National Blog Posting Month is a worldwide event every November in which bloggers publish a minimum of 1 post every day. This is my 3rd year participating and has also been the most challenging by far. So here we are at the end of the event and I thought it would only be appropriate to end the blogging marathon with a list of tips on how to survive an entire month.
Plan, plan, plan, plan, PLAN!
This is by far the most valuable tip I can give anyone who is wanting to participate in Nablopomo. When you’re trying to write a blog post every day, you have to at least put some thought into it ahead of time so you don’t get stuck.
One of the things I did this year was a topic calendar. A topic calendar is your basic calendar and each day contains an event you know is taking place that day or a possible topic to publish that day. For example, topics you might consider first are: birthdays, holidays, trips, outings. Next you can add topics you’ve always wanted to blog about but haven’t had a chance to actually write.
A topic calendar isn’t anything you have to keep up with religiously. In fact, I only filled it out the last week of October and I only looked at it maybe once a week to see what sort of topics I could blog about if I ever needed some help.
Post Scheduler Can and Should Be Your Best Friend
This is the one thing I wish I had taken advantage of more often this year: the post scheduler. Most blogging software such as WordPress or TypePad allow you to publish a post ahead of time.
So for example, let’s say most of your free time is on the weekends. You could potentially write several days or an entire week’s worth of posts ahead of time and just schedule each post to publish on a specific date and time.
Make It As Easy As Possible For You To Blog From (Almost) Anywhere
Scenario: it’s 10PM in the evening and you know you haven’t gotten your daily blog post in. Not only a that, but you’re away from home. In fact, a computer isn’t even within easy access. What do you do?
Every once in a while, you may find yourself in a bind where you know you haven’t gotten your daily post in, especially if you didn’t take advantage of the post scheduler mentioned above.
This is where your contingency plan should kick in. So let’s think. If you don’t have access to a computer, what DO you have access to?
You have access to your cell phone of course. And if you have a smartphone with web access, you could just as easily login to your blogging software from your phone and write a quick post from there. If you have an iPhone, check to see if your blogging software offers an app via the App Store.
If your phone isn’t equipped with a usable Web browser or fancy apps, but you can send and receive email from your phone, you might want to look into blogging via email. I know WordPress by default has a post-by-email feature which is setup to work with your domain’s mail server, I’m not sure about other services like Typepad or Blogger but I would imagine they offered that as well.
Perfection Is a High Bar to Reach
Every once in a while you might have to write a post that’s less than stellar. I know I’ve written a couple of those this month. You know what I mean, the ones that go, “Right now I’m blogging from my phone so I figured I’d just drop a quick post and say hi!” This is where I give you permission let posts like that go. Not that EVERY post can be like that, but I think you should give yourself permission to write a post like that every once in a while. Life happens, you know. Just be sure to make up for it with an awesome post the next day 
Much like you might write a post or two that’s only a few sentences long, you may accidentally miss a day or two (but let’s hope it’s no more than that). Of course the point of Nablopomo is to publish a post a day, but like I mentioned before: life happens. It’s just as important to learn how to persevere amidst setbacks.
If you participated in Nablopomo this year, what are your tips for succeeding?
