Today is Get Organized Day. To mark the occasion, I’ve got 5 easy ways to help you organize your blogging life. If you could use some help getting organized, download my free blog planning calendar and content creation checklist.
It’s not easy to manage a blog on top of a full-time job, part-time school and everything that’s involved with running a household. The only way I manage it all without burning out is to stay organized. Here are my top 5 tips to help you organize your blogging life.
This post was originally published in April 2021 and updated in April 2024.
Easy ways to organize your blogging life
Keep a list of ideas
The hardest part about blogging is deciding what to write about. When I started my blog, one of the biggest things I worried about was running out of ideas. One of the first things I did was sit down and brainstorm a list of blog post ideas.
Two years after starting my blog, I still have that original list. Some of the ideas are crossed off and published, and others are still there for me to go back to when I need a little inspiration.
I recently moved my list from my notebook to a spreadsheet so I can keep it better organized. It doesn’t matter where you keep your list. It can be a notebook, a spreadsheet, or a document on your phone or tablet. The important thing is to have a list and add to it when you get inspiration for a blog post.
Plan your content ahead of time
All the ideas in the world won’t help without a little planning. The biggest tip that keeps me sane is planning my content ahead of time.
I usually plan my blogging calendar about six weeks in advance. Around the middle of each month, I sit down and plan my content for the next month.
There’s nothing scientific about this, I use an Excel calendar template to plan and organize my content creation. I colour code my posts—white means “Not started”, blue is “In progress” and green is “Scheduled”. Here’s what my April calendar looks like…
And, because I never know when inspiration will hit for a new post, I always leave one or two spots blank, so I have some flexibility.
Follow a content creation checklist
In my early blogging days, I would always forget something. My post would go live, and I’d realize I hadn’t created my photos for Instagram or planned what to write on my social media posts.
I’m a big fan of lists so I created a content creation checklist. It has all the tasks I need to complete before I change a post from blue to green on my calendar. It also has my posting day activities, so I don’t forget to promote my posts on social media.
Click the image below to download your free copy of my planning calendar and content checklist.
Schedule your posts in advance
No matter how organized you are, life has a way of getting in the way of blogging. Consistently staying two to three weeks ahead of my content has been my saving grace on more than one occasion.
I post every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 6:25 AM Eastern Time. Am I always awake and ready to press that Publish button at exactly 6:25 AM? Heck no! WordPress has a great feature that lets me schedule posts for a specific date and time.
Knowing that I have content scheduled is a big stress-reliever when life gets crazy.
Plan your Pinterest content
When I first started blogging, I didn’t have a clue about Pinterest. When I published a post, I’d go into the post and pin it to my blog board on Pinterest. No wonder I didn’t see any traffic from Pinterest.
Around the middle of last year, I decided to take Pinterest more seriously. I did some research and found lots of great tips from the blogging community. A big a-ha moment was when I discovered there was a correct format for pins, and I needed to create pins in Pinterest instead of just pinning them from my blog post.
Since that discovery, Pinterest has been my number one source of blog traffic. I hear about bloggers uploading dozens or even hundreds of pins a day. I don’t have time for that. How many pins do I create each day? Three!
Pinterest tips and tricks
I’ve learned that Pinterest likes consistency. Here are my easy tips to stay organized and consistent with Pinterest content:
- Create several Pinterest boards related to the content you blog about. For example, my Pinterest has boards for Eco Friendly Living, Less Waste Living, Sustainable Living, Decluttering, Minimalist Lifestyle, Organizing.
- When you write a post, plan which boards you can pin that post to. Create your pins as part of your content creation. It’s on the checklist!
- Include a Pinterest-friendly image in every post. Here’s one if you’d like to pin this post for future reference.
- Use templates. I create my pins in Canva using about 10 different templates. This saves me a ton of time. I simply swap out the images and text and can create a professional-looking image in a minute or two.
- Plan your pins ahead of time. I stay organized using…you guessed it…a spreadsheet. I plan pins for my new posts first. Then I fill in the rest of the days by creating new pins for older posts.
- Schedule. You can use scheduling apps, but I use the Pinterest scheduling feature. Because I plan ahead, it takes me about 5 minutes to schedule my pins when my posts go live.
- Be consistent and patient. Don’t expect to see thousands of clicks overnight. You never know when one of your pins will take off. I have several pins from a couple of years ago that are still making the rounds and bring traffic to my blog every day.
For more Pinterest tips and ideas, visit this post.
I hope these tips will help you organize your blogging life. Do you have tips to stay on top of your blogging tasks? Tell us about them below.
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It still baffles me that you plan so far in advance. But the excel sheet?! Geez I wish I could be even a tenth as organised as you are! I know you said you just use the Pinterest scheduler, but have you ever tried any other app? Also, I hope you don’t mind me asking – how much traffic do you see on average from Pinterest? On the best days, I will get a max of 5!
Thanks so much Shelly. I’ve often said I should start my own consulting business to help people organize their lives. Maybe that will be another “retirement project”. I haven’t used any other scheduling apps for any of my socials.
