Hello everyone! Welcome back to BirthMay 2022! Today’s post is going to be sharing all my secrets on blogging every day for a month.

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In case you’re new, every May I blog every day and call it BirthMay! Why? Because it’s my birth month and I’m super extra.

It seems crazy that I waited until now to share this post! I feel like I’ve shared my tips in various posts, but never all at once in one post. So, here’s how I do it!

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How to Blog Every Day for a Month

I’m going to address a few things first. First, my blog is a hobby. It is NOT a “side hustle”, I’m not trying to make it one, and I’m not trying to make it my full time job either. I do this for a creative outlet, and if I didn’t feel like blogging I would just shut down the blog and walk away. So for me, it’s really important to make this fun and not feel like homework. Because of this mindset, I was able to continue my blog when I was working full-time and completing my MBA program a few years ago, but then still continue blogging when I was unemployed during the pandemic.

My blog is literally just me posting whatever I want, so I don’t have any restrictions on what I can and can’t post. I know everyone says “FIND YOUR NICHE AND STICK TO IT” but that’s not me, so that’s why BirthMay is always chaos! You could get three posts about books in a row then none for another week and a half.

So how do I do it? A ton of prep! I would say that for prep work, everything takes double the time. Planning out posts, creating featured images, scheduling the posts once they’re written, and so on. Everything involves so much prep! For example, when I create featured images, I like to use different photos for each so I spend quite a bit of time on Canva finding the right (free) image and then making sure I haven’t used it yet for BirthMay specifically. Or, if I’m scheduling a post, I have to double check what day I’m scheduling it for against the planner. It’s not a ton of time for each task, but it does add up! Even something like styling each post will take longer, as I generally create a whole new template just for that year’s BirthMay.

Planning ahead is probably the most important thing though. I always create a list for every day that I’m blogging in general, and it’s even more important for a big challenge like BirthMay. As tempting as it is to plan out the first two weeks and say “I’ll figure out the rest later”, I’ve learned the hard way that it’s not so easy to come up with 15 new ideas when you’ve already exhausted yourself with fully implementing the first 15 posts. The perfect timeline for me is to have the entire challenge period planned out two months in advance. Of course, there’s always going to be changes and adjustments, but at least having a plan ready two months before the start of the challenge is very important to me and helps me stay on track.

In terms of writing the posts, I try to have at least half completed by the time challenge starts. Preferably at least 10 of those posts are within the first 2 weeks, especially the first 7 days. The other 5 should be in the last two weeks. Then I sort of tackle it by what makes sense. More time intensive posts require more strategy, such as the Ten Mini Book Reviews. I try to keep up with those in real time as much as possible. Not only because I read so much that then I fall behind fast, but also because it’s easier to review a book when it’s fresh in my mind. Some other time intensive posts can be reflection type posts, since I tend to make notes ahead of time and then write it down to make sure I’m not forgetting something (although I always end up forgetting something anyway). If I am having a sluggish day and want to feel like I’m getting a lot done though, I’ll do a few of the faster, quicker posts like the “how to do [something]”. Those are fast because it’s pretty straightforward to share how I do something!

Also, spreading out the creation of the posts just helps in general. Typically I publish two posts a week, so I spend a couple hours on the weekends writing them, creating the images, and scheduling. With 31 posts, I sit down ahead of time to write as many as possible, then I not only write the rest on weekends, but also during the week when I have down time. These projects do end up taking a lot more time than I am used to, but it’s also really satisfying to successfully complete my goal!

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So that’s how I handle blogging every day for BirthMay! (And Blogmas, although that’s “only” 24 days.) Let me know what your tips are if you do something similar!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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