheet and my blog topics lists to start. I enjoy blogging about a variety of topics so in my spreadsheet I keep a running tally of the main categories each post focused on. This makes it super easy for me to see visually what topics I haven’t wrote about recently. From there I can go to my idea list in Trello to find something that seems like a good fit.
Step #2: Research & Write
Once I have picked out a topic for the week then the hard part of the blogging process starts, the actual writing of the post. This is probably the biggest struggle for me since I’m more visually inclined versus writing. The only way for me to get better though is to power through and keep on writing week after week, it definitely works a different part of my brain and is good for the business. I would love to say that I could whip out a few posts at a time but I usually only have the capacity to get one post a week, hopefully I can improve this over time and become a little more efficient with my writing time.
Depending on the topic I also spend some time in this step researching. Whether I’m sharing the love for other resources online with you all or am sharing my experiences with products I want to make sure I share the most important & relevant information.
Step #3: Graphics!
This might be my favorite step in the blogging process which makes sense because I love the imagery and graphics part of a blog post. I usually have imagery in mind while I’m working on the writing of a post which helps with this part immensely. I also have my graphic templates for the header and Instagram post which keeps the look and the feel cohesive but unique. I currently create all of my graphics in InDesign and I have a template set up with the variety of fonts & colors that I swap in and out for each week. I will go into more detail on this in the future plus I’m planning to work on some tutorials using non specialized software to help you all out!
Step #4: Review & Format
Once I have the post written and the graphics ready to go it’s time to review is all and format it so it’s ready to be published on time. At this stage I move into WordPress and start the formatting process. To make sure I use the same settings for spacing I usually copy a past blog post and input the new content. This makes it pretty easy to preview the final post and reread it before scheduling it.
At this stage I also add in my focus keyword & snippet for SEO purposes, along with making sure all of my imagery has alternate text. Once I’m happy with everything I set up the post to auto publish and it’s good to go (right now I have a my posts published on Tuesday and Friday).
Step #5: Final Steps
I’m not completely done with the blogging process once I have it scheduled to publish, but the remaining steps are mostly administrative type tasks but still important. First I go through my checklist in Trello to make sure I did not miss any steps plus I do the final steps on there I can before it’s published. This includes making a bit.ly link and adding it to link.tree. I also set up and social media posts to go along with it and get it ready to add to Pinterest. That’s pretty much it! Phew.
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