I know and use some of the blogging best practices. Want proof? KTAG had over 10 million hits in 2023 and it has made a profit in the last 7 years. Oh, and I work 36 hours a week, I have 7+ chronic illnesses, I’m close to my family and friends, and I run this blog. 

So if you’re looking for successful blogging tips, social media management tips, how to write successful blog posts, and more, keep reading.

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great®! 

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These tips and tricks can be broken into 3 categories, but they are pretty similar. That’s because these strategies are all interdependent and work best together. So pick and choose and figure out what is best for you, your life, and your blog. 

Time Management for Bloggers

Take longer to write your posts 

You might be wondering how “take longer” fits under “time management.” And that’s because I don’t mean that the total time required to write a blog post should be longer. It’s more about spreading out the work when you have other stuff happening in your life. 

I tend to start blog posts at least two, if not three or four, weeks in advance, but that doesn’t mean that I work on them every day leading up to it. As I mentioned, I work 36 hours a week, I live with a bunch of chronic illnesses, and I’m close to my family and friends. So if I want to have a balanced life, I need to work intentionally, which includes working on blog posts over the course of several weeks. 

Something I’ve said a lot – and that will be mentioned a lot in this post – is that I do the majority of my blog work over the weekend. Sometimes I’m able to cram a whole blog post into one weekend, but for the majority of them, I work on them over the course of multiple weekends. 

This enables me to write great blog posts, have a bad day or weekend without totally ruining my blog schedule, live my life, and enjoy my blog work. 

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My steps for writing blog posts are generally: decide on the category, narrow down the topic idea(s), generate SEO keywords, outline, draft, review, and then schedule. This would be a LOT for anyone to do in a 48-hour period, which is why I don’t. 

In fact, that process came about because I couldn’t do all of it in 48 hours. Initially, I would come up with the idea, type 500 words, and post it. Once I started taking more time to create a blog post, I was able to make my process the best process possible, which then helped me get more blog traffic.

The reason my blog has become as successful as it has is because I started writing better quality, more helpful blog posts that were eaqsier to find. All of the relies on the steps stated above and having more time to work on them. 

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Regularly dedicate a chunk of time 

As I said, I do most of my blog work over the weekend to write posts and newsletters, create and schedule social media posts, research SEO keywords, learn about aspects of blogging that I was to improve on, work on my products, and more. 

But that’s what works for my life. So why should you do this?

There are a few reasons.

One is that you can use this time to dedicate yourself to aspects that aren’t your favorite. This could be coming up with ideas, researching courses to take, taking those courses, discovering SEO keywords, analyzing your traffic, or more. 

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Another reason is that you can devote yourself to writing a blog post, which can and should be a huge part of your worktime. 

I write my blog post drafts in Google docs, so I’ll turn on the setting that enables me to work on them when I’m offline, and then I’ll turn off the Internet on my computer and write. I do this in sprints, generally for 20-30 minutes at a time. For me, that’s enough time to write a bunch, but not so much time that I’m tempted to turn my Internet back on or play a game on my phone. 

Sometimes, I’ll even set another timer for my break time so that I’m not procrastinating for an hour and then writing for 20 minutes. 

I can write a lot in that time with few distractions! If there’s anything that I need Internet access for (looking up data, a source for a fact, adding a link to a relevant post I wrote), I add a comment. Then, once that writing sprint is up, I turn the Internet back on and look it up. 

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Work in spurts 

I know what you’re thinking – does this contradict the previous section? No, it does not. 

A spurt is a period of 30 minutes to 2 hours and not, say, and afternoon. 

Work in spurts when you have the time. This can also make you less stressed about your blog, which makes it more fun.

Wondering what this looks like in action? 

Let’s say that it’s a weekend and, since you have a day job, that’s your main blogging time. But you’re also a human being, so you also need to cook, clean, do your taxes, and do something fun. 

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You might have 2 free hours on your Saturday where you could do some blogging. So, knowing that that isn’t enough time to write a full post or take and edit your Instagram posts for the week, you decide to tackle your social media. In those 2 hours, you write your Twitter and Facebook posts for the upcoming week and you schedule what you can with whatever time is left over. 

Considering what else you need to do, that might not seem like much. But it’s something. And yes, you probably can’t write and schedule a week’s worth of content for 2 networks in 2 hours (speaking from experience here). But you’re done writing it, and you’ve scheduled some, which is better than none. 

Another example is if you find yourself with a spare 30 minutes. Again, it’s not a massive amount of time, but you would be amazed to see the sort of things that can be accomplished in 30 minutes. You can make and schedule new pins. You can engage in Facebook groups. You can outline a blog post. You can draft a newsletter. You can do some combination of all of those things. 

