I was surfing along on the Internet a few days ago when I came across the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin (via Chris Brogin) and immediately downloaded and installed it to both my work and personal blogs. It puts all of my posts – drafts, scheduled and posted – into a calendar that lets me see, at a glance, when my next posts are coming out and what I have scheduled in the near future. It also – and this is the killer feature for me – lets me do a quick typing of a blog post directly from the calendar. Every day has a “new post” link that brings up a simple box with the title, content, time and status of the new post. You can set up a post as a draft, schedule it or post it immediately from the calendar itself. The posting interface is simple and doesn’t include the bells and whistles that the Add New post page does, but it gets the job done pretty well nonetheless.
This little plugin has really helped me create new posts for my work blog, where I have a goal of at least 2 posts per week. Now I can easily see that I’ve missed a week in my scheduling and either move a post (via a very simple click and drag from one day to another) or create a new post right there from the calendar. It’s given me a little more incentive to write here, because as I look back at the wasteland that is my very erratic posting schedule here, I get motivated (by shame, yes, but that’s good enough for me…).
Therefore, when looking at the upcoming weeks of empty boxes on my blogs, I am motivated to write – more often than I have been recently – and will hopefully be able to produce more content for both of my blogs!
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