A cluttered desk either means you are to busy to clean up, or you are too disorganized to be productive. In the world of blogging, it means that you are all over the place. Too random to be predictable.
To avoid confusion, you will have to display the new calendar alone, not everything. Google Calendars home displays all your calendars by default. That is why you had people's birthday and some event you forgot to attend on your face. Choosing the new calendar should clear things up.
While predictability mightn't be a good thing at all, having a predetermined blogging schedule will not only help you get the best out of your readers but also give search engines something specific to look forward to.
Since most blogging calendar apps are either too shallow or up for sale, I decided to make do with Google's free calendar app. At first glance, it looks dull, ugly and unappealing. A couple of tweaks and turns later, it turns into this powerful tool that could give even the best planner app on the market a run for its money.
Let's begin by collecting them and putting them on the table (you can put them on your floor or carpet, its your ideas your room, you make the rules.)
Get a schedule first
Setting up your Google calendar without something tangible to put into it is a waste of time. Since we do not have the web designer's liberty of using Lorem Ipsum, I'd suggest that you get some your topics ready.The ideas
A good blogger has ideas all over the place. They come while you are in the brushing doing your teeth, or when in the kitchen setting up a cup of coffee. It doesn't matter what your muse is, what matters is whether you jot down the ideas or not. If you do, you probably have a trail of paper all over the house, you office and the car.Let's begin by collecting them and putting them on the table (you can put them on your floor or carpet, its your ideas your room, you make the rules.)
Coupling ideas to a theme
A theme could be the holidays, the season or trending news. A Thanksgiving article would do perfect around November or December, and swimming costume pieces wouldn't be a great idea in winter. You get the drift, don't you?
Getting Started with the calendar
Launch your Google Calendar using this link https://www.google.com/calendar/
If you are logged into your Google account, you will get your default calendar interface, else you will get a login prompt before being redirected here.
It looks plain and dull, I must admit. But hey, that's why we are here. Let's get busy and make it look a little bit attractive.
Head over to the settings cog, to your upper right and click on it. Pick settings from the dropdown. You could choose to explore the other settings. Exploration rarely kills - at least not with Google Calendars.
Under settings, am interested in the 'Labs' tab since here is where all the goodness dwells. We have to add some functionality and looks to the calendar before worrying about what goes into it.
Under settings, am interested in the 'Labs' tab since here is where all the goodness dwells. We have to add some functionality and looks to the calendar before worrying about what goes into it.
Things to Enable (and why)
- Gentle Notifications: You wouldn't want to miss any of your posts. The native notifications might not work well. Gentle Notifications will ensure you get the message without interrupting - provided you are at your computer.
- Who's My One-on-one With: While this shows who you are meeting with, you could tweak it to show to what blog you will be posting. It is perfect for me since I run multiple blogs
- Background Image: Well, we came here to get personal. Didn't we?
- Next Meeting: Everyone loves to know what they'll be doing next. You can use this to give you a sneak-peek of your next post. It keeps you mentally prepared .
Once you are done choosing your tools (there isn't so much to choose from) don't forget to hit the save button at the very top. You browser will request for permission to display notifications or get your location. You have to give consent else some of your settings won't work.
To insert your background image, head over to the general settings tab. You will find the 'Calendar Background' option near the very bottom of the list. Choose a good image from your hard drive. Something that will make you feel good about yourself.
Gentle Notifications will also have a couple of settings just above the background image. Basically, you can find the settings to all the functionality you added at the lab on the general settings tab. Tweak them to your liking.
NB I realized that my personal calendar was conflicting with the new calendar I was creating. To cure this, I just created a new calendar.
On the left sidebar, you should see the Calendars option. Clicking on it will pop up a menu with the Create a new Calendar option. Click on this and you have your new calendar interface.
Since I don't want to make it public or share it with anyone, I will just fill in the basic information and save.
The ability to share the calendar with people is what keeps me around. It is perfect if you have a team of writers you want to share your schedule with. You will always know who should write what on what date.
To insert your background image, head over to the general settings tab. You will find the 'Calendar Background' option near the very bottom of the list. Choose a good image from your hard drive. Something that will make you feel good about yourself.
Gentle Notifications will also have a couple of settings just above the background image. Basically, you can find the settings to all the functionality you added at the lab on the general settings tab. Tweak them to your liking.
NB I realized that my personal calendar was conflicting with the new calendar I was creating. To cure this, I just created a new calendar.
On the left sidebar, you should see the Calendars option. Clicking on it will pop up a menu with the Create a new Calendar option. Click on this and you have your new calendar interface.
The ability to share the calendar with people is what keeps me around. It is perfect if you have a team of writers you want to share your schedule with. You will always know who should write what on what date.
To avoid confusion, you will have to display the new calendar alone, not everything. Google Calendars home displays all your calendars by default. That is why you had people's birthday and some event you forgot to attend on your face. Choosing the new calendar should clear things up.
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