30 minutes does not seem like a lot. But think about how much you can get done with 30 minutes 3 days a week. That’s an hour and a half of things you don’t need to do on Saturday.

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Wake up earlier or stay up later 

One way to be able to dedicate a chunk of time regularly is to wake up earlier or stay up later.

Which one you do depends on whether you’re a morning or a night person. I’m a morning person and also don’t feel well at the end of the day, so I make sure to set aside time earlier in the morning. But also, I need to wake up 1-1.5 hours earlier before I get ready for work because I deal with morning stiffness due to my RA. Getting up early means that the stiffness has worn off by the time I start work. It’s a personal win-win.

There are a couple of blog tasks that I do every morning. 

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One, I make new pins. Every day, I share a blog post on my Twitter and Facebook pages. When I pick an old post, I make a new image for Pinterest, and I add to my Tailwind queue. 

I make these new pins with Tailwind’s program called Tailwind Create. This is Tailwind’s smart tool for making new images. You add a link to a blog post, add the title or wait for it to populate from that link, choose some photos (including from stock images they have), and it makes a bunch of images. You choose the ones you like and download or schedule them! 

I generally make new images for the posts I’ll be promoting the next week. So on Monday, February 19, I’ll make images for posts I’ll be promoting the week of Monday, February 26. It takes me 2 mornings to make and schedule a new pin for 7 different days.

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Two, I engage in Facebook groups. I’m in several Facebook groups for bloggers, and some of them have social media engagement or follow posts published every morning. I engage in those during this time.

Three, I work on my social media editorial calendar for the upcoming week. Editorial calendars are when you intentionally plan your social media posts for a chunk of time. I do this for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. I keep track of it all in a Google Sheet (1 per month) with one tab per social media network, and then I schedule out my social media in Buffer and Tailwind.

On Twitter, every day I share someone else’s blog post, a question, an inspirational quote, and one of my blog posts (7 posts). On Facebook, every day I share one of my blog posts (4 posts) and I alternate sharing other people’s blog posts, a question, and an inspirational quote (with an image for it). I write the content during the week before, and by the end of the week, I start scheduling my social media promotion.

I do all of this in 30 minutes to an hour over the course of 5 days! 

Additionally, if I have a new post, I promote that post the morning it’s published.

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Find a rhythm that works for you 

When are you most productive? When are you least? What situations make it easier? Harder? 

Successfully blogging with a limited amount of time is dependent on what works for you and finding the situations in which you are most productive … and then maximizing them. 

Find the rhythm that does work for you, your life, and your productivity style. After all, I’m not you!

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Planning for Bloggers

Make and use an editorial calendar 

Editorial calendars are not only a game-changer but they’re also indispensable.

An editorial calendar is a calendar where you keep track of your blog post dates, categories, and topics ahead of time. Basically, you decide what you will write about on what days in a calendar format.

How this looks depends on the person. For some, the categories or topics in the calendar are more general, while for others, they are very specific. For example, my editorial calendar itself is very general 75% of the time; I write “health,” “lifestyle,” or “blogging,” which are my categories. And they’re all different colors because that helps me differentiate between them, and sponsored posts are a fourth color. That helps me spread out sponsored posts, especially since there are certain times of the year when they’re more common, like the holidays. If I have a specific post I want to write at a certain date, then I’ll write that specific type, such as “blog traffic report” or “recent reads.”

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The whole point of an editorial calendar is to help you stay organized, so you should find a system that works for you. Maybe you use an electronic calendar or maybe it’s a paper one. 

It will also depend on what you’re blogging about. If your niche is something like fashion, which can change a lot in a short time, you might have your categories or topics be things like all-time bests, trends, holiday outfits, gift guides, etc. If your niche is something like health, we have more evergreen topics, such as specific illnesses, lifestyle changes, recipes for a specific type of health diet, and more. 

Editorial calendars help you be more organized as a blogger and not stress every time you need to figure out what to write about. They help you make sure you don’t post about really similar topics two days or posts in a row, which keeps your readers coming back since they know that you’re going to write about new and interesting things in every post.

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Decide on post topics ahead of time 

This is definitely a part of an editorial calendar, but I wanted to talk about it specifically because it’s so helpful. 

As I mentioned, when I make my editorial calendar, I generally stick with broad categories, but what I didn’t mention is that I keep a separate running list of blog post ideas and a separate doc where I keep track of SEO keywords to use. That way, when it’s time to select the specific topic of the blog post, I have these lists and just need to make decisions instead of deciding and researching. (And, yes, as I mentioned previously, every month or two I spend a bunch of time compiling SEO keywords so they’re available for this step.)

