How do I run a blog while being an author?
Writing a blog when you're otherwise preoccupied with author work is interesting. I won't tell you it's an effortless task. Like social media, it takes maximum effort to write my bi-weekly blogs, besides writing and scheduling my social media posts. I work a full-time job besides being an author of three published books, writing my fourth, planning my fifth, and having oodles (one of my maternal grandmother's favorite words) of other ideas knocking around in my head. To say I'm busy is an understatement. But . . . I have it under control thanks to my handy-dandy planner and my routine. I could not do all this if I wasn't so well organized as I am.
Ideas
It took me a while to get ideas for blogs and I did so by scouring the internet for ideas by other authors and what they blog about. I'm not a one-topic kind of person, so centralizing my blogs won't work for me. Boring you isn't a goal either. I took the time to put all the ideas I found online into a document. The next step in my organization is scheduling.
Schedule
Since I decided on bi-weekly blogs, I wrote all the dates I'd post on my blog. Why bi-weekly? Weekly would have been too much for me to handle and monthly, while it would work, wouldn't have given me much time to talk about everything I want to talk about. Well, not talk. Let's say write about. Writing comes easy to me. Talking to people, that takes work since I'm an introvert. I'm getting so much better with all the wonderful people I've met at craft shows and other events! Okay, so I have all my dates and I have my pages and pages of ideas. I run through it and schedule each blog idea based on what I feel is important to write about, keeping in mind that some blogs may center on releases coming up, such as sneak peeks, cover reveals, contests, etc. I have the entire year scheduled, so at the end of this year I'll do the same for 2025. That's how organized I am.
A bit about my social media posts . . .
Social media posts are more difficult than my blogs, even though in reality they are much shorter to write. I have a massive calendar of events, national days, historical events, famous people's birthdays, seasonal things, etc. Before the start of each month, I go through and pick out upcoming events I have for the next month and fill in the gaps, so I'm posting 3-4 sometimes 5-6 days that week. I have 3 major categories for my posts:
- Personal: Things I write about myself personally. I mean, you want to know about the person behind the book, right? Have I done something fun recently? Pictures of my office or my desk companions, my writing routine. Things like that.
- Curation: Recommendations (books I'm reading or preparing to read) or facts such as historical events or birthdays of famous or historical people. I admit, I've posted a lot of historical facts in the last few months.
- Brand/Book Posts: Post directly related to my books and my brand. Upcoming releases, book reveals, teasers, events I'll be attending so you know where to find me, those kinds of things.
I try to make all three somewhat equal for the month, so I'm not posting one category more than another.
Once I have my month planned with ideas, I schedule the weekly posts every Sunday (unless I'm busy that Sunday, then I'll do it Saturday or even Friday). Anyway, they're scheduled and they post to my Facebook and Instagram pages automatically. Pictures are another story because I'm not supposed to post pictures copyrighted to someone else. I try to be very careful about that. I'm not aiming to get sued for copyright laws after I so carefully register all of my books with the Library of Congress. Worse case, I'm hoping if I posted a picture I shouldn't have, I'll be asked nicely to remove it.
Happy reading!