6 Step Guide to Manage Multiple Blogs Effeciently

Most of the Bloggers maintain more than one blog. Some Bloggers maintain multiple blogs, sometimes even up to five, six or more. And to be honest, it is not difficult to manage. Effective time management and Multi tasking are the key to success. If you are struggling to multitask, try the following tips.

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1. List you Blogs and Blogging Objectives

When you are managing more than one blog, you cannot just divide time between them equally or even randomly. Each and every blog you have should have its own place. Treat it like a family treats its family members. Imaging your Online Blogs as you family. Now do you get as much importance as your Big Grand Daddy. No right..!! Similarly, in your Blogging Arsenal there would be some Big Blogs which have lots of contents and demands more attention. On the other side, there would also be tiny startup blogs which need fresh content and more promotion. The key here is differentiation.

Here is a rough way to do this. Improve according to your personal preferences

1. List down your Blogs.
2. Categorize them into Mature, Startups and Midway. This classification is relative to you and not Blogosphere. Keep that in mind.
3. Start dividing time among these in terms of percentages. Keep in mind that new blogs will require more research, fresh content and more promotion. In short more time required. (The time allocated here are based on individual blog post. Not Domain promotion. They would be discussed separately)
4. Also mention the Frequency of posting beside every Blog. Do it conservatively as you would be aiming to hit this number. Twice  a week for decent size post or once  a day for New Update type of posts seems fine.
5. Finally estimate a rough amount of time you need to write per post. This would come handy for the later part.

2. Chart your Habits & Sync with Blogging Objectives

I am a night person. I sleep very late at night because it suits my body clock. So I keep my RSS Reading, Emailing and other stuff like surfing, chatting towards the evening. Once past Dinner, I start with writing Blog Post. I keep weekends specifically to catch up with my Studies and Designing Themes. Now if I reverse the order, I can still get work done but not optimally.

That is my work life balance. Stop. Think for 2 minutes and evaluate your personal work life balance before reading further to benefit from it.

There are four broad things you need to do. It may be more or less depending on which step of Blogging you are: Expert Blogger or Newbie

1. Domain Specific Research and Promotion
2. Individual Blog Specific Research and Promotion
3. Managing your Online Identity
4. Misc. Tasks like Emailing, Chatting and Surfing

Count the number of hours you can easily keep aside per week in total. Now divide these into the four slots mentioned above as per your personal preferences. Remember to give more time to Point 2, where you need to keep up with your Posting frequency.

3. Re Evaluate your Blogging Frequency

Now you must have a fair idea of how much time you need. Its time to re-evaluate your Blogging frequency and choose a conservative figure. Don’t try to over achieve. Things can go seriously down the hill if you do so.

4. Compartmentalize your Tasks and Gain from Synergy

You can see that there are certain repetitive tasks you perform for every blog. You can actually gain on time if you thread the similar task together in your Calendar Schedule. Keep stuff like reading RSS feeds, Keyword Research, Comments Moderation and Maintenance Tasks for all your blog together. For this to happen you may have to break individual tasks into compartments.

Ex: You want to write one post each for your three different blogs. Now either you can do the research, writing and promoting part individually. Or better, you can do these in compartments. In this way, you can sit on one thing, focus better and get it done faster.

5. Make use of Technology

Finally, before you put to use, try and find software and tools to get things done faster. Here are few example from my personal experience. It will give you a fair amount of Idea.

1. Use Google Reader to Gather all RSS feeds
2. Divide your RSS Subscriptions into Folders and Tags. So you can focus on reading a particular post category when needed.
3. Make use of a offline Blogging Application like Windows Live Writer.
4. Use Twitter Feed to post your Blog Posts to Twitter and similar Services
5. Forwarding all your different Email to one, preferably to a Gmail Account
6. Make use of Gmail Labels to organize similar Email Tasks together.
7. Use Bookmarking Service to quickly bookmark your post to large number of Social Media sites.
8. Make use of Google Notebook / Bookmarks to take notes and carry them everywhere.
9. Make use of Portable version of applications and carry them on USB Drive.
10. Make use of Google Gears where ever possible.

These are just a  few of them. I would list in forth coming

6. Quick note on Some Tasks

I have not touched upon on how to optimize each and every individual task. They need a separate post of their own to do justification. But I would quickly run over the some tasks here

1. Emailing: As a blogger you would be getting lots of emails. Don’t try to response to each and every one as you read them. Also make standardize draft responses where ever you can.
2. Quick Keyword Research: Target Long keywords, atleast 3-4 words long but no more
3. Digging and Bookmarking: Digg 10 interesting post for every post you submit.
4. Speed Reading: Skim through the RSS Titles in Google Reader. Star the posts that looks interesting based on Title. Comeback later to read the Starred Items.
5. Email Management: If using more than one Email, forward them to one Gmail account and manage all your mails from Central Location.
6. Live Writer: If you are using Live Writer, remember it cannot pull draft post store on you WordPress Blogs. So save them on the Computer instead.
7. Google Calendar: Mark important events with respect to blogging on Google Calendar and make use of SMS Notification.

This list is by no means comprehensive. Add your opinions to it via Comments. Have a nice Day..!!

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