Marie WheelerHappy Wednesday!
Today’s spotlight is on ProBlogger, a podcast from an Aussie named Darren Rouse. I have two favorite aspects of this podcast so far, the content and a fantastic Aussie accent! Really, it’s the content, organization and delivery that makes this podcast so useful.
Now obviously, I am a new blogger and am looking to become a better blogger, more regular and prolific. I also struggle with the anxiety of, ‘what if I run out of ideas,’ and the ’31 Days to Build a Better Blog’ series on the podcast has even helped to quell that bit of worry.
These are simple, well-crafted exercises that you can fit in to your daily life, or week, if you are really pressed.
My number one take-away (so far!) from this podcast series was the concept of an Editorial Calendar. I was struggling with both organizing and cataloging my thoughts as well as sticking to a schedule, even when exhausted or distracted. As you can hopefully tell at this time, I have become much more consistent in posting and I credit the calendar for that.
After hearing the podcast, I Googled and Pinterested a bunch of ideas and designs, but I didn’t have the money to spend and frankly could think of better ways to spend that money I don’t have. So I used the tools I have and the skills I have developed already.
If you are a part of the Google-plex (see what I did there?!), you know that there are apps in Chrome and one of those apps is Google Sheets. It is the same as MS Excel. So I looked at November, figured out my ideas and how I was going to code data on the calendar and took an afternoon to make it work.
It has each day of the week listed, an idea of what I plan to talk about on that day, such as a podcast review on Wednesdays, cooking on Saturdays, art journal on Mondays, etc. It also has a list of 4, and only 4 things, that I need to work on or investigate further through the coming week. Though I don’t have much social media going presently, I did plan for it with a daily slot in the calendar as well.
I’m sure that there will be some tweaking, but it has been helpful. If you want more information on the editorial calendar I created, drop me a comment and I’m happy to share!
If you are interested in blogging and the like, give this podcast a listen, and I hope to see you next Wednesday for another podcast review!
