How I'm going to blog better in 2013!

Phew - practically Christmas already. It's been a great year for blogging and my book has been selling well, which is really exciting.

But as you can probably tell from the date of my last post, I haven't been practising all that I preach! Yes folks, I confess it's been a while since my last blog post here. Why is that? And what are the lessons to be learnt?

Stick to your editorial calendar
When I started this blog, my editorial calendar was stuck to the wall in front of my desk and I kept to it pretty well, but then one month I was busy on other things and forgot to update it... and before long I was 'ad-hoc' posting (rather like this) which is ALWAYS more work than devising and sticking to a schedule.

Keep your ambitions sustainable
Three posts a week was fine at first, when the book was launched and was being reviewed I was doing talks and writing posts was relatively easy, blogging was top of my mind. But that frequency wasn't sustainable over the long term.

Follow your passion
Although blogging about blogging is still on my agenda, my interest in poetry has really blossomed this year and as a consequence much of my blogging has been over at Poetgal. If you find yourself blogging more about Topic A than Topic B, the signs are trying to tell you something. It's REALLY hard to blog about a subject if there's something ELSE you're burning to blog about!

So what am I going to do about it? Well, this blog isn't my only neglected blog at the moment - robinhoughton.com has also seen less action lately! So rather than beat myself up about not blogging equally often across all sites, here's my plan for 2013:

1. Create a sustainable editorial calendar for my bloggingforcreatives blog, based on, say, two posts a month, for the next 6 months. These can be based on chapters from the book, tips and ideas from expert bloggers and other 'timeless' but useful information.
2. Create an outline editorial calendar for my robinhoughton.com blog, again based on two posts a month - but if I'm not inspired to write I won't give myself a ticking off. It's my main business blog and most items there are 'thought pieces' brought on by topical issues or events, and I do think that if I don't have anything specific to say which adds value to the debate, it's best not to post.
3. Continue to blog at Poetgal, when inspired to do so, and not feel guilty about it!

Wish me luck! What are your blogging goals for 2013? What went wrong in 2012 and what worked for you? Let me know!

(Image credit: Origami Penguin as featured on How About Orange)