16 January 2014

My Blog Post Planner Insert

Do you ever get the feeling that goes something like 'I'm sure I've written about this before' but when you go looking in all the obvious places you can't find it... or to my embarrassment I once reviewed the same organisers twice about 18 months apart!

So the other day I was asked what I use to plan blog posts on Philofaxy... yes there is a plan! 

And here it is: 


So this is a standard Philofaxy 'Steve and Ray' Month on One Page A5 insert which you can download and customise. 

So I took the merged file for 2014 in this case and I then populated it with our standard posts on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. 

You will notice I also included the post numbers in there as well. We got out of sync once and I had to go back and renumber some FFAF posts! Opps! Then I assign the person who will be scheduled to do the particular Friday unless they are busy or away etc. These just run in alphabetical order Anita, Laurie, Nan, and Steve. Nothing complicated! 

I then try to plan in the round table events and when they should be announced. The insert also contains the dates of the clock changes in North America, Australia and Europe. We try to avoid round tables on those weekends. 

After all those dates have been accounted for the remainder are free for any post that needs to appear on the blog. 

Now occasionally things get moved around and that is fairly easy to do when I can see it laid out in this calendar layout. It takes the guess work out what is the date in two or three weeks time for Tuesday and what number will the post be. 

With my Filofax open at this section to my left, I can glance across at it and because I touch type I can type in the relevant information in to Blogger and it all comes together nicely. 

I use a Pilot Frixion pen for entries so if I need to shuffle posts around, which frequently happens I can write in the approximate title in to a new slot and rub out the old one easily. 

It gets a bit busier than this example above around the time of press releases, because they have to go out on a set date, but mostly we try to work a week or so in advance of publication date. 

Some people go in to a lot more detail with their blog post planning than I do. But I find this works for me. Of course I could put this all in to iCal, but that just wouldn't work now would it!!!!

6 comments:

  1. I usually reserve the first line of my wo2p lined diary insert to signify what my blog post for the day will be, but using a dedicated monthly calendar is such a good idea. Many times, I've wanted to know when I last posted something in a series and have to hunt and search...this would be so much easier. Great reminder that simple is very good!

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  2. I really appreciate all that you and the others do to maintain and even improve this blog. I have got so much out of philofaxy over the last few years. It is a permanent open tab on my iPad.

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  3. I like plain pages. I am using plain month on two pages (Preference Collection) and week on two pages (Franklin Covey) in my compact Luxe. The weekly pages have a different color every quarter. I have extra inserts so I am using this combination. I have a couple of Frixion pens but they don't erase well. I have seen other month pages in which there is a blank row at the bottom. Maybe it looks better that way. I have an A5 insert that has very large boxes and they look almost too big.

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    1. The last row is blank for a reason. It is because the first falls on Wednesday. If the first of the month falls on Saturday or Sunday then the row is not blank. It has nothing to do with how it looks as I said previously.

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  4. I use the year fold out diary in my blog section. Helps with planning future posts without carrying extra pages of diaries or crowding up my main diary that's used for everything else.

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  5. I've been using the FF tabbed vertical month (I think that's what it's called) to do mine. It works really well plus there's room at the bottom for any other tasks I need to do during the month. I usually put other writing deadlines there.

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