June 26, 2010 39 Comments

Travel Into the Future

travel into the future One way to keep great content rolling along on your blog is to have a few posts ready to go ahead of time. Every time I get a moment to sit down to write, I try my best to get two or three or four posts ready. I do as many as I can at one setting.

WordPress makes this very easy. Go to where you hit the publish button and look just above the blue button:

wordpress publish button area

Instead of “publish immediately,” just set it for the day you want to publish the post. Note that I wrote this post on June 23rd, but you’re not seeing it until the 26th. I did this because I knew that I had a bunch of busy days ahead, so I set up a bunch of posts to launch in the morning without me.

The Benefit

The benefit of doing this is that a busy day doesn’t swamp my blogging. The benefit of this is that I can think through what I’ve got posting when, and tweak it, to make sure that I’m covering the topics that matter to me. The benefit of this is that I can plan my work instead of just reacting.

Travel Into the Future

Sometimes, you get to sneak back in and push out a post even further, because something more interesting hits. But having a few extra posts ready means that you can do more for your community while not pulling your own hair out.

Getting into the habit of writing two posts instead of one at a time is a great habit. It will change everything for you.

So, are you ready?

Photo credit alexkerhead

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  • http://stephenpickering.com StephenPickering

    Ah, cool, this will help me with the post a day thing, because like everything, my blogging will come in waves of activity followed by waves of inactivity. This way I can take advantage of the activity waves and spread them out.

  • Raul Sim

    What about not setting your post to be published automatically later? What about leaving it as a draft, and editing it the next day, and then publish it manually?

    Check out the latest post on Copyblogger about “The Rule of 24″ for writers.

  • http://www.perfectoled.com electronic display

    That's right .very cool and Helpful ….jajaj

  • http://twitter.com/swoodruff Steve Woodruff

    What you're onto is this: social media is a combination of pro-active publishing and reactive commenting/conversing. Some people seem to have a knee-jerk reaction against anything non-spontaneous, but when it comes to writing/content creation/broadcasting (oh!-that awful word!), a little planning and advance work can be a huge help. I create most of my “stuff” in the morning and then time out its appearance for other slots.

  • http://elvaleach.com Elva Leach

    Thanks for the great tip. I have just been saving my posts as a draft for future publishing but this looks like a better idea. I have shared your post for others to see.

  • Jackbriant

    Chris
    I feel good when I see your suggestion because when it does get busy I do get swamped by the number of blogs I write. And when I can I try to write more than one entry. Thanks.

  • http://twitter.com/DianaScimone Diana Scimone

    Great idea. Many bloggers write looooong posts that can really be broken into 2 or more shorter posts. As a writer's coach, I'm constantly telling people it's much harder to write something short than something long. When I'm writing my own blog, I often find the post is way too long and realize I've really written 2 posts; I publish half of it immediately and then save the rest for a future date.

    PS: That's one of the reasons I love your blog and Seth Godin's — because your posts are short and easy to read.

    Diana Scimone
    http://www.HowToWriteABook.biz

  • http://twitter.com/jasoncrouch Jason Crouch

    Chris – Thanks for pointing this out. So simple, but I didn't know it existed until this moment. :)

  • http://seeindiadifferently.com/ Vacations in India

    i hv been using this feature for quite sometime now.
    it does send ping when published
    xml-site map if set to re-generate on new post does get updated.
    awesomeness

  • http://www.cffatboy.com/ Jesse Petersen

    I publish my posts to go live just after midnight every night. Sometimes it's for that night and sometimes it's up to a week in advance, such as my weekly series that goes up Monday mornings at midnight. It is a HUGE stress reliever and adds consistency for my readership – my West coast readers get new content at 9pm every night.

  • http://www.joshchandlerva.com Josh Chandler

    Diana,

    That's true, you actually build up anticipation for your readers by breaking a post into two parts. I really should use that a lot more on my blog. I average about 300-500 words per post, but at times I've been known to write 1000+ words in a post (I know, way too long!) :)

  • http://www.joshchandlerva.com Josh Chandler

    Raul,

    You are correct to a certain degree. But, you've got to consider just how much content Chris produces and where exactly he would find the time to wait 24 hours before returning to make the final edits to his post.

    There are blogs who produce articles on embargoed news stories or upcoming events which need to be scheduled in advance. These are the blogs which truly benefit from the functionality.

  • http://www.thinkstrategymarketing.com Mat

    Good reminder Chris. I knew this feature existed, but I still sometimes use the excuse that I don't want a post to go live to not sit down and write when I get busy. Looks like my excuses are being taken away. Thanks again for the reminder.

  • http://www.webconsuls.com Judy Helfand

    Hi Chris,
    Good advice. I think a lot of us fear that we will hit “publish” by mistake. Blogger has this feature, too. Love the photo of the Motorola clock radio!
    Judy

  • http://twitter.com/JonStow Jon Stow

    I already do this, Chris and I agree it is worth pointing out WordPress's scheduling facility. Currently I am about two weeks ahead.of course we hope it will be useful stuff.

