Freelance Business Writing

I have mentioned the value of an editorial calendar for blog posts. Now I have to confess that I don’t actually have one myself. At least, not one that is written down in any kind of formal way.

What I do have is a mental list of topics and a bunch of scribbled ideas in the notepad (one of about ten) that I have designated for blog posts. I live in a strange hybrid world of computers and old-fashioned pen and paper – I do most of my work on the computer but I am a scribbler at heart. For ideas I always use pen and paper, with notes written all over the page, sometimes in different colours of ink. It is a bit chaotic, but it seems to work for me.

While my idea-generating habits may appear a bit messy to everyone else, the process I have developed for managing my posts is quite orderly.

Because I spend most of my time writing for others, I need to take advantage of any time I get for my own writing. As a result, I usually write several blog posts at once. I write them in my word processor (MS Word) and save each as a separate file. I store them in a folder very simply called “blog”.

I do not post all of my entries at once. I try to post no more than 2 a week so that my little cache of posts will (hopefully) last until I have another block of personal writing time.

To keep things in order, I adhere to a strict convention for filenames. I begin with a number, then a general subject, then a brief but specific description of that post’s content. For example, this very post you are reading has a filename of “021-blogs-managingposts”.

At the bottom of each Word document I write down a planned posting date. I then add an item to my MS Outlook calendar to remind me to post that entry. I use the number from the filename to reference the specific file I want to post. While the obnoxious reminders popping up all the time can get annoying, this system does work.

When it comes time to post I open the Word doc, copy and paste the text and then close the Word doc. I then rename the file to include the posting date in the filename. This tells me that the file was, in fact, posted and the date that I added the post. Using this post as an example again, the final name is “021-blogs-managingposts-080608”.

Can you tell I have a degree in library science? Probably. But my detail-oriented system works and makes managing my blog posts a cinch.