Blog Talk: Does your blog have daily themes?

How The Book Cove's daily themes developed

When I first started blogging I would post whatever I had on whatever day. I was more about building content and less about giving the blog an identifying characteristic. Shortly after starting, I found a weekly blog hop that I liked and I kept up with the hop on a routine schedule. As a result, I started scheduling my other posts around it. It inadvertently led me designate certain days for certain kinds of posts. I liked using a day to catch people up on news and Monday was a logical choice for me. My personal job was gradually taking up more time so the number of reviews that I was posting started to decrease. I wanted to keep the posts spread evenly throughout the week so that left my Wednesdays open for reviews. It wasn't long before I had days designated for certain types of posts.


The benefits of keeping up with themes

Those exact daily themes have changed for this site since, but I still have designated days for certain posts. Sometimes I deviate from those if there is a blog tour or special promotion that requires a specific day. But for the most part I try to schedule everything accordingly. When I first implemented daily themes I was not sure if I liked it. I felt restricted and was sometimes excited to post on a topic and didn't want to wait for the next week. Sometimes I gave into that impatience (and still do) -- realizing that it isn't that big of a deal to break my "rule" for the day. I eventually found many benefits in having daily themes and I became less impatient about posting all of the time.

1. It saves your content - Sometimes I write on something that I am really passionate about and I want everyone to read it immediately. Obviously there is benefit in posting on a hot topic immediately; especially if it is trending in the news. However, if it's just a hot topic to you, then waiting a week probably won't hurt the stats any. It is especially useful to wait if you're in a blogging slump and feel like you're running out of writing ideas.
2. It provides back up content for slow weeks - When personal life takes front seat or blog tours/hops/reviews fall through, sometimes those pre-scheduled theme posts are the only thing going on for the week. Think, does your blog benefit more from six posts in one week with zero, two, and one post in the following weeks? Or three posts in one week with one, three, and two posts in the following weeks?
3. It mixes up the content throughout the week - Readers can become bored with all reviews one week and all author interviews the next week. If you mix them up throughout the weeks it gives readers something to look forward to.
4. It makes scheduling easier - While pre-scheduling posts is as easy as clicking the "schedule calendar" next to the post editor, that doesn't always help with memory. When was your last author interview, review, spotlight, or blog hop? Was it sometime last Monday or Tuesday? Maybe you can't remember the week, but you know it was on a Friday. For me, the later situation is more helpful in terms of content scheduling than the other.

How about you? Do you designate certain days for certain posts? What led you to do that?