    I have been known to wrtite six posts in a day for storage, but that “purple patch” was an exception and it makes up for the days I have no inspiration. :-)

  • Taylor Ellwood

    I do this a lot, and I agree it's a good idea….especially good for that week you're taking for vacation

  • http://www.gillianpritchett.com Gillian

    Yesterday I decided to get back to writing regular blog posts and scheduled certain days of the week to do this – then I thought if only I could post them to go live at a later date and then voilà the awesome Chris Brogan appears in my inbox with the very answer to my question. I shall have to try thought transference again and see how consistently you appear with the answer – lets try with nrxt weeks winning lottery numbers !!!!

  • http://www.superiorpromos.com Pablo Edwards

    I have found this to be the best way to stay on top of blogging. When you have the idea and you're in the mood, write.

  • rmsorg

    Great tips Chris.. I wish the Hubspot system offered this option to their customers.. This would definitely make my blogging experience more enjoyable…

  • http://twitter.com/marymcd Mary McD

    Chris, we do this for our 3 company blogs, and in addition to saving time, you can post a series of blogs that interact with each other, follow a thread (we have a 'theme' every month that bleeds from our blogs to our newsletter and vice versa), and allows you to do some concentrated thinking about the message you want to send.

    Off to update the blogs for the week now… my goal is to get 2-3 weeks in advance!

  • http://www.goshorty.net/ ShortyInDaHouse

    I also do this with two of my three blogs. My Shorty: Your Chicago South Side Resource blog posts daily so this definitely comes in handy. And I look like I”m in the know. I'm about to practice this for my writing blog. I finally found a way to ensure that I post consistently every week.

  • http://twitter.com/mvolpe Mike Volpe

    HubSpot's blogging platform does offer this option. I use ii all the time. Once you have written a blog article, just click on the “advanced” tab, then select a date and time to publish in the future, and then click the “publish” button.

    When the selected time comes, HubSpot will automatically publish your blog article on your website, post it to the RSS feed, send an email to your email subscribers, post it to Facebook and Twitter, add a marketing event to your analytics, and then start tracking the traffic and links into your blog article based on these different sources (social media, RSS, email).

    Let us know if you have trouble setting any of it up, just call 888-HubSpot! We're happy to help.

    What phone number do you call for WordPress support… ;)

  • http://twitter.com/Johnwsnyder John W Snyder

    This is something I am currently working on. Love the idea of two at a a time.

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  • MariaSantoferraro

    Chris – I love your blogs – I take away something useful from them almost every day! I have been blogging for a few months now and never even clicked on the button that allows you to set a future date (duh!). Thanks for pointing that out! Now I have no excuse for getting ahead of the game on my blogs.

  • http://www.yourwhiteroom.com Ted Eleftheriou

    Hey Chris!

    Just recently did this taking a post and making it into a five-part series and scheduling them out to appear every other day. Felt good having so many “in the bullpen” so to speak. Then, during the middle of the series… I forgot that Father's Day was coming up… so as you suggested… I pushed my last post of the series forward and interjected a Father's Day appropriate post.

    Thanks again and love your “stuff!”

    Ted

  • http://lukemysse.com Luke Mysse

    The day this finally clicked in my brain changed the way I blog forever. I once heard it explained that “you're always blogging but not always posting”. Meaning we should always be writing and thinking about content but that doesn't necessarily mean we post that content right away.

    I keep an ongoing list in Evernote of future post ideas…just a title and a brief description. A couple times a month I carve out time to expand those items into full posts, I send the written content to a friend who does some editing for me then I schedule those 8-10 posts to drop over a couple weeks. It takes the pressure off to blog everyday. And I will still chime in with an “publish immediately” post.

  • http://robgokee.com Rob Gokee

    The funny thing about this post is that I just started doing that a few days ago, and I love it. It's much easier for me to crank out 3-4 posts in one sitting, and then schedule them over the week. Otherwise, I never seem to find time every day to write in my blog.

  • http://robgokee.com Rob Gokee

    I use Evernote for the same thing, amazing application.

  • http://lukemysse.com Luke Mysse

    I just started using it about a month ago. The syncing is what did it for me. iPad, iPhone, Mac all stay in sync. I've even started using it for my daily to-do list because it syncs. And I love that it works offline as well, I can type a bunch of notes on a flight and it all syncs up when I get a data connection. Brilliant!

  • http://twitter.com/markcahill Mark Cahill

    Chris,

    Another simple but effective tip, it is all about “working smarter”.

    Mark.

  • http://twitter.com/PriyaFlorence Priya Florence Shah

    I love WP's schedule feature. Makes my life so easier when I'm on vacation. I can just put a weeks worth of posts into the system and let them get published. Of course, I still do all the syndication and bookmarking manually, but it cuts down about 90% of the time it takes so I can relax and enjoy myself.

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