I feel quite certain of the fact that the majority of bloggers are short of time for blog keeping. No wonder! As many of us either work in companies with “inflexible” schedule or develop dozens of personal projects, and blog keeping may be a very time-consuming task.

As a result, one have to face a dilemma: either carefully write blog or do the day job well.

If that is the case, there are three basic solutions:

1. Leave your job and turn to blog fulltime. It is by all means a tempting alternative, however, to choose it you have to be sure that your blog produces stable and high income.
2. Spend less time on blog keeping. Nevertheless, blog is more than just a hobby. It is the means of self-actualization, so this alternative is hardly acceptable.
3. Try to write more efficiently. As for me, I chose this particular alternative.

A lot has been written about effective blogging, including works of Rohit Bhargava. I also decided to write a series of articles under a title “Time Management Tips For Bloggers” to summarize in them my own expertise, as well as my colleagues’ and blogosphere stars’ experience.

In total, I developed 30 recommendations for effective blogging. As a part of this series I plan to publish three posts.

1. Post list
Create a separate file to take notes of ideas for blog posts. Such file will help you to avoid such clumsy situations when you just sit in front of the monitor and puzzle your head over the question what to write next.

2. Factors distracting attention
Everybody is sure to remember the following scenario: well seated, you have focused on your blog and began to write a post when somebody sent you an instant message. On exchanging some trivialities you were back to blog, but getting inspired for work again asks some time. Then, after a short while you were struck by the idea of looking through blog statistics. Say goodbye to five minutes more. And so on. As a result, in an hour you discover that by the moment you have written just a couple of sentences.

Before start writing, personally I exit all the instant messengers and e-mail agents as well as try not to abstract for RSS and Twitter reading under no circumstances. As a result, the efficiency of my work significantly increases.

3. Inspiration trigger
A marvelous way of triggering inspiration is to make some ritual every time before getting started the blogging (of course, I mean neither prayer service nor tea ceremony). For example, you can listen to the music of a certain style and, in future, making this ritual will trigger so much wanted inspiration in you.

As a kind of such ritual before blogging I listen to a tender instrumental music and have a cup of sweet-smelling green tea. My friend, for example, tunes up while playing fingerboard. I am sure that everybody can find such kind of ritual to his/her own liking.

4. The rule of three posts
In his helpful article, Rohit Bhargava suggested to make it a rule to write three posts a week. Thus, you propose yourself with a quite feasible objective and establish the blogging schedule in advance. As a result, you do not feel “depressing guilt” for not accomplishing your blog tasks.

5. Develop post schedule
It is a good idea to plan which days you will devote to blog updating in the early part of the week. It will help you to develop your schedule in advance to allow some time for post writing.

It would be perfect if you will always have some reserve posts on your admin page. In this case you can save time directly on publication if you preset auto publication start date using the function “Delayed Posting” in WordPress.

6. Have the exact understanding of promotion procedure
A considerable part of time devoted to blogging is spent on its promotion. Rank all your articles into several categories (in order of importance, format and topic). And develop the standard promotion strategy for each category. Transform promotion process into a kind of line production: you assess the post, choose the most appropriate promotion tools and employ them using your “bug-free” procedure. It may be also helpful to systematize your general blog promotion activities.

7. Prioritize your goals
First of all I recommend you to set the major goals of creating your blog. As for me, I pursuit the goals of self-actualization and creation of an attracting and useful resource. As I do not prioritize the task of just ”messing around” or “spending my spare time”, I try not to pay too much attention to blog competitions and games because it involves and can become an end goal in itself. I agree that participation in such competitions may be useful for blog popularity growth, nevertheless, it is much more important for me that my blog is interesting and useful for its readers.

8. Address the comments on schedule
One of the major blog advantages is its interactiveness. It means that you can personally address your audience, answer their questions, and ask them yours. However, the main point in communication with readers is again some scheduled consistency.

Often blogger either visits the blog with the interval of 15 minutes to check whether new comments were added or not, or subscribes for RSS comment channel and hastens to reply each and every just added comment. Such attention to readers is undoubtedly very good, but only in the case when blog is your day job. When your time resources are limited the best alternative for you is to devote only a scheduled time range to it daily.

Make it a point to check comment list two times a day: for example, morning and night. By the way, the same strategy may be useful when checking blog statistics which is another strong diverting factor.

9. Make use of usually wasted time
In the course of our routine life we often face situations when we have just waste our time, I mean urban transport trips, queuing, air travels, etc. Such moments provide you with a perfect opportunity of writing the next blog post. Always have PDA, iPhone, Smartpen or at least a ball pen and a note pad with you to write blog posts anytime and wherever you are.

10. Start work with the post sketching
Try to make the post “sketch”, i.e. the list of main talking points to elaborate on. To do this, you may conveniently use programs for the creation of the so-called mind maps.