How to Plan a Years Worth of Blog Content in One Day

Sounds too good to be true right? A year worth of blog content in one day? Well, I’ve done it, many times. Believe me, if you get the ball rolling it’s not easy to stop once the ideas are flowing, and that’s what I’m going to help you with today. You don’t have to spend a penny to be able to do this task, you just need an hour to two hours of concentration and motivation and you’ll soon have thousands of blog post ideas pouring out of your brain.

Now, grab a pen and paper, or open up your blog post spreadsheet (yes I have one!) and let’s get to work.

You need a number

Firstly, you want to know how often you want to be posting on your blog. Once a week? Then you’ll need 52 ideas. Twice a week (like myself) then you’ll need 104 ideas etc. Work this out this number then at least you have a figure to work towards.

Divide into categories

Secondly, categories. What do you write about on your blog? Personally, I write about motherhood, pregnancy, lifestyle, home, blogging, personal posts and baby. So those would be the main areas I want to focus on. I occasionally might throw in a fashion or mental health post but it’s not the type of content that is regularly on my blog. If your blogs ‘niche’ (don’t like using this term!) is very open like mine you possibly have it easier when it comes to thinking of content, compared to if you only ever write about cars it’s going to make it harder for you.

Dive into Pinterest

Once you’ve got all this ready you can go ahead and start jotting down blog post ideas for each of your categories. You might be able to write down a few you’ve had rattling around in your head for a while, or you might be starting at a blank. There are tonnes of blog post ideas posts out there on the internet, and especially on Pinterest. I have my own post for lifestyle blog ideas which I put out a few years ago too.

After reading through a few lists ideas will suddenly start popping up into your head. Note down everything even if you’re not sure, and if you can think of items you want to touch on in those posts write them down before they’re long forgotten too. You’ll be surprised how quickly posts start piling up, and once you’ve got the ball rolling it’ll be hard to stop.

Original blog content VS popular blog content

Then start searching your ideas in the Pinterest search bar. What posts are currently out there? You want to make sure you have a mix of original ideas that not many bloggers have written about, alongside ideas that seem to be super popular in your niche. Take my ‘baby names we love but won’t be using‘ post I’ve just published. Almost every parent/pregnancy blogger I’ve come across has done this post. The reason why? People love it! People in my niche love searching up baby names and love trying to figure out what people might name their baby. It’s a mixture of parents to be wanting name ideas against people who are just wanting a good nosey into your unborn baby’s name. So just because a post has been done 100’s of times doesn’t mean yours can’t be just as good or even better.

(little background info, that baby name post of mine got as many views in 3hours as it usually takes a whole day for any other of my posts)

Read posts from other bloggers in your niche

You have no idea how quickly this will inspire you into thinking of fresh content ideas. Please try not to go around blatently copying other bloggers posts (someone will notice and you will most likely be called up on it on Twitter!). But keeping an eye on what others are up to in your niche will honestly help keep the creativity flowing and will actually spur you on to do more work (because everyone wants to be the best right?).

Find a way of organising these post ideas that suits you

I always found if I just had all my ideas in some journal or random note sections in my phone they got lost or confused in translation. Your best bet is to make a digital copy of all your posts in one place thats easy to access from both your phone and laptop. I spoke about my spreadsheet technique in last weeks blog post about how I stay orgainised as a blogger, and everyone seemed to love the look of my blog post spreadsheet!

Once you’ve got so far you’ll be able to see what categories of yours are flowing with ideas and which are slacking. I tend to have a look at my ideas and see how I can incorprate that into a different category. Say if I need more ‘home‘ posts, I’ll scan though my other ideas and see what I can tweak to slot into the home category. Perhaps an idea to write a post about my favourite pregnancy products, that gives me an idea to write a post about my favourite recent home finds. I then could do a ‘favourites’ for almost every category I write about! Simple!

Then once you feel like you’ve got enough ideas, start planning out when you’re going to post what. Make sure you space out your categories so you’re not posting about one thing all the time. Using my spreadsheet I like to put an estimated publish date and colour-code my posts categories so I can check I’m posting a great varity of content.

I do hope that this post has helped you get to work with planning your whole years worth of blog content. This way you’ll never be stuck for inspiration and ideas again. Then once you’ve dated them all like I do you’ll always know what you’re working towards next instead of in that ‘I want to work on my blog but don’t know what to do’ attitude.

If you’re a parent blogger keep an eye out for my next post which will contain a huge list of blog post ideas for you all to look through!