What Is Your Daily Routine?

Get Into A Routine

As humans we are creatures of habit.  We tend to like to stick to pre-established routines and straying from that routine can cause unwanted stress.  Having a routine helps to keep you focused and in tune with your work.  Conversely, not having a routine or set pattern can lead to chaos, missed deadlines, and panic.

Sticking to a routine can help you build your blogging consistency and is also a great way to stay on track towards meeting the goals you have set.

My Daily Routine

1. Log onto my blogs and check to make sure that they posted without issue.
2. Check the traffic to the blogs from the day before.
3. Check referral data to find any incoming links from fellow bloggers.
4. Read any comments that I have not already seen.
5. Reply to comments as needed.
6. View all the blog posts of blogs in my blogroll.
7. Leave relevant comments on these blogs and any links to similar posts I have written.
8. Send out a Twitter tweet on new posts 3 times a day.  Auto-tweet in morning when posts go live, then manually in the afternoon and evening (to reach more foreign traffic).  Follow me at @SSmith0911
9. Research and work up new posts as needed and set to auto-post.
10. Engage comments left throughout the rest of the day.
11. Submit excellent cornerstone posts to article marketing sites as needed.
12. Comment on forums on relevant topics leaving links as appropriate.
13. Make sure to have a pad of paper in my back pocket throughout the day for making notes and saving post ideas.

Sticking to this routine daily does pay off in the long run, as I am engaging my comments and leaving comments on other blogs and forums to help drive new traffic to my sites.

Do you have a routine that you follow daily?

Importance of Prewriting and Queueing Posts

You don't write all of your posts the night before do you?

Customizing Your Post Times

Many of the popular blogging tools offer the ability customize when your post is going to go live on your site.  This is an excellent feature to use when working on your posts.  You can set all of your daily posts to go live at the same time each day.  Blogging consistency is important if you want to keep and grow your reader base.  Here are a few of the benefits of writing ahead and time and queueing your articles for a later time or date.  Queueing posts up for later release can be beneficial:

• When you have a sick day and can't get out of bed to write.
• When you are on vacation or are taking a refreshing break.
• Have a stroke of great inspiration and can write multiple posts in one sitting.
• Want every post to appear live at a specific time.
• Have certain time sensitive topics.
• When working up a series with multiple posts on a specific topic.
• Have guest posts to space apart.
• Hosting a blogging carnival and are adding links to the hosting carnival page.

I do highly recommend writing your posts ahead of time and setting them in the queue for the dates and times that you would like.  It is much less stressful, knowing that you have a cushion of articles already written waiting to go live.  Having to crank out a post on the fly with little time to edit and proofread is a recipe for a poor post.  Save yourself the hassle and work up a few posts ahead of time.

Blogging Consistency

"Everything you need to get that relaxed driving that brings consistency only comes with practice."
John Surtees
Consistency

When blogging, you should try to be as consistent as possible.  The more you write and post, the more consistent you will become.  Posting on random days at random times is very inconsistent.  If you want to really grow your blog, first you must find readers.  Next, you must bring those same readers back time and time again.  Sticking to a posting schedule will reap rewards of reader loyalty and returning traffic.  The more you post good content the more readers will learn that they can count on your information at reliable intervals.  How often you post is not quite as important as setting up a posting schedule.

Maybe you only post new entries on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  That's fine, as long as you stick to that schedule, inform your readers of your posting schedule, and don't deviate from it.  Posting daily will probably have the best results for your blog.  Random posting at random times breeds inconsistency.  Being inconsistent will cost you readers.  Not only is be consistency in your days of posting important, but reliablity in your posting times are important as well.

Blogging Timeline

You want to create a consistent timeline for posting as well.  By selecting a specific time of day to have your scheduled posts go live, you will allow your readers the oppurtunity to look for and expect your posts at a certain time of day.  This will assist in retaining your readers as they know when to expect new posts from you and negates them having to return periodically throught the day looking for new blog entries.  By studying my google analytics time data, I was able to derive that 6:00 AM was the ideal time for me to post on my main blog, Cold's Gold Factory.  The data showed me when my traffic starts to arrive in the morning.  So to cater to the needs of my readers I started posting daily at that same time each day.  This blog will feature daily posts and an 8:00AM (Central Time) posting schedule.