How do I stay organized with my blog, podcast, and life?

Blog organization – blog time management – how to balance a blog and your full time job - stay organized with my blog

I’m in an exciting but busy season of my life. I’m engaged and planning a wedding in the fall. I launched a podcast last month with my friend Maddy called the Content Creatives Podcast. I’m still writing and producing two blog posts a week. And I still have my other life I call my full-time job in aerospace.

While most people probably slow down on their side hustles,
I tend to maintain (sometimes even increase) my time on my blog and now
podcast. My goal is to leave my full-time job in a year and a half so I’m doing
everything I need to do to make sure I’m set up for success.

So how do I stay organized with my blog and podcast?

I wanted to give a quick shout out to @natalie.yerger and @thriftsandtangles for submitting this question on Instagram stories! I hope sharing how I organize my content helps you ladies!

Here are 5 ways I stay organized with my blog, podcast, and life:

1. I maximize my time on the weekends

Like most people, I spend my weekends catching up on laundry,
chores, and grocery shopping. But unlike most people, I’ll spend at least 4-8
hours working on my blog and podcast.

I divide my time up in two categories on the weekend: photo
shoots and writing.

Writing for my blog, social media channels, and podcast: I
usually spend several hours at Starbucks or a local coffee shop. I absolutely
need this time before the week starts to decide on what photos I want to share
on Instagram and write all of those captions out. I’ll also spend at least one
hour outlining the podcast episode for that week and another hour or two outlining
or writing Emma’s Edition blog post(s).

Photo shoots: I usually spend 1 ½-2 hours actually
shooting content for my blog. I would probably add another hour to factor in
commute time (driving to the photo shoot location and back home).

My weekends are vital to me. I need these two days to develop
and brainstorm ideas as well as actually create the content with photo shoots.

2. I use my planner

I write down when sponsored content needs to be shared, events, trips, and photo shoots in my planner. Lately, I’ve been missing things even with the events written in my planner. But I think there’s just a lot going on so I’m figuring out a new normal for my schedule.

Fremont Seattle - Record Store - Emma's Edition

3. I limit my social life

When I first got out of college, I was going out every weekend with friends. But when I started my master’s program in 2017, I really had to limit my social life. Even though I graduated in spring of 2019, I’ve still continued to limit my social life.

I’ll see friends during birthdays and occasionally for
brunch or happy hour, but I’m working 3 jobs (my full-time job, blog/podcast,
and wedding planning). The truth is after I work my 40 hours a week plus 10
hours of commute time, I have to switch on to my next two jobs. My energy is
spent creating content, engaging, and making decisions about my wedding, blog,
or podcast.

4. I batch my content

I’ve been batching photo shoots and outfits for years. I
usually shoot at least 3 outfits for every photo shoot. For a whole day of photo
shoots, I’ll shoot up to 10 outfits.

I also brainstorm and list out my entire month’s blog posts topics at the beginning of each month. If you want to learn more about how I batch content, check out: How I batch content for Emma’s Edition.

5. I use Flickr and Google Drive to organize photos

When I work with Maddy to shoot content, she uploads and
organizes our photos into Flickr albums. When I work with Holly, she uploads
and organizes our photos on Google Drive folders. Both systems and formats work
well for me.

I have both the Google Drive and Flickr app on my phone to pull photos. I don’t mind switching back and forth the two platforms when I’m deciding which photos I’m going to post that week. I usually will save the photos on my phone and upload them into Planoly to decide which photos get posted on what day.

There you have it friends! A few ways I stay organized with my blog, podcast, and life. Did any thing surprise you?