I’ve talked about how I use Goodreads to organise my to-reads list and figure out which books I’m buying next, and last week I showed you how I reorganised my bookshelves.
Now I want to talk about another couple of fantastic tools I use for managing the blog.
Google Calendar
I’ve kept a schedule since October 2012, which was utilised best in 2013 when I did Project Animorphs.
I used to try to post every day. In 2015 I changed my blogging schedule to post every two days. This means I would do my regular memes Top Ten Tuesday, Waiting on Wednesday and Stacking the Shelves, as well as some of my original features and the good old book review.
I colour coordinate EVERYTHING. Posts yet to be written are red: this is because you have to change the colour from the default blue, so it helps to remind me that I still need to write that post. Once reviews are posted they are changed to orange so I can quickly see how many I’ve posted in a month. Other posts are changed to blue when they’re scheduled.
In January and February I didn’t stick to my post-every-second-day, but that’s OK, because I still fulfilled my commitment and it helps my stress levels. As you can see from the above picture, which is April 2015, I’m not very organised in advance at the moment, but normally I try to post as much in advance as I can. Personal circumstances are affecting my reading.
I switch posts all the time. I can skip any of the memes if I want and slot in a review or discussion post.
Drafting Using Dropbox
On top of the Google Calendar I also have a Word Document I keep in my Dropbox that I write drafts of posts in. My dropbox is linked to my computer, my iPad, and my phone. I don’t like the draft feature on the blog because I’m old school and like seeing everything in a list in Microsoft Word.
At the moment I have the future Top Ten Tuesday posts I can write at my leisure, the rest of the 30 Day Book Challenge, a list of Musing by Moonlight chat topics that are in various draft stages (including basic idea – whenever I get a hint of inspiration I’ll write it down to work on it later), and some other ideas I’m working on but are yet to launch.
When a discussion post is completed, it’ll slot into the blog.
What about you? What tools do you find essential for running a blog? Do you use Google Calendar and Dropbox?
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About Nemo
A lover of kittens and all things sparkly, Nemo has a degree in English Literature and specialises in reviewing contemporary, paranormal, mystery/thriller, historical, sci-fi and fantasy Young Adult fiction. She is especially drawn to novels about princesses, strong female friendships, magical powers, and assassins.
Bekka
Totally agree about Google Calendar (or any editorial calendar)!! On Great Imaginations we use the Editorial Calendar plugin which is amazing because it let’s you quickly see who wrote the post, *AND* it lets you drag and drop to different dates for scheduling. It’s wonderful!
On my other blog I use blogger so unfortunately that calendar isn’t available to me, so I use Google Calendar and it’s perfect. On there I also have my Great Imaginations posts so I can see how much blogging I’m doing each week on both blogs. Each blog has a different color, and all my unwritten posts are also red. I should try your method of color-coding even further so I can take a quick look to see all my reviews, original content, and memes.
Great post!
Nemo
I definitely think if I had a co-blogger I’d be using the editorial calendar plugin, and I probably would be now but I just haven’t transferred all of my Google Calendar stuff over yet. The bonus is that I can access Google Calendar on my phone so I can see at a glance what I’m yet to write without logging on to a computer.
I’m a huge fan of colour coding. It makes things SO MUCH EASIER at a glance.
Alisa @ Papercuttts
I keep track of my post schedule with Google calendar, but in a lower-maintenance way than you, hehe. I use it mostly as an overview of what I did and what I need to prepare for. All that color coding stuff is done in a bulleted google doc. In that doc, each week has a list of posts that I want to do, and I highlight them in a bright color if it’s reeeaalllly super important. If it’s finished, then I highlight it in grey.
All my draft posts are in Google drives, kinda like the way you use dropbox. It’s just so much lighter and faster than using Word, so I like it.
Nemo
Yeah I’m actually considering slinging everything over from my Google Calendar to the calendar plugin here on the blog, but I can’t seem to sacrifice the ability Google Calendar has to show me what’s going on on my phone, which I have with me all the time, as opposed to my computer, which I do not.
Sounds like you’re super prepared, I like that!