Tag Archives: scheduling blog posts

Thoughts on Blogging – Video Blogs

For the past month, I’ve been experimenting with doing a weekly video blog post. The goal was to see if doing a video blog would allow me to spend more time writing fiction and working on Isaac’s and my tabletop games, rather than writing blog posts.

While doing video blogs is certainly fun (I enjoy reading the stories aloud), it doesn’t necessarily speed up the blogging process. Since I’ve just started learning how everything works (the Youtube editor, Premiere Pro…), it actually takes longer. Combine this with the tendency for the computer to take a while to upload the videos, and for Youtube to process the edited video once I’ve finished making edits, this takes time.

For example, I actually did create a video for last Friday. By the time I got it loaded, however, it was already early Saturday. And once I started to edit it on the Youtube editor, I realized that the blog portion was very rambly– the result of trying to rush. So, rather than uploading a rushed video while I was half-asleep, I decided to write this post today, and I plan to upload the video blog on Monday (I’ll be reading chapter two of Magic’s Stealing).

Based on my results thus far, I’m considering trying to do the video blogs earlier in the week. That way I could set up the video during the weekend, then schedule it to release on whichever day works best.

The biggest challenge of scheduling blog posts is discipline. If I plan for a Monday update, I’ve got to remember to make the video early in the weekend, that way I have time to upload it. For each blog–at least ones  where I do a reading–I need to practice the reading, do the reading, edit the reading, and then piece together the reading and the “blog” portion of the video.

So that’s the quick update for today. 🙂

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Thoughts on Writing – A Short Post

Well, I was going to have a longer post up today, but I forgot to write it yesterday and today was even busier than I expected. So, instead, I’m going to make a quick note on the benefits of scheduling early.

When you have a blog (especially one that allows you to schedule posts, as WordPress does), you may find it handy to write your posts at the time you have the initial idea, then set them to release on a later date. This is what Isaac and I plan to do when we release The Multiverse Chronicles, and what I often do for regular posts (except today). This is a great way to ensure that your posts have a reasonable consistency of release, a great way to schedule guest posts without worrying that you’ll forget to post them on the right day, and a great way to relieve the stress involved with trying to get a post done by 8:00 Monday night. *Ahem.*

You can also schedule tweets, if you use Twitter. I’ve used Tweetdeck, which is also a great tool for managing hashtags and watching a conversation unfold. (A necessity if you work during the day of #Pitmad, which has new rules for next time).

With that said, I hope those are helpful insights.

In other news, Rebekkah Ford did a book feature of Magic’s Stealing on her blog. Click here to find another excerpt from the book (an excerpt which isn’t available in the preview on Smashwords!), and check out the other books she features while you’re at it. 😀

Now I’m off to write a much longer post. Have you found any handy tricks to managing a blog?

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Filed under Writing