To kick things off this year, I wanted to share one of the best tools I use to stay organized with the blog.

You’ve heard me say it many times, when you fail to plan, you plan to fail! That’s why I LOVE planning my content ahead of time to ensure I’m staying on topic and actually SHARING content consistently.

Honestly, the hardest part of maintaining a blog or website is the content creation aspect. You have to be consistent if you want your audience to stay tuned in. I’ve definitely struggled in this category, but it’s a new year and I’m going to try to be more consistent!!

I created this template after realizing the notes app on my phone wasn’t doing the trick. I needed one place I could go to write down blog topic ideas. I also needed to write down my process to ensure I didn’t miss any steps!

The template I currently use on a daily basis can be downloaded here. There are four sheets I use to stay organized:

  • Topics: this is where I write down every topic idea that comes to mind. I keep this in my Google Drive app on my phone, and when a random idea comes to me, I log it in this sheet. If I decide to keep it, I fill out the rest of the details so I can make the post come to life!
  • Monthly Calendar: this is where I lay out the topics I’ll be writing on that month, and give them an actual date. This helps me plan out when posts will go out and what my deadlines are.
  • Weekly Calendar: I don’t strictly follow this, but this helps me understand the steps and time it’s going to take to produce one post. Writing the content should only be about 20% of the effort. Promoting and growing engagement should be 80% of the effort.
  • Outfit Planner: this helps me prep the outfits for photoshoots coming up, because putting outfits together on the fly is not a strength of mine.

I hope ya’ll find this spreadsheet helpful in planning your blog content. I use it religiously and have set an intention to be more consistent with the blog in 2020. What is your favorite blog planning tool? I’d love to hear more ideas!!

~XXXO,

Mary