It’s been about a year since I posted an article on my blog. I blamed it on the fact that I began going to school but that wasn’t a good reason. Honestly, I made no plans to ensure the blog remained sustainable. So I thought of ways to keep my blog (or any blog) alive and I came up with a few steps that need to be followed to ensure this happens:
- Define a reason for the existence of the blog
- Define the areas and subjects the blog will cover
- Define the post publishing frequency
- Define the structure of posts
- Tell people about the blog
1. Define the reason for the existence of the blog
Why did I decide to bring the blog back to life? Two reasons:
- I decided to keep a public record of my progress as a self-taught Data Scientist.
- I thought it would be a good idea to make things I learn tech-wise available to a public audience.
I had initially come up with a reason for creating the blog which was the second reason listed, but now I have a second reason! This should help me keep it going this time.
If your reason isn’t solid or genuine enough, you’ll discover that down the line, you’ll falter and you won’t be posting as regularly as you would have expected or wanted to.
2. Define the areas and subjects the blog will cover
So now that we have my reasons for starting a blog (or reviving one in this case), I’ll need to explicitly decide what areas I’ll be covering. These areas will help be create a good Category structure for all my posts and will ensure I don’t end up creating posts that aren’t under the areas I planned to cover for the blog.
It’s a good idea to write them down in a document or immediately creating all the categories and adding their descriptions as well – WordPress lets you do that.
3. Define the post publishing frequency
Now that I have decided the areas I’ll be covering, I’ll decide when I’ll be publishing posts. I decided to post twice a week – on Tuesday and Friday. I might have to change the selected days but I have to make sure I publish, at least, two posts each week.
I could also determine the frequency for each category – not all categories can get equal love when it comes to allocation of publishing posts. A category may get a post one a month, while another could get one a week. Once I have the schedule defined I’ll need to stick to it.
4. Define the structure of posts
Defining the structure of each post will really help with keeping the blog alive. Things like:
- how long should each post be,
- how many images should be included in the post
- breaking down a post into a series and defining the publishing frequency
I could always create a template for my posts under each category. This will help speed up post creation since I won’t need to worry too much about the layout each time I need to create a post.
I could also create drafts of posts when ideas come to mind and complete them when I have collected my thoughts for the article.
5. Tell people about the blog
This part might be a little difficult for me – I really don’t know who to tell! So I better come up with a list of people who I believe will benefit from my posts. I need to make sure my content is relevant to them and also ask for feedback so I know how I am doing.
This is also help me make sure I keep to my schedule – I wouldn’t want a situation where I am asked about the blog and I draw a blank face, or come up with a silly excuse like, “Oh… school, exams, work…”. I should rather have a response like, “Oh yeah, I started a series covering…” or something along those lines.
I shouldn’t wait for your blog to come up on search engines. I should spread the word myself!
In conclusion
So here we go! The plans have been drawn! It’s time to get this started! I’ll definitely post the plan in my next post once the draft is complete.
Thank you for reading and I hope I stick to my plans 🙂
Featured Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
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