I average between 400-500 views from Pinterest in a month. It has definitely gone up since I started pinning consistently every day.
🤯 That’s a lot of views for one month! I think I’ll take Pinterest seriously from now on!
Great tips, I am just starting out blogging and realized after posting my last article that I didn’t have any social media content ready to go at all after I hit publish 🤦♀️🥴. Excited to add your content checklist to my routine so I don’t get ahead of myself! Thank you!
That’s great Amanda. I’m so glad you found it helpful. Thank you for reading Nd commenting.
I admire your blogging organizational skills! While I do write down topic ideas, I haven’t so far started to plan out when I would publish the content in advance. I tried to do that about two months ago but then it quickly fell by the wayside. I just write by the seat of my pants! lol 🙂 Not very effective and organized but it seems to work for now…
Thanks Helen. As long as what you’re doing is working for you, no need to change. For me, it just wouldn’t happen if I didn’t take the time to plan and organize. 😀
I always find it easier to blog when I plan in advance the types of articles to write with their relevant content. Checklists make work more easier because I can keep track of what am posting and how am promoting it. Thanks for sharing these useful content marketing tips.
I agree John. Planning makes everything in life easier. I’d never be able to manage my blog on top of my “regular life” if I wasn’t organized.
You are the most organized person I know, Michelle! I love it! Thanks for providing us with these great suggestions. I cannot believe I’ve been blogging as long as I have and I still haven’t embraced Pinterest in the correct way. But after reading your post, now I’m going to start! Thank you so much!
Thanks Cher. Good luck with Pinterest. If you need help, let me know.
Thanks, Michelle! I may be bending your ear soon!
This has me thinking about my blog. You offer so many good ideas and I want to figure out how to apply them. Very timely Thank you, Michelle.
Thanks so much Judy. If you have any questions, you know where to find me! 😀
I do. Thanks!
I love spreadsheets and lists so this post makes me so happy!
Planning posts in advance saves my sanity too. And I feel it helps me create better content because I’m not writing on a pressured deadline.
It’s really interesting to hear about your Pinterest routine. I haven’t really figured out Pinterest yet. I create one post a day, scheduled a week in advance right now. You’ve given me some things to think about and I think I am going to change some things up. Thanks!
Thank you. Pinterest is still a bit of a mystery to be honest but I am definitely seeing results. My top pin has been making the rounds since August and the post it links to is has been my #1 post for the last 4 months with daily traffic from Pinterest. That’s pretty motivating and it’s why I’d rather put my effort on Pinterest than any other social media platform.
I don’t have time to be this organised. I just throw things together! I do 3 pins for each post and pin them the 3rd day of publication, then pin them to group boards a couple at a time over the following days. It doesn’t get me far but my impressions are increasing if not my clicks. I think for a non-niche blog like mine Pinterest isn’t as powerful. One of these days I’ll find a couple of days to dedicate to figuring out how to be more productive. But then again, I’m not that fussed whether 10 or 50 people read anything.
I agree with you on Pinterest. I sometimes create pins for my posts and think no-one would ever search for this so why bother – but apparently Pinterest likes consistency so I create the pins. I don’t know how these people who do 20 or 30 pins a day find the time.
I feel the same way about the number of views. I’m not trying to make money or get famous. I just like to stay organized or I just know nothing would ever get done! LOL
I am usually scheduled about a week in advance, but I loved getting a look at your content creation methods! An Excel spreadsheet is something I have been meaning to create to keep track of open submissions, so this is the perfect motivational nudge I need.
That’s great that you stick to a schedule Jaya. I don’t think I could manage my blog if I didn’t get ahead of the game. It would just stress me out too much!
I love your spreadsheet! I only post on WordPress so I don’t have as much to keep track of but I want to start planning further out. I’m definitely going to use your strategy! Thanks. 😀
Thanks Suzanne. All the “outside of WordPress” stuff definitely complicates things. Before I created the spreadsheet, I would always forget something!
This is some good tips, I need to work on my Pinterest boards for sure. Don’t forget also to occasionally clean up your media pictures, I had to do that this morning because it was getting pretty full, and the pictures are all saved somewhere else anyway.
That’s a good point. I cleared out a bunch of old pictures on my iPad over the weekend.
These are such great tips! I love a spreadsheet when it comes to being organised, you can’t go wrong!
Thank you. My former boss was a finance guy so he got me hooked on Excel! LOL
Thanks for the awesome tips! I just downloaded canva and was messing around with it! Can’t wait to incorporate it into my routine! I use similar techniques as yours except mine is less organized LOL as in less strict with the scheduling… Not bc I don’t care to be as strict with it but simply bc I am just less organized lol I just know I have a week to get a post out by Wednesday so by Tuesday I’m usually panicking lol it’d be nice to get back into a schedule… 😅😊👌
It is hard to get into a routine. Personally, I would just get stressed out if I wasn’t organized so that makes it worth the effort. I love Canva. It saves me a lot of time finding images.