I love blogs, especially if it’s run on WordPress. I can post both text and rich media on my blog which allows me to connect with my audience in different ways. Prior to reading Ferriss’ book, I was blogging at least 3-4 times per day. Anytime I ran across a story I liked, I would blog about it.
As you can imagine, this left me with little time for billable work – the tasks and activities that make me money. So, in The 4-Hour Workweek fashion, I streamlined.
- I use Google Alerts to receive news items and blog posts once a day about the things I like to blog about.
- I bookmark the items I want to blog about later on.
- On Sunday, I create 5 blog posts.
- I then schedule them to be published in the future on a specific day and at a specific time.
This takes me less than an hour to do. Then, every day during the workweek, a post appears first thing in the morning. It’s as if I’m sitting there that morning updating my blog when in fact I did that earlier in the week.
What’s great is that Technorati will list my blog post in its directory when new content appears on my blog. I use a plug-in called Bunny to create tags below my post without having to leave it. Then, I set up my WordPress blog to automatically ping Technorati anytime I post new content.
So, my questions to you:
- Does your blog have the tools to allow you to automate regular tasks?
- Where do you find content to blog about?
- How can you blog more by spending less time blogging?
- Which blog platform do you use and why do you like (or loath) it?
I have read a lot about the book The 4-Hour Workweek lately, and part of me is a little ambivalent about some of his ideas (more on that in another comment – on outsourcing).
But being a professional organizer, I’m definitely interested in streamlining processes and removing unnecessary steps when possible.
I probably fall outside the norm, in that I love doing my own administrative work. But I can certainly always find ways to cut down the number of hours I spend at the computer.
I love blogging – in fact I have FOUR (and soon hopefully FIVE) blogs. I realized a couple of months ago that the blogs were consuming too much of my time, so here’s what I’ve done:
I come up with my own blog content. (Always have.) I’m inspired by things that happen to me in my daily life, and I keep an ongoing list of blog topics that I want to explore in the future.
I write the blog entries when I have time – and often several posts at once. I save them as Word files to use in the future.
I save a “draft” or dummy blog on each blog entry nearly every day, and then go back and publish that day’s blog when I have the time or content.
I use blogger.com because it’s free (which fits perfectly with my guerilla marketing scheme). I don’t even have a proper website – I just direct potential clients to my blogs, and they can immediately form an impression about me and see what I have to offer.
I fell in love with one of Blogspot’s basic templates, and I love that I can just drag and drop the various features I want to add or subtract. It’s a no-brainer, but still ends up looking pretty good to my clients.
Ah Peter, you’re jumping ahead. I sing Google Reader’s praises in an upcoming post. Using the Reader has really helped me to streamline my time. I visit about 60 blogs and podcasts in just 10-minutes. It’s awesome.
The biggest help in time management AND corralling the information I want to be “aware” of if not always read has been the Google reader (which seems to be perpetually in beta, but I digress). One of those subscriptions featured in my reader is for this very blog.
This not only gives me the content I like to read but it can also give me direct or indirect ideas for blog posts.
WordPress is my blog format as well…it easy and for those parts that aren’t so easy for me I have folks I can turn to who can help me…big win. The new format we customized also keeps the look and feel similar to my main web site (audioconnell.com) which was a big marketing win for me.
Best always,
– Peter