WordPress Editorial Calendar Saved Me While At Disney World

Last updated on July 19th, 2018 at 08:46 am

The WordPress editorial calendar, published my posts while I enjoyed my vacation at Disney World. If you’ve been visiting my website then you know that my WordPress blog is still fairly new, less than 2 months to be exact. We started planning a Disney trip long this blog was even an idea. I was excited to go on vacation. It had been several years since I had been on a real vacation.

Yet as the date for my Disney vacation starting creeping closer, I got extremely nervous. How was I going to add fresh content to my blog and my social media sites?
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What I Am Going To Share In This Post

I am not only going to share with you how I used the WordPress editorial calendar to post fresh content to my blog. I am also going to share with you how I used an editorial calendar to automate my social media networks as well.

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But before I tell you how the editorial calendar saved me during my trip, let me first tell you.

Why I Really Didn’t Want to Go To Disney World

I couldn’t cancel my trip, we had already paid for it. It all came down with me not wanting to leave my new WordPress blog. The great thing or (bad thing) however you want to look at it, my blog doesn’t get a lot of traffic. At the time of this writing, my WordPress blog is a little over a month old.

Not only that, but I had just started my social accounts and was trying to start networking with other people. I am very new to social networking. I was one of those late-bloomers who took forever to jump on the social networking bandwagon.

For some reason, I never listened when people kept saying social media is where it’s at. I just refused to use it with my past blogs.

The truth is that I am still constantly learning and reading anything I can get my hands on to help me better understand how to use the power of the social networks to build online relationships with other bloggers and marketers.

I now understand how important it is to build relationships with other bloggers, it’s impossible to do it on your own. It doesn’t matter how great of a writer or how hard you work, we all need relationships to get further in life.

I am an introvert and I would rather write a blog WordPress blog post than spend time on social networks. I’ve realized that just writing blog posts won’t drive traffic to your WordPress blog, no matter how great your post is. Those days are long gone.

How The WordPress Editorial Saved My Blog

I’ve had several WordPress blogs and have used the WordPress editorial calendar to schedule fresh content to be posted at later dates. But I wanted to share with you how you can use it to make your life easier if you want time off or focus on other areas of your online business.

I was only able to queue 3 posts before my vacation. It takes me a while to research and write content for my blog. This also had to do with the fact that I had to focus on my WordPress freelance business as well.

Plan Your Content Calendar

The first thing you have to do is decide what type of content you want to write about. I recommend opening up your favorite keyword tool, I use Long Tail Pro. If you are having issues coming up with fresh blog ideas to write about then visit Buzzsumo to get your creative juices flowing.

Once you have a few keywords and know what you want to write, grab a cup of coffee and just start writing. Don’t worry, you can always go and check the grammar to ensure that it sounds good before you hit publish.

If you’ve never used the WordPress editorial calendar, let me show you how it can save your butt the next time you need time off from your blog. You can start getting your blog posts set up in advance so you can take the holidays off with your family.

It won’t take long and you will love it once you start using it. I am going to continue using these editors to help me with my business so I can focus on promoting my blog.

How to Use The WordPress Editorial Calendar

Even if you’re not going on vacation, you will love the fact that you have full control of when your content posts on your WordPress blog.

When you’ve written your epic blog post, and are ready to show it to the world. You have two options you can choose from:

Option 1: Publish Immediately

Option 2: Schedule publication for a later date and time

We want to use option 2 because it is the one that allows you to queue the WordPress editorial calendar with keyword rich content for publication at later dates. This frees up your time to focus on other important things in your business, like setting up an auto-responder, creating your own product or just taking time off.

Follow these steps to start filling up your WordPress editorial calendar with blog posts to post at a later date.

STEP 1

When you’re done writing your post, don’t hit publish. Instead click on edit.

STEP 2

Pick a date and time to schedule your blog posts. I would suggest trying to post at the same time every time whenever you publish new content. If your blog is new like mine, this won’t matter much. Once you start getting people visiting your blog on a regular basis, you want to post consistently on the same days.

This lets your visitors know what days they should come back to your WordPress blog. Hopefully, they have signed up for your RSS feed, which if you haven’t signed up for mine, you can do so here.

STEP 3

After you get your first post scheduled, set aside a weekend and keep queuing up fresh content. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s a lot easier than trying to write a new post the same day you want to publish it.

If you use this method, you won’t have to worry about not having something to post one week to the next. Especially, with the holidays coming up, the last thing you want to worry about is not being able to spend time with your family because you have to write a new blog post.

You can set up as many posts as you want in advance. So set up a lot of them and focus on marketing your blog posts to start driving traffic to your new WordPress blog.

How I Queue Up My Content

Whenever I sit down to write content to fill up my editorial calendar, I just write without thinking. My goal is to write as much as I can about the topic at hand. Once completely done with the blog post, I schedule it for a later date.