Every month or so, I’ll sit down and decide what topics my blog posts will cover. The other day, I did this for all of March. I identified what those posts will specifically be about and I selected the keyword(s) I’m going to focus on in their posts. 

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Let’s pause. I feel like I did this section more backward than others in this post. So why do I do this, and why does this help if you have limited time to work on your blog? 

I do this so that I don’t have to make the decision right before I start working on the post. Deciding on a topic can take a while unless you feel very specifically inspired! And goodness can researching keywords take a while. 

You’re not just coming up with words or phrases you’re going to use in your post: you’re trying to decide on the ones that will help you the most, which means researching how frequently they’re searched for and how competitive they are compared others. If a phrase has really low competition but that’s because people aren’t searching for it much, then it might not be worth using. You’re not just collecting the words or phrases you might use: you’re also analyzing them. 

So if you decide a while (1-2 months ahead of time) what you’re going to write about, you can do that step when you have free time. Additionally, though, this means that you can start writing this post earlier when you have free time and/or when you’re particularly inspired. You can spread out the writing time without relying on having a full day or two to focus on the post. 

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Write fewer blog posts that are of higher quality 

Less is more, and all that! 

I think people who have been readers since the beginning or started reading in 2017 or 2018 will notice a big difference between posts then and posts now. For one thing, they are way longer. For another, there are fewer of them. 

When I first started blogging, I put out a post every single weekday. Then I went down to four posts a week, with Wednesday off. Then I went down to 3, then 2, and now 1. And I don’t have a new post every week!

Since I changed the number of posts I write, my blog traffic, social media followings, and newsletter following have all increased, and the amount of money I’ve made from my blog has increased, too. There are a couple of reasons why, but one of them is definitely that the quality of my blog posts increased as the number of them decreased. 

That’s partially because I’m devoting more time to individual posts. I mean, I’m spending the same amount of time on writing 1 post as I did for 4. But there are some other things I do for my blog posts that have increased their quality. 

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One, I go into more depth on my topics. 

Two, as a result of going into more depth, my posts are longer. The original version of this post was 1,800 words. The next update of the post from 2021 was 4,000 words. This post is going to be over 5,000 words. 

Three, I try to provide more solutions and resources, aka value, for my readers. I’m not just explaining a problem. I’m also explaining why it’s a problem, how to fix the problem, and resources beyond my blog for fixing the problem.

I don’t claim to be the foremost expert on anything except for my own life and experiences, so why shouldn’t I share where people can learn more? And yes, that’s even if it means people leave my site. 

I’ve said it a million times before and I’ll say it a million more times: your integrity and reputation are the most important investments you can make as a blogger. Showing people that you will provide them with more information and places to learn about a topic even if it means they go to someone else shows that you care about your readers knowing the best and correct information. And, yes, this has the added benefit of showing them that you’re great and they should read more of your posts 😉 

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Work Smarter, Not Harder 

Outsource

Outsourcing some blog tasks has made the biggest change in my blog in the last year because I’m not spending time doing things AND someone who is better at it than me is doing it. 

This is especially true of Pinterest.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Pinterest is essential for your blog. It is a visual search engine and it is arguably more important than Google. 

While I’m pretty good at Pinterest now, there’s so much that I don’t know because I simply don’t have time to learn about it and implement what I learn. Hiring someone who does know all of that is amazing because an expert is doing it and because I don’t have to spend time learning these things.

It is amazing how much more time I have now because I handed off my Pinterest management. 

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Reuse old material 

You don’t have to write 1500-3000 brand new words in every single post! And if you’ve been blogging for over a year, you absolutely should NOT be doing that because you should have built up enough content to be able to reuse at least 1 paragraph from a past post in a new one. 

Look. You’re blogging, not reinventing the wheel. You can copy from yourself. I don’t recommend doing that if you’ve published fewer than 10 or 20 blog posts, but if you’ve built up a nice library, it would be a shame to rewrite a paragraph just for the hell of it.

However, there are some guidelines. 

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You don’t want to copy-paste without editing regularly or for a significant number of words. I rarely copy and paste a whole paragraph without changing something. At the very least, I update something that’s out of date, even if it’s changing “last year” to “a few years ago”. 

Why don’t you want to copy-paste without editing? One reason is that search engines will notice that and they may not read it as a brand-new post. Another reason is your readers might pick up on it and they may not be happy because you’re not providing new value. Which is a fair complaint! 

As I mentioned earlier, this post is an updated version of past posts. I have a few blog posts that I share updated versions of every other year, and that’s because blog strategies change every year so what I did 2 years ago isn’t the same as what I’m doing now. Sure, the basics are the same, but the day-to-day is not. 

