There is so much advice out there about being consistent with your blog content strategy.

But productivity tips don’t often work for creative work.

Writing blog posts and creating social media content is creative work.

You can’t just put the creative tap on when the time-slot is up.

So, what can you do to follow a plan and still manage to stick to some level of productivity even though sometimes your creativity just doesn’t flow?

Here are 3 tips that will help you stick to that content plan:

1. Remove the dates from your blog content strategy

I can already imagine you squirming at the idea.

Yes, removing the dates is the only way to make space for your writing creativity. It’s bad enough you have to give yourself a weekly time slot to work with, and then you also force yourself to write about a specific content topic.

The secret is to stay consistent with your blog content strategy is to plan your blog post titles in advance.

Write them down, add in your keywords and then count them to make sure you have enough for the period you’re planning. So for example, if you’re planning to write 2 articles a week for 3 months you need 24 titles.

Then, stop there.
(I like to save my plan in a Google Sheets document for easy access anywhere)

Don’t add a date to any of the articles

This will give you the freedom to sit down during your writing time and pick the title that inspires you the most. If you’re writing for social media, perhaps you can connect one of the topics to something that happened this week.

This simple tweak by itself will make you twice as productive

2. Use uncreative blog content time wisely

When you find you have a day when you just can’t write anything.

Just pause.

Perhaps you have a headache, or your neighbour has been banging nails into the wall all morning.

Worry not.

You can still make that hour productive towards creating content. When I look at my list and feel uninspired to write any of the blog posts, I know just what to do. It takes a little bit of discipline because browsing Instagram or playing bejewelled will always be easier.

Pick a couple of titles that you couldn’t write about without a little online research, and resolve to do that now.

But do it in a disciplined way, or you will spend the next hour spiralling down the research rabbit hole and have little to show for it.

So here are the exact steps I take to avoid the rabbit hole:

1. I write the title down and plan the blog post.
2. So… I need a starting point (this usually comes in the form of a statistic if I’m not feeling creative) and then writing 3 or 4 points to deliver the message home.
3. Bullet list the points.
4. Then search in Google for interesting statistics about the content topic you’re explaining (if your topic doesn’t lend itself to statistics – find quotes, examples or stories instead)

I’ve done this for some time.

Now I’m happy when a day like this comes along because I know I can bullet list and research around 4 posts that are in my blogging plan. I also know that these posts will turn out better than the ones I just dive into when I’m super creative but not terribly focused.

3. Always be a month ahead of the plan

If I could help it I would say 2 months ahead. But realistically, I always aim for two months but can stay ahead around one month. But if my goal were not to be ahead by 2 months, I probably wouldn’t be ahead of schedule at all.

So plan to stay 2 months ahead of schedule, and you will never miss a beat. Sure the behind-the-scenes will look just as messy but don’t worry that’s life.

Life is messy, and things will get in the way.

Make sure you’re a few weeks ahead with your blog writing so your content still goes out and you show the algorithm love every week.

If you’re not sure how to manage this “month-ahead” business you have only two options really. Stop publishing until you’re two months ahead and start then. Or plan a batching sprint in the first week or month to make sure you’re way ahead of schedule.

If you’re writing blog posts, block off a day and write a lot of posts.

If you’re publishing on social media, think of 20 things your audience needs to know before buying from you – then turn them into quotes, images and posts.

A final tip if you’re blogging regularly, is to make sure you publish your blog post on your website. The posts you publish on social media become hard to find after just a few days, and they don’t help people find you.

If you want to be found and eventually be in a position to slow down your online marketing efforts, you need to publish your blog posts on your website (ideally in a blog area) and make sure you use SEO (search engine optimisation) to help Google and other search engines serve them to your audience.