*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Please see my full disclosure.
Plan and Organize Blog Posts

Want to plan and organize blog posts? A lot of work goes into setting up a blog, and in order for it to be successful, you have to effectively be planning blog posts.  

Plan & Organize Blog Posts

Blogging isn’t as simple as just writing something and then hitting publish.  There is a lot of behind the scenes work to writing that stellar blog post.

Planning and Organizing Blog Posts
A lot of work goes into setting up a blog, and in order for it to be successful you have to effectively plan and organize your blog posts.  Blogging isn’t as simple as just writing something and then hitting publish.  There is a lot of behind the scenes work to writing that stellar blog post.

The first step to plan and organize a blog post?  Generating a great post idea through brainstorming.

Brainstorm Great Post Ideas

When you plan and organize blog posts brainstorming is the way to go.  Brainstorming is creating ideas and forcing them out of your brain.  No matter what ideas enter your head while you are brainstorming, write them down.

You may not use all of the ideas that you brainstorm, but all ideas can possibly point you in the right direction.

*TIP When you brainstorm you can use a GIANT piece of paper.  If you are like me, my brain needs lots of clean space to write and generate blogging ideas.  You can fit tons more ideas on a big sheet of paper.

When you plan and organize blog posts, figure out how your brain works, and accommodate it to get the most out of your brainstorming sessions. 

Perhaps you need to create a graphic organizer, or you need to draw pictures to really pull those million dollar ideas out of your head and onto the paper.

You may even set aside a specific day of the week or month to do your brainstorming.

What’s Trending on Pinterest

When you plan and organize blog posts, see what’s trending on Pinterest. If you are lacking some blog post inspiration have a look at Pinterest.  One of the ways you can generate ideas from Pinterest is by looking at what’s trending.  To find out what’s trending on Pinterest:

  • Go to the Pinterest home page
  • Put your cursor in the search box and a drop down menu populates
  • You will see your recent searches and under that you will see “Trending Ideas”.

Now, these trending ideas may have nothing to do with your blog, but if they do bingo! You’ve just got something to blog about!  You know what people are already looking for and you can write a blog post around it.

Get Keywords and Ideas from Pinterest for Blog Posts

You can search something you may be thinking about creating a blog post for on Pinterest.  Perhaps you have a DIY blog and you are thinking about making slime.  You can go to Pinterest and type in the search bar “How to Make Slime” As you can see, I typed that into the search bar and out came a bunch of other searches underneath that in the colored boxes.  

So by using Pinterest’s suggestion, you will have more of an idea of how you want to plan and organize your blog post. How to Make Slime – For Kids! Would be a great title and it’s already being searched for. There are so many ideas and people who have made slime you could even do a round-up post of the best slime recipes and link all the bloggers who are making great slime recipes. With Pinterest, the inspiration is endless.

I have a blog post that explains some more Pinterest Strategies if that’s your thing.

Put Systems Into Place

Systems are a way to almost duplicate yourself when you plan and organize your blog posts.  Once you have a system in place, they kind of work themselves.  No one is going to do your work for you unless you hire an assistant.  BUT if you have a great system your assistant can follow along with your exact system.  Boom, you just duplicated yourself!

Whatever system you use, write it down. Then it can be followed. You can always update your system as your blog evolves. This is a great trick to plan and organize blog posts.

Create a Master Task List.

A master task is a system that will list generically list all the tasks that you need to do each week to produce your blog posts.

When this whole blogging thing was new to me, and I was kind of stumbling along (rightfully so I might add) because the learning curve for a new blogger is steep.

The sheer volume of blogging tasks I had to do was quite daunting.  I’m a super organized person, but I wasn’t sure what to do until I played around blogging for a bit.

A blogger not only needs to to decide what to post, but what to write, research, photograph, edit, design, optimize, and promote.  That’s a whole lotta stuff right?

Creating a master task list that you can follow each day will have help you plan and organize blog posts in no time flat.  You will be ready in every area by the time they are ready to go live.

With s master task list, you can batch your tasks and up your productivity which brings us to our next point…

Batch Your Posts On Your Master Task List

When you plan and organize blog posts it is much easier to batch your tasks.  Batching tasks is when you do all like tasks together saving you time, effort, and energy.

Let’s say you brainstorm all your blog post ideas on one day of the month, then write all of your posts another day, then work on your promotion another day, that’s batching your tasks!

When you are constantly switching gears, you lose valuable time and creativity.  If you stay in one gear by doing the same thing by batching your tasks, you will be more productive and get more things done.

Master Task List

A Master Task List is a great place to ramp up your blogging goals.  You just follow the list and off you go.

If your goal is to publish a blog post once a week, a master task list is where you can do just that and even work ahead.  Batch your work and get a few weeks ahead in your posting schedule.  That will take some of the pressure off of you.

Plan and Organize Blog Posts Offline

Plan and organize your blog posts with Microsoft word. I like to write and plan my posts out in Word or Pages.  A word program helps with the content creation process because you can use these programs even when you don’t have an internet connection. 

I spend a lot of time on an airplane  ✈️ and traveling.  WiFi is often unreliable on an airplane and if you use MS Word or Pages you can keep working on your blog posts even without a WiFi signal as you plan and organize your blog posts.

Print Your Rough Draft

When you plan and organize your blog posts, a printed copy of your blog post allows you to make marks on your rough draft. I feel like when you first start blogging printing your rough draft can be super helpful. Especially if you are kind of new to writing.

