Blogging is serious business to some of us. I get that. If you’re making a living from your blog, you have to take it seriously. Otherwise, you’re totally risking having to move back in with your parents or going back to the corporate world. No one wants that. No one. But, at the end of the day, this is not the blogging military. Sometimes, you have to quiet the inner drill sergeant.

Graduating from Boot Camp

When you first start a new blog, you need to put yourself through boot camp. I don’t mean someone online course that they call “boot camp.” I mean a personal boot camp. You need to be pushing yourself every day to do your best and get things done. There’s a lot of work to do with setting up a blog – website design, posting a group of blog posts to get readers started, setting up social networking accounts, etc. The first few weeks or even months working on a new blog are going to be extremely busy.

That’s ok – just make sure you graduate, so to speak. Get the preliminary work out of the way, going through your own personal boot camp to get everything done. Then, graduate. Stop tweaking your site design for the 289th time. Stop spending every waking hour penning blog posts. Stop reading that millionth site about SEO techniques. Graduate. Do the work you have to do, and certainly continue to strive to be a better blogger, but chill out a little and focus on tasks that are really important.

Mistakes aren’t the End of the World

We all make mistakes. Typos are just the start. No matter how careful you are, you’re going to misquote people, interpret the news incorrectly, or otherwise make mistakes in your posts. That’s life. You have two choices – you can get upset about it and take offense to comments calling you out on your mistakes 0r you can learn to let it go. I think you should choose the latter! That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care. You should definitely care about every word that gets written on your blog. At the end of the day, though, this is a blog, not a life-or-death situation. When you make mistakes, you need to do what you can to fix them and move on.

Have Some Fun

Building off what I said about this not being a life-or-death situation – don’t be afraid to have some fun. You do have to be disciplined to find success as a blogger, but that doesn’t mean you can’t deviate now and again. Something that you should always remember: your blog is yours. In the military, soldiers have to follow orders, no questions asked. On your blog, you give the orders. Let’s say you have a pop culture blog and you do a movie review every Friday. It is ok to skip a week. Let’s say that your organic gardening blog has ten posts a week. It is ok to have 9 or 11 one week. Give your readers consistency, but live your life…and realize that life ain’t perfect. Live your life knowing that you’re doing your best.

Otherwise, what’s the point blogging, if you don’t get out and live a little? In the end, those of us doing this as a career need to realize that money doesn’t mean anything if you don’t enjoy spending it. You’re not in the blogging military. You’re allowed to break some rules in order to enjoy your life. That’s why we got out of the corporate rat race – to do something different that gives us the chance to true love life. Make the most of that opportunity.

Allison Boyer is a writer for BWE’s blog and the owner/manager of After Graduation. She’s sorry that this post came off a little rant-y.

Image credit: Wikicommons

Even if you give up your boring desk job and become a full time blogger, There’s barely enough time to finish doing the things you have to do, let alone the things you want to do for your blog. If you’re anything like me, you could easily spend every moment for your free time working on your blog – social networking, writing posts, designing the website, emailing readers…the to-do list goes on and on.

That doesn’t leave a lot of time for your other passions or hobbies. I make the joke quite often that with Binge Gamer, I spend more time writing about video games than I do actually playing video games.

Imagine that I could teach you one thing. Just one secret that would make you a more productive blogger. You could make one change in your life, right?

Think what you could do with that extra time. What would you do today, if you had the time?

• Spend more time with your children
• Take your dog to the park more often.
• Go on more dates with your spouse or significant other.
• Take more vacations.
• Visit your friends more often.
• Take a class.
• Attend community events.
• Try to take over the world.**

You can also take that extra time and do bigger and better things with your blog. Hell, you can even start a second (or third or fourth…) blog. This one tip can add hours to your day. It worked for me, and I’ve seen it work for my friends after I shared the secret with them.

Have I kept you in suspense long enough?

Ok, here we go. My #1 secret to being a more productive blogger is this:

Make a schedule.

I know it sounds like I hyped up something that you already knew or something that won’t really help you. I know that it sounds like this “secret” is common knowledge. I know that right now, you’re disappointed that I didn’t share something more…secretive.

But of all the bloggers I know, very few of them has a schedule, and those who have started scheduling since I’ve shared this tip have told me that it has helped them really turn a corner in their blogging career. They’re happier, they’re more organized, and most importantly, they finally have time to do then things they want to do, not just the things they need to do.

Blog Scheduling

If you’re new to scheduling, it can be daunting to organize your life that way. In fact, for some, scheduling feels claustrophobic and way too much like a “real” job. We’re bloggers because we wanted to get away from the daily grind and have free lives, right? Yes, but if you do this correctly, scheduling won’t seem like such a big deal. Pinky swear.

