I mentioned earlier this year that I was starting FlashForward Friday, where I share a preview of an upcoming project. The first three were about books I’m planning, namely astronomy, HR competitions, and managing in the public service. I also did an overview of a new layout that I’m using for quotes, which I’m expanding to include humour/jokes of the day. Interestingly, I found an accidental synergy between something new and something old (sorry, nothing borrowed or blue).
I mentioned in an earlier post this week (Tadpole Tuesday: My website fixed itself) that the Chron feature on my website suddenly started working properly after years of not working due to an unspecified configuration issue. Someone asked me indirectly if this was a common problem, i.e., that Chrons might not run, and the short answer is yes, at least with WordPress. I’m not familiar with other site platform software, but if you navigate to the plugin directory for WordPress, you’ll find dozens of plugins that claim to fix the Chron function. Some have hundreds of thousands of users with the plugins installed and actively running. None of them really worked well with my site, so I didn’t use them (I confess that some of them are an open cheat…they actually DON’T fix Chron running, they just regularly send a crawler to the site to trigger the site to reload, thus triggering Chron to run — it LOOKS like it runs, because things get posted, but many of them are just connections to other sites, with bloated overhead). Since my site didn’t live or die by Chron, the extra overhead wasn’t worth it.
But I digress. Chron is the “new” feature that works. The old element is that long ago, I tried to create a posting schedule for myself so that I would maintain some semblance of consistency. Most people assume that I am referring to the same things I mentioned in the previous post about site optimization for user loads, i.e., if your followers respond better to posts made in the morning, then post in the morning; if they respond poorly on weekends, refrain from posting on weekends. That’s not something to worry about for my followers, most of whom do not consume immediately.
No, this was more about the fact that my site has a wide range of content. I was wondering if I should try to schedule specific types of content on certain days. However, since Chron didn’t work, sometimes things would be sent out when I finished them, or I’d forget, and then something I wanted on Tuesday would actually be sent out on Saturday. I didn’t have a functioning Chron feature to do scheduling well, sooooo, I eventually dropped it. But now…?
Content scheduling has entered the chat
I have the seven days of the week to choose as windows, and I’m willing to post up to three things in a single day, as long as it is only one long post and two short posts. I’ll do the long one first at 9:00 a.m. to start the day, and the other two can go at 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. (aka 4h apart). If I do something unique on a weekend that doesn’t fit the schedule OR has a different theme, I’ll post it immediately rather than scheduling it. Will anyone really notice? Probably not. But I’ll see. Because all of my posts will now be planned better, they will have an expected date and time. Currently, things get posted at 2:02 a.m. or something similar, since I’m a night owl. Err, night tadpole? I just have to work through the new scheduling for the slots.
I’ve already decided that Slot 2 (1:00 p.m.) is for quotes, which are really short (a single slide or image). And, I’ve even decided on the themes by day of the week.
- Monday: I’ll cover quotes about astronomy (a primary hobby) or quotes that don’t fit the other themes for the week (aka general quotes)
- Tuesday: I really like the idea of having one quote a week about reading, books, etc.
- Wednesday: I’m going to cover one of three themes for the middle of the week — goals or goal-setting, government or governance, or HR. It’s kind of a “professional” day, in that sense, as all three tie into my work.
- Thursday: This is the bookend, almost literally to Tuesday, but will be about writing.
- Friday: The last day of the week will end on an upbeat note, hopefully, and discuss topics such as love, life, and laughter. (Not quite ‘live, laugh, love’ in the theme sense, but exploring similar ground in more general terms.)
I was a bit surprised to realize that my humour posts don’t fit neatly into categories yet, so that will take a bit more work to refine. I have 82 jokes on the site that need to be converted into images, and I’m still working on those conversions. My working list for the week is:
- Monday: I’m going to start the week with Dad jokes, puns, etc. A bit cleaner than most, a bit more juvenile. Fun.
- Tuesday: I like jokes that have a twist in the ending.
- Wednesday: I’m not sure if this will be the correct heading, but I envision it as a section for “profession” jokes, such as those related to lawyers, accountants, or pathologists.