Another example is my post about how I promote my blog posts. I update that every 2 years because how I promote them changes based on what’s happening on the Internet as well as in my life. 

So when do I update an old post within itself and when do I create a completely new one? There are a few guidelines I follow. 

One is what exactly I’ve updated. I’ve updated over 400 posts in the last 2 months without posting new ones because all I’ve done is remove things that don’t exist any longer, such as a plugin I had installed 5 years ago that is no longer supported. I just go into the old post and delete the use of that plugin or an ad that isn’t supported any longer. 

Another guideline is how much I’m updating. Am I fixing typos or rewording a paragraph or adding more images? Then I’ll just update the existing post. Am I only keeping a couple hundred words out of 2,000 and then adding a few thousand? Then I’ll create a new post. 

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Schedule social media in advance 

This has saved me so much stress over time! I schedule my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest content in advance so I don’t have to think about it and because I don’t have time to be on social media all day long. I have things to do! 

All of my social media networks post extensions of KTAG in some ways, but that’s especially true on Twitter and Facebook. 

On those sites, I daily post some combination of asking questions, inspirational quotes, and sharing other bloggers’ posts. These help me interact with my audience, which provides value to my audience, tells the algorithms that people are interested in my content, and ensures that my other posts reach more people in the future. 

It’s essential to provide value to my audience that isn’t just links to other content because then my Twitter and Facebook pages have more than just blog post promotion. If you went to someone’s Twitter page and saw they only posted promotions of their content, you would only follow them if that’s what you wanted to see. If you saw they posted other things and were engaging with their followers, you would have another reason to follow them. 

All of this content can be written ahead of time, which I do in my social media editorial calendars. I write that content throughout the week for both networks, and over the weekend I schedule my Twitter and Facebook content with Buffer.

On Pinterest, I post a combination of blog post promotion and new content to provide value. 

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When it comes to promoting blog posts on Pinterest, I do it 1 of 2 ways. Either it’s promoting new posts or it’s promoting old posts. 

For every blog post that I have, I have at least 3 images, all of which are vertical. For each image, I make 2 copies: 1 with the dimensions that work best in these posts (600px wide) and 1 with dimensions that are most successful on Pinterest (1000-1400px wide). To be clear, though, only the 600px wide ones are uploaded to the blog posts.

After I’ve scheduled a post to be published, I schedule promotions on Pinterest. As mentioned, I use Tailwind to schedule my Pinterest posts, which allows me to schedule posts on multiple boards at whatever time I want. 

I upload my Pinterest-optimized images and schedule them for as many boards as applicable, and I use the interval tool to schedule them to be published over time and not all at once. With 3 images per post, I have them be 3 days apart. Additionally, the first time each pin is published is on the day the post goes up, the day after, and the second day after. I use their optimization tool to, well, optimize the time they are published.

There are a few things I do to promote older posts on Pinterest. 

When I pick an old post to promote on Twitter and Facebook, I make a new image for Pinterest, and I add it to my Tailwind queue. 

I make this new pin with Tailwind’s program called Tailwind Create. This is Tailwind’s smart tool for making new images. You add a link to a blog post, add the title or wait for it to populate from that link, choose some photos (including from stock images they have), and it makes a bunch of images. You choose the ones you like and download or schedule them! 

I also use Tailwind to schedule my Instagram posts. In fact, Tailwind is the only network that enables you to schedule your Instagram posts ahead of time and then post them for you. So I can be presenting something in a work meeting, not looking at my phone, and Tailwind will post for me.  

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Like with my Twitter and Facebook, I create, edit, write captions for, and schedule my Instagram posts for the week over the weekend. So I’m writing this at 12:30 on Sunday and an hour ago I scheduled my next 3 Instagram posts. 

I also create and plan my Instagram Reels ahead of time. However, I don’t schedule them with Tailwind; instead, I use the “Reminder” app on my phone to remind me to post Reels. When I’m scheduling my in-feed Instagram posts, I plan what Reels I’m going to post around them. I don’t like it when I have a bunch of posts or Reels that were all taken in the same place in a row on my feed; I don’t like how it looks.

I’ve also started posting Reels explaining what my illnesses are and how I was diagnosed with them, and if there are multiple Reels on the same topic, I want to post them all in a row, but then I try to post the same number of Reels that are not connected. So if I have 3 Reels about how I was diagnosed with one condition, the next 3 Reels will be about different things before I post another bunch of Reels about how I was diagnosed with a different condition.

I can actually record and edit a Reel in 10 minutes before my work day starts. Then, during lunch or at the end of the day, I’ll write the caption. 

A Reel that I spent 20 minutes on at the most got over 4,000 plays. It doesn’t have to take 2 hours!

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Like this post? Share it! Then check out: 

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