I am NOT worried about grammar or how the content flows at the time of the writing. Instead, I fix all grammatical errors a few days before it goes live. From my personal experience, I have found that coming back and reading the content with fresh eyes helps me catch my grammar errors.

This is what seems to work for me. It has allowed me to queue up fresh content to post automatically without me having to hit publish every time I post new content on my blog.

What About Your Social Media Content

I wanted to quickly tell you how I am using the editorial calendar concept to help me with my social media marketing. If you are a one-man or one-woman show, then you need all the help you can to make your life easier. Right?

As a WordPress blogger, we all know that we can’t neglect the power of social media. As I mentioned earlier, I refused to jump on board with social media in the past. Instead, I focused 100% on SEO.

I figured I was getting good traffic from Google, so why bother learning social media? I thought I had it made. Well long story short, Google changed their algorithm and I watched my traffic dwindle and all my hard work went away.

So please don’t make the same mistake I made. Here’s a great beginners guide you can use to start getting your feet wet with social media. Everything I’ve learned up to this point has been through reading a lot.

Here’s what I’ve learned, hopefully, it helps you get started.

What I’ve Learned About Social Media Sites for Free

As I mentioned above, I am still new to the social networks. I am constantly learning and tweaking day-by-day. I’ve read a lot of stuff online regarding sharing on social media and I know that people will follow you if you share great content. (Not just your own content)

If you visit my Twitter page and view my tweets, you will notice that when I first started I was tweeting all about ME.

I didn’t have a clue what to Tweet and I had just published my new WordPress blog post. I wanted people to know about it and come to my site. What I didn’t realize was that no one really cared.

Yes there are people who want to learn how to restore a WordPress website. But, no one knew me and my Twitter account was brand new. Why was someone going to listen to me and rush to check out my new blog?

It didn’t take me long to start sharing valuable information that my followers will find beneficial.

No one wants to follow someone who is always sharing everything about themselves. I’ve recently starting unfollowing anyone who is always sharing everything about themselves or constantly trying to sell.

Most of us sign up to the social sharing sites because we want people to visit our sites and buy our products. This doesn’t mean that we have to constantly be in their face shoving our products in people’s faces.

It’s no different than walking into a retail store and then being bombarded by salespeople trying to hound you into buying something. We all want to be acknowledged and thanked for visiting their store. What we don’t want is to be pressured into buying something. Most of us go into a store to browse and if we see something we like or want, we will decide to make the purchase if we choose.

I’ve taken this to heart and am using it to share helpful content. I am still sharing my own content, but not all the time. By me doing this, I have grown my Twitter followers without paying for followers.

I am not a social media expert. I am constantly tweaking to see what is working.

When I left for Disney World I had gotten some followers to my new account. Yeah, I hit over 100 Twitter followers. (I know some of you are laughing right now) but I was happy.

My social media activities include sharing content. How was I going to keep fresh content posting while I was at Disney World? I didn’t want to be tied to my iPhone the whole time I was at Disney World.

I know some of you reading this blog post are going to frown upon this. But I couldn’t afford to hire a social media assistant to take care of my accounts while I was gone.

So I watched a couple of YouTube videos and found that I could easily setup a social media content calendar.

Learning How to Setup My Social Media Content Calendar

Let me explain this a little bit. I know that social media is about networking…so I don’t recommend doing this and then not visiting your account. You still want to take the time to post comments and interact with people.

However, if you are not at the point where you can hire an assistant. This just plain works. I signed up with Buffer. You can choose the free account or use the paid version. I chose the paid version because I was able to connect more than one account.

Once you sign up you can start filling your Buffer content calendar with content that your followers will love. Don’t forget to sprinkle your own content in there as well.

Here’s Some of My Disney World Pics

I can’t finish this blog post without sharing some of my Disney World pictures with you. So here they are.

We also spent a day at Universal Studios. I realized I love roller coasters, even though I get really nervous before the ride. My favorite one at Universal Studio was The Incredible Hulk coaster.

If you ever get a chance to go, I would highly recommend riding it. We also rode the Harry Potter rides and I really enjoyed them.

Overall, the trip was great. My only complaint was that the crowd was horrible.

Now that I’m back, it’s to grow my blog and start working on building relationships with others.
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The Take Away

You most likely started your WordPress blog to share your knowledge with others. Just because you write epic blog posts or step by step tutorials, doesn’t mean that people will visit your blog. Whenever you write a new blog post you have to promote your new posts.

If you haven’t started blogging yet, here is my tutorial on how to start a blog on SiteGround. As a “thank you” for purchasing through my link, I’ll send you a copy of my book – The Jumpstart WordPress Guide – for free.

The WordPress editorial calendar if used correctly, can help you take the time to promote your content. I will continue using it even though I am back from vacation.

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Don’t be afraid to use the editorial calendars for your social media marketing. Both of these saved me while I played at Disney World. Do you use the WordPress editorial calendar to schedule your new posts? If so, how many posts do you queue up in advance?