The funny thing about being a producer is that people assume that you were born with the ‘ultra organised’ gene shared by wedding planners and mother-in-laws all over the world. Perhaps this stands true for some producers. These are the same types who are adept at Excel pivot tables, despise a beautiful shoe and haven’t seen daylight for the last four years. I however am not ashamed to say that attempting to manage this blog in between work, life, walking the dog and cups of tea is starting to become a tad challenging.
What I need is structure and process to tame the myriad thoughts, ideas and opinions that keep popping into my head and then running off into the ‘great topic for a post’ drawer soon to be forgotten along with all the left footed socks.
After much analysis of the blogs I have decided to give my content monster a few ground rules, I noticed some common factors and rules of thumb which I am going to adopt:
1. Post regularly and succinctly
It’s an obvious one but a cardinal rule that I have been breaking for the last year! If you post consistently a couple of times a week, your readers know what to expect, it improves SEO and it forces you as the blogger to become disciplined ala Seth Godin or Guy Kawasaki both of whom post regularly on interesting topics in around 300 to 400 words.
2. Create your own Editorial Calendar
This should aid the first point enormously, having worked on content schedules before I’ve seen a hundred variations of a content calendar however there’s some excellent tips in this post by Lisa Barone at Outspoken media on how to create one specifically for your personal blog.
3. Focus on it
The Calendar should enable me to do this. I don’t harbor any great expectations of this blog making me a millionaire, what it does do is provide me with an outlet for the frustrated writer within. Being a natural ‘scanner’ I am am always curious about the world, I always wonder whether what I should really be blogging about is fashion or living in Sydney or beagles. Having a niche blog works, however after two years I still don’t think I have a specific subject area but what I do know is that I’m not giving up on the blog and I’m not going to start another one no mater how tempting it is to start afresh. My new blogging idol, Penelope Trunk has a great article about why it’s better to stick with what you have started.
4. Learn from Others
I love finding blogs that not only interest me but that I can learn from whether it’s content, design or structure. Some blogs I have been referred to, others I have discovered having gone off on a tangent researching an entirely different topic however all of them have taught me something along the way.
5. Just Do It!
Sites like Problogger are a great starting point and you can find a raft of online articles and posts on how to set up a blog and how to improve what you blog about. However much like learning how to ride a bike, you can watch others and it can be really intimidating but at some point you just have to get on and start peddling 
