Betty White is coming out with two books this year. What hasn’t this woman done? Well we’ll soon find out in her tell all Hollywood life tale and her animal scribes. For now, lets write about blogging and your ticket to writing heaven.

No matter how long blogging has been around, I consistently get asked so many questions about it. That is why I wanted to make sure we cover this. So even if you’re an amazing blogger maybe you’ll get some good stuff out of this.

So pillar versus a filler...what is that? A pillar post is pretty much one of those kinds I call the angry tenant. They are blog posts that you have  once a week and they are more lengthy, more in depth, they take you longer to write and are more words. So basically it could be your frustrations about lame events. So you can rant and rave about all the different laundry list of what not to do at your event. It can also be a longer post about fabulous things that work at events and why.  Kind of think of it more like an article.

A filler post is basically just that and how I look at it is the things you fill in the rest of the week. To get your blog to get some action you want to write 40 to 50 posts the first month before you launch so that you really have some traction.

But you want to keep up with it.  I’ve heard so many different numbers and the numbers bounce around depending on who you listen to and when . But we want to make sure, in my opinion, that you’re blogging 4 times a week. Now remember something and this is something that so many of us make a mistake. We think how am I going to fit this into my schedule? My schedule is already jammed packed?

Well how you’re going to fit it into your schedule is you are going to just schedule the time but remember you don’t have to blog every single day. So you can just once a week do all your different posts, whether it’s your pillar or filler posts and schedule all that and just knock it out all at once when you’re in a good spot and you are feeling motivated and you like to write. Just figure it out so that you’re not going every day okay now I’m going to write my blog, now I’m going to go do this. Why? Because then it becomes really tedious. Just get in the flow.

The other thing to that I encourage people to do is if you have an assistant or just have a VA (virtual assistant), which is a great way to do things, focus on writing the content of the blog and you can even write it in a Word document if that’s easier for you and then email it to the VA and have them post it and make it look fun and pretty it up.  For someone like me who really wants to get the message out but I don’t necessarily want to spend the time putting the tags on the blog and everything else, I’d just do the content or the ideas and then have a VA post for me.

One of the ways that we do it because we know photos help so much with a blog or at least with our audience they do, we use photos and inspiration and stuff like that. So we use a free site called Picnik.com. Picknik is a great way to upload photos or visions boards, you can use it for clients and upload the different photos and that way you can attach it to your blog. It is almost like a PDF.

Another great tip as far as blogging goes that we’ve implemented and this has helped a lot is we have a blogging calendar. So we have an Excel spreadsheet and we have a whole blog calendar where we have all the different potential blog posts for the week. So we know, for example, that we do a Goddess of the Week every week. Then we know there are certain other things we want to cover during the month or focus on.

Let’s say it’s Valentine’s Day, we know Valentine’s Day is February 14^th, maybe will want to start blogging about Valentine’s Day towards the end of January. We’re certainly not going to want to start blogging on February 14^th. So by having a calendar and knowing if you have any set things and like in our case the Goddess of the Week goes up on Monday, then that’s a great way to what I call frame your week.

So I highly recommend doing an Excel spreadsheet and really having that blog calendar because it also helps your creativity. If you sit right now and go great we’re at this point in the year and I’ve got the rest of the year to think about, it kind of helps you get organized as far as when you’re going to blog for the holidays and when certain blogs are going to go up so people can really prepare and use the content in your blog.

The other thing to remember, another tip, is just to remind you that you do not have to have these 10,000 word posts. Blogging what I find is that really shorter is better. 300 to 400 words is fabulous with one photo and it doesn’t have to be the full on amazing photo taken by the photographer, etc. Let’s just do a great photo that you took with your camera that was super fun and expresses what you were up to at the Farmer’s Market that week.

SO to recap, first, batch your blogs.  Then, have a VA… if that will help in terms of having the VA post tags, pretty them up, post photos and that kind of thing and kind of play administrative assistant for you. Next have a blog schedule so that you can manage the schedule, and plan out when you do things.

Finally, I kind of have a swipe file for blogs and those are for blog ideas. Where if I come through and read an amazing article and I’m like oh my gosh I have to blog about these white jelly beans or something like that, I’ll create/fill a swipe file, where I just put all these different ideas for my blog!  That way when I’m stuck and going what am I going to blog about, I don’t have any ideas. I just go to my file and pull out the ideas and then I’m good to go.

Other quick tips: adding video clips, personal photos like real decor shots, etc., and adding color and fun fonts make the blog interesting. It’s just as interesting as the content is to the reader.

You knew all this stuff, right?  Then go for it!