Blog scheduling should be your first goal. Do a little blog-storming, as I like to call it, to organize the topics you want to cover on your blog. From there, come up with some post titles or even some quick outlines. How much of your day do you spend staring at a blank page and thinking “I don’t know what to write” to yourself? Yeah, you’re not alone.

So, spend a few hours coming up with a list of topics to cover and then schedule the writing work. You can deviate from the schedule if you want; this isn’t set in stone. It’s your blog, after all. But on a day when you would otherwise start at the screen for two hours before typing a single world, having a schedule is a godsend.

I like to schedule in two ways. First, I schedule the number of posts I’m going to write every week. I give myself a deadline, essentially. Working under a deadline, even self-imposed, really helps you stay motivated to get stuff done. Secondly, I schedule around themes. You can have weekly themes, monthly themes, or themes that correspond to the days of the week. This helps you stay on track and also gives you opportunities for linking.

Other Work Scheduling

Once you’re on track with blog posting, consider creating a schedule for the rest of your blog-related work. Think about it in very small tasks. Don’t write on your schedule “Use Twitter.” Be more specific – “Start a Twitter account.” “Download TweetDeck.” “Set up TwitterFeed.” “Go through all the blogs on my RSS feed and follow the bloggers who are on Twitter.” Give yourself very specific tasks to complete.

I do this in a datebook. I plan things out for each day and cross them off as I get them done. It isn’t hard to motivate yourself to do one thing, like “Create a list of blogs in my niche accepting guests posts” or “Email Blogger X about a guest post.” It’s harder to say to yourself, “I want to get into guest posting, I’m going to work on that today.” The entire task seems daunting. The individual tasks are easy.

Start by writing in your schedule everything you have to do. Then, start adding the things you want to do into the mix on days you have more time. Adding them to your schedule means that you’re giving them priority. You’ll start thinking of them as have-to-do tasks as well. Be brave; write in ink.

Life Scheduling

Once you’ve mastered scheduling for work, you might want to add in non-work stuff too, like baking a cake for your kid’s birthday or going to the bank or taking a shower (you know who you are). Not everyone likes that much structure to their lives, but personally, I love crossing things off my list. I just find it so empowering.

It’s ok if you don’t finish everything you had planned for the day. Don’t let it become a habit, but also don’t beat yourself up if a day got away from you. It happens to us all. The important thing is that you have a plan. When you blog without a plan, it is hard to succeed on any level.

*I’m the queen of cliche phrases, and I’m ok with that.
**Did anyone else have a Pinky and the Brain moment? No? Just me?

Allison Boyer is a writer for BWE’s blog and the owner/manager of After Graduation. She is going to have the Pinky and the Brain theme song in her head for the rest of the day now. I hope you people are happy.

Image credit: sxc.hu

But now, you need to Tweet your posts, Retweet other people‚s posts, cultivate your Facebook Fan page, add your photos on the Flickr, submit your posts to Stumbleupon and Digg, record YouTube videos, and comment on other blogs. It’s not smelling like roses anymore, is it? Well, here are a few tips and suggestions for keeping up with all this new media crap (tongue-in-cheek).

Batch Your Work. Productivity gurus have long since said that batching your work is more efficient, and it is true. I use Hootsuite to spend 15 minutes every Monday and setup interesting tweets and Facebook updates for the week. Just like you sit down to read the newspaper, I sit down and go through my RSS feeds and pull out things of interest to others. Batching doesn’t hurt anybody and in fact offers you the opportunity to send out updates at a time more convenient for readers in another time zone than you.

Get Some Focus. How many social networking platforms are you on? Stop now and take a hard look at what platforms are giving you the most value. If you’re new, experimentation is good, but once you’ve got your base readership established, it might be time to take a critical look at some social media outlets that do not appeal to your ideal readers. Strip them down. As the old saying goes, it’s better to do a few things really well than to do a bunch of things poorly.

Join an Alliance. Some social media things, like Stumbleupon and Digg, just don’t get lots of traction with only one blogger pushing his/her stuff out. The best results come from joining (or starting) a blogger alliance. This is by no means new news (Problogger suggested it last year), but so many bloggers dismiss it as too hard. Hard to find the right partners, yes, but worth doing? Absolutely.

Ask for Help. Why not ask your readers to pitch in now and then? Many readers would throw themselves in front of a bus to get the chance to write for you, with or without pay, so why not may a weekly or monthly slot open for that opportunity? Be sure to ensure your blog’s voice and editorial tone remains consistent, but there’s nothing wrong with a fresh perspective now and then. With that extra post out of the way, you can use that spare time for website tweaks or fan page updates you’ve been meaning to do.

Accept Your Limitations. You don’t become an authority blogger nor Internet famous overnight. Chris Brogan talks about his overnight success story as a reminder that the only thing that begets success is hard work. But you’re only one person, so don’t let the stress of new-media-everything overwhelm you. If you didn’t find the time to update your Fan Page last week, ok – do better this week. If you’re lagging on making YouTube videos because you’ve got client work or you were finishing up a big advertising deal, ok. Stop beating yourself up – because the only result of a stressed out blogger is poor content, which leads to more stress and unhappy readers.

