The Importance of Planning Ahead

I cannot tell you how many times I have fallen behind on my work simply because I failed at planning ahead. I got caught up in thinking about the work that I had to be completed today that I did not think about the work that needed to be completed tomorrow. Then, when something unexpectedly came up, I fell behind. I found that this is especially true in blogging, both at AM Beat, and a number of other websites I have run over the years which rely on fresh new content on a daily basis.

I would spend so much time in focusing on today’s content, making sure it was as good and in-depth as possible that I would forget to plan out for future posts down the road. Hence, there would be days when my website would remain stale with no fresh content because “things came up” and I could not get around to posting new content. In that niche, where content is king and new content was the product that I was selling; a “stale” website was a dead website.

I recently wrote another guest post over at JohnChow.com where I talked about “The Value of Planning out Posts ahead of Time” and how I have been able to avoid the dreaded “stale blog” by planning out an editorial calendar so that I have posts ready to go as late as a month from the current date. This means that here at AMBeat.com, I have post ideas lined up well into July and August. Of course this is subject to change as we report on timely news stories and these pieces can’t be published a month after they happen, but with an editorial calendar, you are always prepared for whatever may happen in the future and have the flexibility to shift around posts.

You can read the full article here.