- Thursday: This is probably my “sex” or “relationships” day for related. I could consider putting it on Friday with the quotes about love / life, but I’d rather it isn’t quite that “themed”…if you like love / life stuff, it’s better to spread it out through the week, or at least that’s what the “experts” say. Who knows?
- Friday: I’m going to throw my “general” jokes in for Friday, that’s easy to decide. But I’m also leaning towards any religion-related humour being that day too.
Where things get a little more interesting is figuring out which days to post other types of materials, also known as the longer content. I have way too many categories, I know, although many are categories where I might only publish a single article a year. However, I still need to determine when to post things.
Reviews seems like a no-brainer category. I have book reviews, movie reviews, music reviews, and TV reviews along with separate blogging on movies, music, and television. I’ve been experimenting with listening to and reviewing podcasts lately, and I’ve even started listening to an audiobook, which will be the subject of a separate post for later. But — spoiler alert — I won’t be doing podcast or audio reviews. I might, however, blog about them, so maybe I’ll keep it as an option with reviews.
The real challenge, though, is book reviews. If I designate one day a week for book reviews, I’ll never clear my backlog. I generally read more than fifty books a year, so if I hold myself to only 52 or so, the math doesn’t math. I also find myself frequently writing book reviews in batches. Which is good, because there is a wrinkle to some of this planning. There are going to be some days when I may not have anything scheduled to post, nor am I trying to fill every slot. The REAL philosophy, and I’m just realizing this as I write it, is that I want to post whatever I’m going to post in a themed way, but NOT to write things just to fill a themed slot. It’s a small but important nuance to my planning. But, if I have, say, 10 book reviews written, they can literally go out any time, there’s no benefit to “waiting” for the right day. I don’t want to add a fourth slot for the day, nor do I want it to overlap with other blogging, but any time I have gaps in the schedule, they can go out.
Goals have been, and will always be, a hot topic for me. Sometimes it’s about my goals, including how I’m doing; other times, it’s about the process of setting goals and various methodological musings. I already have TadPole Tuesdays (where I discuss current projects) and FlashForward Fridays (where I discuss future projects), so goals are more or less covered on two different days. Maybe goals could be either one or both days. It is, after all, sort of a horizontal theme that touches on ALL of the others.
I feel that there is a locus of activity that is more “personal” in nature. The “Paul” side of things more than the “Tadpole” side of things, if that makes sense. The most significant pieces will be my photo gallery uploads, and it will take some time to re-incorporate them into my workflow. I paused for a while simply because it can become a bit overwhelming after completing a full year’s worth of photos, for example. Obviously, the gallery photos are heavily linked to my “family” posts, and I’m going to throw health and spiritualism as well as experiences in there, too. And I feel like I should probably integrate my efforts at Learning into this area too.
Often, I wonder if my website stuff should go in that same category, but, well, it’s a bit more of a “creative” outlet, amongst many other creative outlets. Legos, 3D printing, trying new recipes, or other more traditional “DIY” projects go in there, so I’m adding “computers” to the mix. I might call it Crafting in general, but Creativity would be a better heading.
And then we come to my writing category. Which not only includes the actual topics like HR, Government, Skills, Performance, and Astronomy, but also the actual business of writing and publishing. Not to mention a future foray into fiction.
I’m not sure I understand where this leaves me. I’ll try to combine it into a simple table, see if becomes clearer even to me. I’m struggling with forcing today’s topic and future plans into a coherent workplan for myself. It works, but it doesn’t feel quite right yet.
| Slots | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 a.m. (Main) | Personal, gallery, family, health, spiritualism, experiences, learning | Reviews (movies, music, recipes, etc.) | Creativity, DIY, crafting, computers | Writing | Goals |
| Tadpole Tuesday | Flashforward Friday | ||||
| TBC: Book reviews | TBC: Book reviews | TBC: Book reviews | TBC: Book reviews | TBC: Book reviews | |
| 1:00 p.m. (Quotes) | General, astronomy | Books, reading | Goals, government, governance, HR | Writing | Love, life |
| 5:00 p.m. (Humour) | Dad jokes, puns | Twists | Professions | Relationships, sex | General, religion |
I guess I’ll see if that works for now until I get into the swing of things, using the new options for scheduling. If anyone has any thoughts, let me know!
