I keep two blogs; one in English (this one) which is updated 5 times weekly with a recap on Saturdays; and another in French (see top right in the menu) which is quite similar in content but not identical – some stuff is very local-appropriate for Quebec, other stuff is only of interest in English….. I maintain the French one twice weekly with a weekend recap.

That is basically 9 posts to write a week. Well, in fact I’m very erratic in my writing. There are weekends or days when I’ll write 5+ posts and I can spend 1-2 weeks without creating anything new.

The secret recipe is in scheduling your posts. It’s not because I just finished writing something that it’s got to go out immediately. Some posts are timely, are relevant to an event while most are non-time related and could go out now or 3 weeks from now and still be new + of interest to the reader (I hope) like this post (I’ve read many similar posts by various bloggers, however they usually give tips on what to write about, how to write multiple posts, grow ideas and such. Few bloggers in such posts discuss scheduling which is why I figure I’d also write one of my own.

How do I plan my scheduling?

On my English blog I publish an original interactive marketing / advertising piece every Tuesday – I’ve got some scheduled for the next few months actually. These posts are either multi-post text versions of presentation I’ve done to the industry or questions I’ve answered – I am the regional IAB Canada director for Quebec and thus the point person to whom questions are often fielded – adapted to everyone’s benefit.

I also publish posts on Foursquare, tips & news as well as virtual trip logs every 3 weeks on Thursdays – I don’t produce enough of this to make it a weekly feature on my blog nor do I think there’s sufficient interest for it. Further I publish posts on my visits to various Hard Rock Cafes around the world every tree weeks (a different week than the Foursquare post) also on Thursdays. So 2 weeks out of 3 I publish 2 original posts a week, the other only sees one published.

I furnish every other week day with a recap of recent readings that have caught my attention in a particular topic. These are in fact like reading my Twitter feed in slow motion and in an orderly relevant fashion. I do a lot of reading every day out of interest and necessity to keep up with the industry (for my IAB function). Every other day I’ll maybe spend an hour reviewing my Google Reader shared articles and Twitter retweets, cut and paste the titles and summary of each into a topic specific open post – I have an average 10 open posts at all times for topics like consumer marketing, social media, mobile marketing, SEO & SEM, metrics and measurement, location based marketing, etc… Depending on the popularity of the topic I’ll include 6 to 9 recent articles.

Some weeks are much more prolific than others in news sharing so I build up my posts over time and as soon as one is ready, I schedule it for the next weekday when I don’t have a post scheduled to be published. At the moment of this post’s writing, I’ve got 2 and half weeks’ worth of posts scheduled.

Finally, on Saturdays I publish a weekly recap of the posts published in the past week including topics and summaries. Given I’ve got a few weeks of material already scheduled; I can also prepare in advance these weekly round-ups. Essentially, I can take off on vacation for 2 weeks, not touch a computer and yet my blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts will make me look almost as active as normal.

On my French blog, I publish 2 original content posts weekly. These, like on this blog cover events I participate in, answer questions I’ve been asked and address interactive marketing and advertising topics I like to explain. I translate all my Foursquare and Hard Rock Café posts to French but post them every 3 weeks like on this blog – however given posting priorities they don’t necessarily appear at the same time – sometimes are many weeks apart.

During the summer and during the holidays I also publish a cocktail recipe on Fridays at 4:30pm – quitting time for most. These are prepared long in advance –two third of those scheduled for this summer were written last winter.

I also publish a weekly recap on Saturdays which includes my published posts from the previous week in French, as well as those in English (this blog). I also include in this recap those articles and retweets that were in French from the previous week (which average 4-8 per week).

So there you have it, my secrets revealed. I hope this doesn’t diminish the value of what I publish for you.

How do you maintain your blog? How do you manage your time to remain regular?