Writing a blog post every day in January

At the end of December, like most people, I made a list of a few habits that I wanted to work on for the New Year. You can read more about them in my book review of Atomic Habits. One of the things that I wanted to do in January was to write a blog post every day. Not to publish, just to write one and schedule it to publish at a later date.

I really did find it a challenge as some of my posts can take quite a bit of time to put together, but I managed it! And it was so successful that I'm planning on continuing for February. I love being able to plan my content properly rather than scrambling to post something, anything, at the last minute. It also gives me the flexibility to add in any collaborative or review posts when I have plenty of my own content ready to keep things balanced.

Photo credit Mel Poole

I did spend a bit of time in advance getting myself organised. Before Christmas I had already planned my editorial calendar for January, and although I hadn't yet written any posts I had a clear idea of what I wanted to write about. I went through my lists of blog post ideas and I was able to come up with a complete list of 31 posts to write. Then I planned roughly which ones I would be writing each week, sorting out which ones would be straightforward and which would need more work in terms of crafting and photographs. 

Because Christmas was still fresh in my mind I wrote a few Christmas themed posts which are now scheduled for this December. I also made a start on some Easter content and there are some general posts which aren't time specific. I now have a great deal of my February content written and some posts scheduled for March. 

Despite all the planning I kept it flexible, so I was able to move things around and add in any posts that I felt like writing on the day - for example writing about Mia's adopted gibbon and Harry's birthday. I also made a start on some longer posts in advance with photos, notes and any affiliate links ready in a draft post that just needed to be written up and checked over on the day. 

I'm really pleased with everything that I got done this month. I feel very organised and able to concentrate on some of my other projects, which in turn provides me with lots more things that I want to blog about!