You must have noticed that sometimes you have enough time and other times, you don’t.
Your tasks don’t flow in an even stream; sometimes you’re too busy and other times you have some time for projects.
One aspect of automating is to schedule blog posts and email newsletters so that you can do them when you have time. For example, you can create your blog posts and newsletters on Monday, but publish them on Tuesday.
You can even pre-write many blog posts and newsletters and schedule them throughout the week or month! How cool is that?
Should you create a blogging calendar?
Some bloggers create a blogging calendar, even for the entire year, and stick to that.The calendar lists the blog title, and perhaps a short description, with the projected date of publication. But there are pluses and minuses.
- On the plus side, when you have a calendar, you always know what to write about. If you have difficulty thinking of a blogging topic, I recommend creating a calendar. Run through everything you know that your target market needs to know, break it up into topics, and break the topic into smaller bites for each blog post. Go through a year like that and you’ll have amazing content that will attract people who need to know what you know.
- On the minus side, I don’t believe you should stick to a calendar completely. You should always be open to writing blog posts that answer questions that your readers ask you. And you should also always be open to writing blog posts about issues that come up in the news or in your field. When an issue becomes a hot topic, you should write about it, because people are interested in it now — that’s how it becomes a hot topic.
How to schedule blog posts
Schedule a time each week or each month to write the next week’s — or next month’s — blog posts. As you finish each post, do the following:
- In the Publish box on the right of your WordPress Dashboard, click the Edit link after “Publish Immediately.”
- Set the desired date of publication in the boxes you see here.
- Click OK.
The post will appear on your blog’s home page at the date and time you specified.
How to schedule email newsletters
Your email service should allow you to schedule the sending of a newsletter at a later time or date. In fact, you should almost always use the scheduling feature because you want your newsletter to arrive in your subscribers’ Inbox at a time when they are most likely to read it.
That time may vary, based on your target market. For example, if your target market is business people who read your newsletter at work, you don’t want to send out your newsletter on Sunday! Most experts say that Tuesday is the best day, around 10am. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are considered much better than Monday or Friday, when people are more rushed.
You can check the open rates of your emails to see what day and time has worked best for you.
In MadMimi, the email service I use, there’s a Schedule This to Send Later button. When I click it, there’s a box to specify the time and day, as well as a button that opens a calendar and list of times. Once I schedule the newsletter, it goes out by itself at the right time, no matter what I’m doing!
Scheduling is great for vacations and travel
Part of the gift of Internet marketing is the fact that you can do it anywhere and any time. If you’re going on vacation or traveling, you can make sure that your business continues to function.
Even cooler!
Do you schedule blog posts and newsletters? How does it work for you?
4 replies to "How to automate an Internet business: Part III-Schedule blog posts and emails"
I write my blog posts and newsletters Saturday morning and schedule them for Tuesday morning, two hours apart. No time for writing during the week.
The most difficult part of having a blog calendar is to stick to it (and to have all the blog ideas in advance). What I do, is to write down a list of ideas or things that I want to talk about, and I write them as soon as I get inspired. Then, I post them little by little (if I have any blog posts in advance…).
Thanks for the tips!
Thank you Ellen so much great info I found on this blog, I never even knew that there was Madmimi in existence but one question though- Does MadMimi allow all these emails that internet marketers use to send? Emails that promotes maybe affiliate products or so?
As a start-up I use mailchimp and the very first email I tried to send violated with their Ts nd their Cs so I cant send anymore I think I will try MadMimi if you recommend doing so.
Themba, MadMimi doesn’t like you to use affiliate links, although I’ve used them without a problem from them. If you’re doing heavy affiliate marketing, I’d recommend AWeber. Here’s my affiliate link 🙂 http://www.ellenhelps.me/aw.
A number of email services allow affiliate links but not affiliate marketing. What does that mean? It means that you CAN use affiliate links as long as they’re related to your topic, to what people signed up for. You can search any email provider’s policy in their tems of service.
Here’s how MailerLite describes their policy:
“Affiliate Marketing and Affiliate Links
Affiliate Marketing and Affiliate Links are two different things. Affiliate Marketing is prohibited in MailerLite, but Affiliate Links are fine in most cases.
Affiliate Marketing (Prohibited)- is a type of business where you earn commission by promoting other company’s products. We don’t allow this activity, because there’s no direct relationship between you and your subscribers. You are not allowed to send unrelated offers to your subscribers or pretend to be another brand.
Affiliate Links (Allowed) – is a way to recommend product or service to your subscribers in your campaigns. Advertisement for another company (Affiliate Link) can only appear under your branding and be clearly presented as a special offer from another company. Moreover, the offer has to be related to your content and meet subscriber expectations. You are not allowed to send emails with links to content that is prohibited in our Terms of Use. Campaigns with blacklisted links will be stopped automatically and we may be forced to close the account permanently.”
Good luck!