Cache-ing In: Why Your Fresh Content Should be Frozen
If your ability to write is subject to the alignment of stars, direction of the wind and the reading of tea leaves, you may have an issue keeping up with the previously discussed keeping a schedule. I guarantee more than once you will spend the day overflowing with ideas only to finally sit down and–nothing. Fingers posed on keyboard, ready to go and–nothing.
Or, you’ll have test anxiety and spend the entire day twisting your brain around blog post concepts and–nothing. So you scramble to come up with something and wind up covering the latest news story, which would be okay if your blog wasn’t about training Parakeets and the latest news story was about the Russian space project. And you happen to know nothing about it. And you happen to not care.
As you can imagine, rehashing irrelevant news articles just to keep the content coming is a bad idea. It’s probably better to just skip a post.
Even better would be to develop a cache.
Begin now by making a list of potential post topics for your blog. It doesn’t have to be well thought out. Just write down anything and everything that relates to your topic. Parakeets singing, parakeets talking, parakeets not overhearing you discuss your mother-in-law, parakeet health, parakeet happiness, parakeet as a Wal-Mart door greeter. If I can come up with a half-dozen topics for a non-existent blog, you can do the same for yours. The more, the better.
Once you have that list, go back and break down each topic. For example, are certain letters more difficult for a Parakeet to pronounce, and how do you correct that? I really don’t know anything about Parakeets (if you can’t tell). But the point remains: itemize each entry into smaller topics that you can expand on.
Next, write. Yep. Don’t just keep the topics on hand for when you need something. If you’re drawing blanks on topic ideas, you’re likely not feeling particularly invested in the blog that day. You will turn out much better content if you write when you feel more inspired, and will make much tighter series of posts. Keep your pre-written posts in the freezer and defrost as necessary.
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Simply put:
1. Make a list of any related topics as they come to mind.
2. Break those topics down into smaller, manageable—but interesting—topics.
3. Write several posts at once, and keep them on hand for uninspired days.
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Things to Consider:
1. If you write them as a series, you need to post them as a series.
2. If you interject a sporadic post between the pre-written ones, be mindful of any “next time” promises.
3. If the topics are tied closely together, then open with a recap and link to the older post.
Do you keep a cache, and how many fully written posts do you keep in it? What’s your schedule for keeping the cache replenished?
