Creating content that people will enjoy reading and sharing with others comes down to organization and planning.

These foundational steps help to create the pathway to creativity.

Determine the direction and purpose of your blog from the start.

What do you want to achieve? What is your purpose? It helps to come up with a mission statement.

Nail down a niche to focus on.

You can't write about multiple things well. Doing so will cause reader confusion, content bafflement, and set up advertising problems in the future.

Pick one or two related ideas and go with it (i.e. - recipes using local ingredients).

Now that you have a general content focus, it's time to create a schedule and organize your content themes.

Pick how many days a week you want to publish. Daily is too much for one writer and a small reader base. Ideal publishing schedule is 2-3 times a week.

These days depend on your demographic and readership. However, it IS possible to create reader traffic through consistency and predicability!

Pick a post anchor that will publish each week. This is the core of your blog content (i. e. restaurant review).

Pick an easy, but interesting post series. Photo posts do well. Something less than 300 words.

Now you just fill in the gaps!

One or two days are your core content days. You can have 2 or 3 core concept topics (review, essay, interview).

The other day is your easy post (photos, short thoughts).

Each month our bloggers schedule out their posts.

By scheduling, you can prepare your content ideas - go to restaurant, cook a recipe, go on a hike - and have time to write a quality post. With organization, you aren't left scrambling.

Keep a list of content ideas, too!

You can also use Google Calendar, or even a wall calendar - it doesn't matter.

On days that you aren't publishing content, you can focus on social media.

Many marketing companies pre-write their updates each month into a schedule. Days, times, and conversations are developed into content strategies.

Leave room for flexibility. Over-scheduling can kill engagement. You might have to change topics depending on breaking news.

Not having scheduled days may leave some platforms in the dark. There's balance in all things!