An entire. Year’s worth. Of blog posts. 

Oh my days, that sounds like a heap of work. But there are companies out there, and indeed small businesses and solo business owners, who do sit and plan a year of blog posts, and save themselves a lot of time and grief.

​🙋‍♀️ I’m one of them.

I’m not being smug here. I’m sharing it to confirm your hunch—getting an entire year’s worth of content sorted in one go is both doable and desirable. And, in my (counts on fingers) 17 years of writing experience, I’ve landed on this solid truth.

The possible results from batched blog content will outperform content written on the fly, every. Damn. Time. 

Why is this? 

Wouldn’t being so organised hamper creativity? And kill the possibility of publishing time-sensitive pieces? 

 Nah-uh. Quite the opposite, actually.

The four big benefits of batching content

The biggest bonus of batching content is all the time it saves you. And isn’t that the thing we want most of? Time back and time saved. Because when it comes to keeping the effing marketing hamster wheel spinning, who hasn’t wished (and sometimes uttered a silent prayer) that your business blogs could be done quicker?

Knowing what you’re going to write about so you’re not fumbling around every week (or month) for an idea will save you time. I promise that. But there are other benefits to batching content as well. 

1. Batching brings harmony

Deciding what to write about for a series of blogs brings clarity. It’s easier to see how they’ll work together. Linking new posts with older posts becomes easier. And so does planning how you might move a reader from one article to another, or from an article to a service or product page. This internal linking can help with your SEO, while knowing where to take your reader next offers a better, smoother user experience.

2. Batching lets you plan ahead

Toggl time-tracking is one of my most favourite work tools ever. I track absolutely everything I do during my working hours. And from using Toggl religiously, I know that some articles take longer to write than others.

I can confidently tell you that knocking out a round up post is quicker than creating an interview-led article. And coming up with a post that relies on original research will take longer still. 

Planning a whole year of blog posts lets you identify which articles are going to take a little more research and writing time. Now you can adjust your time management accordingly, so those heftier posts still get written rather than being shunted off to a, ‘It’s too hard, I’ll deal with it later’ list. (You know the list I’m talking about.)

3. Batching makes it easier to spot content gaps

Planning your titles and topics reveals anything obvious you’ve missed. Stuff you know your customers, clients and readers are crying out for and you’re yet to cover on your business blog. 

When you spot a subject gap, adjust your content plan to address it. You might need to swap some ideas around or find you can’t run all the articles you originally planned on, but that’s OK. Switching things in and out will create your   ‘fall back ideas list,’ and those ideas are always useful to have in your back pocket. 

4. Batching gives you flexibility 

You can tackle your blog posts for the year in one of two ways. 

Way number one: get the whole lot written in one hit. Allow yourself a couple of months to do everything—writing, getting any design elements you need, uploading and scheduling. Bam! Done. Apart from checking that they’ve posted correctly, (and tracking their results) you technically don’t need to think about your blog articles for the rest of the year. 

Way number two: the more-or-less monthly method. (Depending on your posting frequency.) This works if you can hand-on-heart dedicate 1-2 days every month to create articles.

In my experience, writing all the blogs in one go ultimately frees up more time. Think of getting these core posts sorted as having done the bare minimum. Any time you have left available for your content marketing can be spent working on the nice-to-haves, like last-minute timely news pieces or existing content refreshes.

The practicalities of planning a year of blog posts 

If you’re confident about your marketing goals and enjoy writing, then go for it! You’re probably set to handle all of the blog writing that your business needs. But if like many small and solo business owners, time’s never on your side (or, like one of my clients, you simply fucking hate writing), then take a collaborative approach.

Enter a copywriter or content writer. (We go by a few different job titles.)

If you choose to work with a writer to get all your content done and dusted for the year, it must be a joint effort. This collaboration will make sure your business gets the best content possible. 

Let me show you what that usually looks like for my clients and me. 

Figuring out ‘The Point’

So the very first question that needs answering is this: “What’s the actual point of this business blog?” 

Without a clear answer here, you risk simply  ‘shitting out content’—publishing articles for the sake of it. You’re not clear who you’re writing for or (worryingly) what you’re actually meant to be writing about. And why. Everything you publish on your blog should support an overarching business or marketing goal.

Your goal could be:

• driving more traffic to a website
• encouraging conversions (buy, download, click here, contact us)
• increasing brand awareness 
• establishing a voice of authority.

