At first glance, having a blog might seem as simple as spewing word vomit onto the Internet once or twice a week. Too graphic? My bad, but it’s not as straightforward as you may think. There’s a bunch of steps that I take in my whole “blog production process” to ensure that my posts stay high quality and I don’t get behind. I’ve outlined the 10 key steps that I follow for every new post, from the birth of a new idea all the way to clicking the “Schedule” button. I hope this gives y’all a better idea of what goes on behind the scenes of this lil ol’ blog, and happy reading! If there are any other blogging questions (or just questions in general), feel free to send them to me (use the contact form or just send me a text)!
1. Finding an idea
This first step can either be really easy or really hard; it just depends on whether the inspiration is flowing or if I’m hitting a bit of writer’s block. I have a list of ideas that I keep building up for when I want to start working on a new post, and often I pick what my next post will be from those ideas. But where do those ideas come from, you may ask? It’s a bunch of different places: Google, my favorite YouTubers, my friends, podcasts, or the ol’ noggin. Often I find that coming up with one idea, many others will follow it. For example, I saw that a few YouTubers lived like their zodiac signs for a day, and then I figured that I could also live like my MBTI, Enneagram, or Hogwarts house for a day. Sometimes I’ll also put down a relatively general core idea in my list, such as a playlist, and I’ll do multiple posts revolving around that idea. Overall, I want to find ideas that I’ll enjoy writing about and will be of interest to all of you guys.
2. Getting organized
Let’s talk a bit about how I organize all of my stuff. I have a folder in my Google Drive dedicated to my blog, and within that I keep all of my writing. In there I also have the list of blog post ideas and my posting schedule. For my list of post ideas, I’ve color coded each one of them. An idea having no highlight means that it’s an idea that hasn’t been used; yellow highlight means that it’s an idea that I’ve decided that I’m going to use, but I haven’t started writing; orange highlight means that it’s an idea that I’m currently writing the post for, but the post is unfinished; and red highlight means that the post is complete and scheduled on the blog.
For my posting schedule, I’ll lay out all of the posts I have planned, noting which ones have already been completed. It helps me organize the order of posts going up as well as the order that I work on them since I can figure out which deadlines are coming up. I don’t work on posts in chronological order, so it’s good to have this system to keep me on track. When I decide to start working on an idea, I’ll make a Google Doc in this folder, figure out when I’m going to schedule the post for, and change the color-coding in my documents accordingly. This system helps me get ahead because I know which posts are coming up and what’s already lined up. For example, this post is scheduled for November 23, but I’m writing this in early September because I’ve already gotten my early September posts done.
3. Outlining
The outline for this post!
Now it’s time to start planning the post itself. This is the stage during which I do any prewriting, research, or planning for the post that I’m working on. If it’s a post that includes a list of tips, I’ll do some research and figure out what those tips are going to be. If it’s a post about me living a certain way for a day, I’ll plan out all of the things that I’ll be doing for the day. If it’s a more serious, writing-intensive post, I might make a list of all of the points I want to hit while writing. Whatever outline I create depends on the subject of the post, but I try to do detailed pre-writing so that the writing process goes a lot more smoothly.
4. Writing/Producing
This is the meat and potatoes, y’all. The writing/producing step definitely takes the longest, but it’s also the most fun. The time that it takes depends on what the post is about, but I try to get all of the writing done within a day if I can. This step is when I expand on all of the ideas that I planned out in the previous step and do whatever things I need to do according to the subject of the post, whether that’s me taking photos or living my day a certain way. For example, if the post is about going without my phone for a day, this is when I’ll put my phone away for 24 hours and write about everything I did for the day. If the post is about me dressing like my friends for a week, I’ll spend the week taking photos and dressing according to my friends’ styles. For posts like productive things to do during quarantine, I’ll make my list of things to do and write a short intro for the post. Relatively straightforward, but it’s the most important step of all of this.
5. Proofreading
Before I copy my writing from the Google Doc into Wix, I make sure to proofread everything I’ve written to make sure that there are no typos, my ideas flow, and I’ve said everything I’ve wanted to say. A lot of times I just write whatever comes to my head, so this step is really important to make sure that what I’m trying to say is coming through. There’s a lot of cutting sentences down, that’s for sure.
6. Formatting in Wix
Wix before and after I put my writing in!
Once the post is all written and revised, I copy it into the Wix blog manager. I make sure all of the text is the right color, all of the proper links are there, and all of the formatting is how it should be. The reason I write my posts in Google Docs first is that in case anything happens with Wix (or Google Drive, for that matter), I’ll have a backup copy of all of my posts.
7. Adding images
Picture time! This is always an enjoyable part for me, and I love having that occasional visual pop in my posts. I try to include an image at least once or twice per post, depending on the length; for those “day in the life” type posts, I try to include as many images as possible so people actually get what I’m talking about. In cases where the post is just me talking about myself or giving advice, I’ll insert a couple landscape pictures that I took on my past trips just so that there’s a bit more variety in content. I personally think it's kind of intimidating when there’s just a big block of text and that’s it, so the pictures spice the post up and make it more fun to read. I use my phone to take all of my pictures, edit them either in VSCO or the iPhone photos app (Wix is slow haha), upload them to Wix, insert the pictures into the post, and then add the necessary captions. I try to make my captions as witty as possible, especially in those deep posts.
8. Adding excerpts, cover photos, tags, and other blog things
These are just some technical bloggy things. Basically, for every post I can customize how it appears on my site or on search engines. I can write a brief excerpt for people to read, change the cover photo, add tags according to what category the post may fall into (fashion, lifestyle, productivity, etc), and customize the URL of the post. I try to keep the excerpts and URLs as short and sweet as possible, but for the excerpts specifically, I want to be as funny as I can to draw people in. It’s like the first look -- it’s the first thing people are going to read when they see the post, and it may determine whether they click or not.
9. Final look over
After all of this is done, I take a quick skim through the post and make sure all of the writing looks good, everything is well-formatted, and the pictures are in the right place. Just an extra precaution before I prepare to send it out for the world to see. Or maybe it’s just me being paranoid.
10. Scheduling
This is the most satisfying part of this process by far. On Wix, you can choose to immediately post or you can schedule it to post at a certain time. If you didn’t know, I post every Monday and Friday at 8 am EST, so I schedule the finished post for whenever it’s lined up in my posting schedule. This just adds some consistency and makes sure that I’m not ever slacking in the blog department. Then, I’ll mark off in my posting schedule and post ideas list that the post is completed and move onto the next one! Rinse and repeat for however long you want. So that’s my full blogging process. Hope y’all enjoyed!
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