When you have a hard copy of a document you can more easily see your mistakes as you plan and organize your blog posts.  If you use a pen or pencil to mark out mistakes, rearrange paragraphs, and change-up your headings and subheadings you can find mistakes easier than if you are looking at a screen.

The physical act of writing when you plan and organize your blog posts is so special.  Writing as opposed to typing is kind of like the difference between reading an ebook and an actual physical book. Ebooks are great but there is something about holding a book in your hand and reading.

When you plan and organize your blog posts do you write them down first on paper?  Or do you type them and not write anything down?  Typing is much faster, so by printing out your post you can mark up the hard copy, draw arrows, put lines through things you don’t like, and rearrange to make things work.

Plan and Organize Your Blog Posts With a Blog Planner

Blog Content Outline - Blog Planner Insert

Planners make such a huge difference when you plan and organize your blog posts!  I’ve created a Printable Blog Planner that has different parts for all of your blogging needs. 

The PBR Planner is Buildable, meaning you can build it as you go.  If you are the type of person who likes to plan and write things down on paper then the Plan Blog Repeat Blog Planner will help you plan and organize your blog content.

The type of planner you use is really personal preference.  There are so many types, the possibilities are endless.  My Filofax recently met it’s untimely death, (lets *pause* for a moment of silence in her honor).  The Happy Planner is a perfect accompaniment to The PBR Blog Planner.

Planner Tip To Plan And Organize Blog Posts:

Write your post titles on a post it, so you don’t have to write in your planner before you have decided exactly what post you want to publish on which day.  If you want to move your blog posts around, you can simply peel up the post it and move it to a different day.

Use A Separate Planner For Blogging

I find it most organized for the blog when I don’t mix business planning and personal planning. 

Having Planner Peace is when you have complete peace about your planner.  Using a planner to plan and organize your blog posts, will bring you planner and blog peace!

I used to need to have separate planners for business and personal use.  Busy Mom’s need a lot of space for planning and two planners didn’t use to work for me.

Using a planner can help you plan and organize your blog posts. It can be really helpful to have a paper planner to plan and organize your blog posts. Technology can fail, paper is a great back up and you can really see and touch your plans.

By having a complete planner dedicated to blogging, you can keep everything in one place, completely organized and easy to follow and find.

Planners For Blog Organization

Planners are fantastic for the organization of your blog posts.  Writing things down not only gets you organized but it makes things happen!  Paper planners are awesome but digital planners have a place in the world too.

A paper planner needs to be open and in front of you to be effective.  A digital planner, like iCal can pop up reminders to your throughout the day.  A digital planner can pop a reminder to your on your watch, phone, or computer.

That’s a great system to really keep your blog posts organized.  All of your electronics can work in harmony to keep you on schedule.  A digital and a paper planner can both work together.

Blog Posting Schedule

When you plan and organize your blog posts, pick which days you would like to post and stick to it.  If you are just starting your blog, it’s not so much of a problem if your posting is sporadic because you don’t yet have traffic and may not even want it.

When I first started blogging I didn’t really want traffic. I know that probably sounds ridiculous but I wanted to learn and make mistakes without an audience watching me possibly fail.

However, it’s never too soon to establish a posting schedule. The sooner you get traffic and your blog up and running the better!

There is so much to do when starting a blog.  With all of the blogging tasks you need to do it can all feel totally overwhelming.  A posting schedule helps get your posts planned and written in a timely manner.  A posting schedule will help you stay on track planning and organizing your blog posts.

Using an Editorial Calendar to Plan Blog Posts

An editorial calendar will help you plan and organize your blog posts.  A great goal to have is to plan your blog posts a year in advance.  If you can manage to plan out enough blog posts for an entire year of content, you won’t run out of blogging material.   

You don’t have to write an entire year of blog posts at one time. Just coming up with blog ideas is a great start. However, you can plan and organize your blog posts for an entire year rather quickly once you start brainstorming!

Types Of Editorial Calendars

You can use an electronic editorial calendar or a paper one. I personally use a month at a glance inside my Blog Planner.  You can keep a running list of blog post ideas.  Once you have that running list you can draw from those ideas to fill in your editorial calendar. It’s much easier to plan and organize blog posts with a running list!

You can plan blog posts as far in advance as you can manage.  As long as your blog content is evergreen, the farther your content is planned the better.  If life throws you a curve ball or two your blog will never suffer with content planned in advance.

Don’t be afraid to switch up your editorial calendar.  You may want to move posts around.  Do whatever suits you.  An editorial calendar is to help you effectively plan and organize your blog posts.  If you have to rearrange that’s just part of the organization process.

Use a Blog Post Cheat Sheet

Plan and Organize Blog Posts with a Blog Post Cheat-Sheet

I created a free blog post cheat sheet just for the Plan Blog Repeat readers!  This cheat sheet can be used in your very own Blog Planner for easy reference.

This cheat sheet can be used in your very own blog planner to help you plan and organize blog posts. Don’t have a blog planner? Print this out and you’ve got the start of a blog planner.

The Blog Post Cheat Sheet is a useful way to organize your blog posts.  Not only does it help you to make your blog post more reader friendly, but also search engine friendly. What blogger doesn’t want that?

How to Efficiently Plan and Organize Blog Posts
Pin me for later.

Just fill in your name and email address below to grab this awesome freebie!

deannacastro