When you have a goal in mind, it’s easier to figure out exactly how your blog content can work hard to help achieve it. This makes it easier to figure out the next bits. 

Finding the magic number

Now, you probably know I’m an adult industry writer, but for once I’m not talking about that magic number. (Please do keep that figure to yourself.) 

This magic number refers to how many posts you need for the whole year. And there are a couple of factors to consider when working out the magic number.

• The goal you want to work towards and how ambitious it is
• The resources you have available for blog creation (time, budget, skills) 

So even though you’ve probably stumbled across posts that say stuff like, “To achieve a gazillion website visitors, you must post 30 million times a week,” and you think that sounds great, if it’s just not realistic for your business to generate that much content, may I suggest that you bat that advice away.

Idea gathering

This bit is the funnest. (At least for a nerdy writer like me.) It involves gathering all the possible ideas—my ideas, my client’s ideas, ideas from their business mate, and their business mate’s mum. Nothing, at this stage, is off the table—no matter how crazy it might sound. 

To give you some ballpark figures, I usually gather 15-20 ideas. The client generally brings around 10-20 possibilities, but this depends on how much time they have available. (It’s not out of the ordinary for them to only contribute 1-3 ideas.)

Our next step is catching up for a meeting (usually done on Zoom) so that we can…

Whittle down the ideas

No idea is a bad idea… Until you have to explain it to someone else. And then it can become so brazenly apparent that the idea is actually shit. And has less oomph than a sloth taking a nap. 

You’ve given the idea a red hot go, and tried to emphasises how it delivers such a great headline. But try as we might, it can’t be teased into a fully-blown, entertaining article. So ta-ra. See you later. Those ideas are the first to be crossed off the list. Closely followed by any that:

• are no longer relevant because they were time sensitive
• don’t promote the overarching goal 
• don’t bring any SEO value
• simply sound like too much of a ballache.

By the end of the process, you’ll have a whittled-down list of ideas that match your Magic Number. These are the final picks.

Working with the final picks

Once I know what I’m writing. I add my client’s dozen or so articles into my workflow. I use Trello to manage all my projects, so now I can track each article through each of its phases. (First draft, client review, second draft, with my editor, etc.)

A client can usually expect me to go quiet at this point. Perhaps for a month or more. (Although I do send weekly project updates if it’s a long one like this, just so they know I’ve not run off with their money or out of steam for their project …or died.) At this stage, I’m doing a lot of research and rough writing. Which usually starts with…

Creating the skeleton drafts

These are more detailed outlines of the articles, but they’re not a full, first draft that’s ready for client review. A skeleton draft includes a rough working title, the keyword, the call to action and a series of dot points that I want to cover in the article. 

Sometimes I ask the client to review the skeleton outlines, sometimes I don’t. It depends on how much time and availability the client has, and how involved they want to be. (Some prefer to be very hands off, until the first draft is ready.)

Generally, the skeleton drafts are for my reference only. They guide me during the writing process so I don’t go off on random tangents or get lost down too many research rabbit holes. (The perils of which you get to hear about if you sign up to my newsletter.)

After the blog planning…the writing

With the skeleton posts figured out for the whole year, it’s time to flesh out their bones. I get deep into writing. 

Depending on the number of articles and the complexity of the topics, it can take me anywhere from a month to two months to create a whole 12 months’ worth of posts. And that process involves:

1. writing and submitting the first draft
2. implementing client feedback and changes
3. submitting a second (and sometimes third draft)
4. sending the article off for a professional proofread
5. implementing suggested changes from my editor
6. polishing the final document and submitting it to the client.

Repeat steps 1-6, times 12. (Or more.)

This might feel like a lengthy process. It can’t be dressed up any other way, but it’s thorough, creative and 100% human-generated. In terms of pure speed, I could never match AI-generated content. But the way I create a year’s worth of posts brings success for my clients. Their goal-driven blogs get results, such as more leads, increased traffic and increased revenue. 

For real life. You can read about these results here.

Let’s plan a year of blog posts

Batching your content like this, knowing you’ve got posts ready to go is very satisfying.  And it frees up time and headspace for focusing on the areas of your business that interest you the most. 

Sure, the work will feel intense for a couple of months, but clients tell me  that my process is smooth and by the time my articles reach them  they’re on-point and ready to go.

So if you’re interested in getting your entire content written and packaged for this year. Talk to me. I have two different blog services to suit your needs and budget.

Show me your blog writing packages.