I have two blogs and a dynamic (meaning not static) website. All of these platforms thrive on fresh material on a timely basis. In a couple of these cases, the timely basis means I have to put up a new post each day. In another, I limit myself to around 10 posts a week (guess which one that is). On the other, I just want to make sure that I have new content every few days.
So, I have to write ten posts a week for Active Rain. Some of those will be posts that can go to LaneBailey.com and Blogger (until Blogger gets wound down). All of them get posted to GarageHomesUSA.com, although some of them are just archived in a private area (if something ever happens to A/R, I'll have the posts available to me).
As with any creative endeavor, inspiration may come in waves... and not exactly at the most opportune moment. So, I park posts. I use some of my platforms as reservoirs for the others. I may have three posts on A/R waiting to go to another place, or I might have a couple on GarageHomesUSA.com waiting to be posted on A/R or LaneBailey.com. Occasionally, I may have posts sitting in word docs waiting to go online.
The idea is simply that when the creative juices are flowing, I write as many posts as I have the time and/or creativity for. When the juices aren't flowing, I can draw from those pre-written posts. An odd by-product is that the more I write, the easier I find it to write more. I recall that I used to sit down in front of the keyboard and wonder what I could write about. Now, because I know that I am pretty covered, I sit down to write because I know what I need to write (as an aside, I often only know what the title might be when I sit down to write. I'm as surprised as everyone else with the final result).
Oddly, the inspiration for this came from Meyer Leibovitch's post, It's Not What You Make. In his post, he mentions that agents need to be on solid financial footing in order to not press clients to make decisions based on the agents needs. In this case, having a ready supply of good posts means that resorting to subdivision recaps and mall directories in order to get enough posts for current needs won't be a likely scenario. I know that none of us enjoy reading those.
So, if you want to make sure that you are giving your readers great material (or at least some good material in my case) each day, or on a regular basis, park your posts and build a reservoir. The Rain will help fill it up, and you can avoid the flood or famine cycle... as well as the last minute crunch-time excuses posts.
Unless otherwise noted, all content of this blog is the property of Lane Bailey, ©2012 Lane Bailey.
I'd love to hear from you...