As my yoga instructor says to me often during class, do what you can do and leave the rest behind. That seems like sound advice, don’t you think?

Andy Hayes is addicted to blogging. He runs two successful sites – Sharing Travel Experiences, a travel lifestyle magazine, and Travel Online Partners, a travel online marketing blog. He’s also the overzealous tweeter known as @andrewghayes.

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Set Aside Some Play Time

This might sound intuitive, but we all need to be reminded once in a while that we need to set aside play time for ourselves. Many of us have a schedule that’s packed enough that it doesn’t include any down time. Down time needs to be built in to our schedule just like any other activity. Whether it’s spending time with friends and family, or just checking email and writing a blog post, time needs to be set aside if you want to get those things done without having them interfere with your work. Speaking of work…

Have Two Checklists For Work

According to Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance, two checklists need to be written up just to organize your work. These two checklists are both work-related but in different ways. One Checklist simply states “To Do: Urgent,” and the other “To Do: Long Term.” This is extremely important. As I mentioned, I’m a mess when it comes to organizing myself on my own terms. SO when I read those tips from Scott Belsky on the Mashable blog, I decided to give them a go. “What’s the harm?” I thought. And not only was there no harm – I became more productive, and didn’t have to remember everything all at once as equally important in my mind!

Here’s a great example: Over this past week, I’ve been swamped with work. I needed to get several Marketing written up, a proposal, and a launch plan for a newly-launching website (launching over the weekend). On top of that, I had to organize a parade appearance on 5th ave during the summer, order supplies for a conference booth for a different company, and arrange for another company to have a spot at the Tribeca Film Festival. This was all on my to-do list in my mind. Apparently, my mind is two-dementional, so I couldn’t just do the things that needed to be done now. I had to work on it all at once and subsequently overwhelm myself!as

After putting everything into lists, I realized that the Tribeca Film Festival can be done next week, the conference stuff had to wait ’till Monday anyway, and the parade arrangements were due Tuesday of next week. So those three went straight to my “Long Term” list, and on Monday, I was going to rearrange my lists to fit the new week! The marketing plans and launch plans all moved over to the “Urgent” list, as we’re going to run our PR campaign on Monday! And that’s it – it became immediately apparent that I should work on the Urgent list first, and then, if there was time, I would move on to the Long Term list!

Have One Checklist For Other Stuff

Now that you have your work priorities in order, and  you’ve done all of the work – or all of the Urgent work, and some of the Long Term work. Now you finally have downtime. You can breathe a huge sigh of relief and relax. But wait – you have errands to run, emails to send, phone calls to make. What now? Where to start?

Well since it’s definitely more relaxing to do your leisure obligations than your work obligations, the Urgent/Long Term stuff isn’t really necessary. In stead, just make a list of things you need to do when you’re not working, and when you have a free moment/hour. Call your wife/hubby! Reply to that email you saw earlier today and jotted down on the list! Check and use Twitter/Facebook for exactly 10 minutes. Whatever’s on your list will more likely get done if it’s on a list than if it’s floating in your head. Feel free to cross it off after you’ve done every single one of them.

Do Not Rely on Separate Tabs/Windows to Separate Work/Play

I don’t know about you, but I am a tab man. I walk in to work and I have at least 8 tabs open before I make my first cup of coffee. Here’s how it used to go: Gmail > Work Email > Twitter > Facebook > Work related website > Digg > Work related site > Joke someone sent me by email. Good luck trying to keep only to your work when your tabs are interwoven, and mostly just play-stuff. Leave the tabs alone. As a matter of fact, leave the separate windows alone. You’re really fooling yourself if you think you’re going to keep organized that way. Instead, think of the windows of time as the organizing units in your day. Once you’re done with the “To Do: Urgent” and “To Do: Long Term” tabs, you can close your “Work” window and open a “Fun” window!

Conclusion

So it ain’t rocket science. All I’ve done to get myself organized is not give myself any credit for remembering/multitasking/organizing. That gave me an airtight action plan to get myself out of the check-Twitter-every-few-minutes, work-on-my-actual-work-sporadically rut!

There’s nothing worse that going home at the end of the day feeling like you did half of the work you could have done, and wondering where the rest of it went. On the flip-side, there’s no better feeling than “I did a ridiculous amount of work today, and I deserve a good chunk of downtime tonight. I think I’ll take my significant other out on a date!”

Bottom line is – you’ll feel accomplished. Try it!

Itamar Kestenbaum is a blogger and Community Manager. He is currently Community Manager for Moishe’s Moving & Storage in NYC as well as Blogworld Expo. You can follow Itamar on Twitter @tweetamar or read his blog: ItamarKestenbaum.com.