Did you know, there’s just over 4 months until Christmas? I know, before you start yelling at me for using the ‘C’ word, it was that initial thought that inspired today’s blog post. You see, there’s exactly 18 weeks until Christmas – and I thought that gave us a perfect opportunity to talk about preparing blogging calendars for you and your clients, for the remaining 20 weeks of this year.

Why would you want to prepare a blog calendar?

It’s currently the school summer holiday period and, as any work from home mum will appreciate, working whilst the children are at home can be exhausting! The easiest way to get through it is to plan as much as you can in advance. This not only helps you get more organised at work, it also frees up your time, so you can spend it with your family – and that’s why you’ll want to prepare a blog calendar for the rest of this year.

Having a blog calendar makes your life easier and more organised

Having your blog content planned out in advance makes your life easier! It gives you a clear overview of the topics you’re going to cover in those blogs – so you can ensure you’re always on niche for your target audience.

By organising your blog topics in advance, you’ll be able to get organised, by planning in time to batch your blogs. Batching means setting aside a larger chunk of time to write several blogs in one hit. Not only will this save you time in the long run, it’ll also make you write faster, as the more writing you do, the faster you’ll become.

The final benefit you’ll glean from being this organised with your blogs – it’ll enable you to create the relevant social media content and memes ahead of time too!

So, now we’ve covered the reasons why you’ll want a blog calendar, we can move onto those 20 ideas…

How to come up with 20 blog ideas in 20 minutes

It’s all well and good planning out a blog calendar for the rest of this year, but how do you come up with the ideas for those 20 blogs?

Honestly? It’s not as difficult as you may think! Set your timer for 20 minutes and follow these steps:

Step #1: Start with the basics

Spend 5 minutes writing down words that relate to your niche. If you specialise in helping businesses in the self-help niche, what key words and phrases does that conjure up for you (for example: Law of Attraction, mindfulness, motivation, attracting clients to their business, lead magnets, email etc)? Write them all down.

Step #2: Expand on them

Now, spend 10 minutes expanding on those words. You can ask yourself what other words and phrases come to mind, when you think of each individual word in turn, or you can ask yourself the following:

  • What do my clients want and/or need to know about this?
  • My clients typically ask me what questions around this?
  • What advice can I give them on this topic?

Step #3: Turn them into titles

Finally, look to turn them into titles. Here are some starter prompts to help:

  • How to…
  • Top 5/7/10 things about…
  • Why you need…
  • 5/7/10 steps to…
  • The secrets to…
  • The easy guide to…
  • Why we should…

That’s how you can come up with 20 blog titles in 20 minutes! If you want to get even further ahead, you can set aside another 10 minutes, to break each title down into the 3 main points you want covered.

I’d love to hear how you got on with today’s steps and your 20 blog titles in 20 minutes. Did you manage it in the timeslot or did you beat it? Why not share your experiences (and times!) in the comments box below!

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