Today, I am going to tackle what it takes to plan your content. As you may know, I am in the middle of a three month pre-sale for The God Queen and every single day of it has been planned….in fact, I started planning as far back as March! INSANE??? I agree. It was rather crazy of me. But it was totally worth it, because it gave me all the breathing room I could get in between getting things ready now. I am prepared for anything to come my way (which it likely will) and all the important stuff has been planned so now to put out all the little fires!

Yay!

Where did I learn to do it all? I took Jenna’s Moreci’s class on book marketing on SkillShare and let me tell you there is soooooooooooooo much you can do for your book – based on your budget – to get it in as many hands as possible. The biggest piece of advice she recommended was having a book launch – anywhere between 3 to 6 months before the release of your book. There is so much to do in the meantime (as the writer while your readers wait patiently, not knowing what craziness is happening behind the scenes). Since The God Queen is my debut novel – I opted for three months. This includes more posts a week, calculated social media presence, emailing influencers, reviewer, bloggers to look at your book – and much much more.

Anyway, how did I tackle such a thing? Well, I am an excel junkie (this includes google sheets). I love making lists and columns and I looooooooooooooooove programming them to do the things I need when the things get done!

Wait, what?

Let me explain. I have two google sheet files. One is a calendar and one is a tracking sheet. I use the calendar to see how my month is planned out and the tracker is to see where I am on each bit of content for my blog (before the presale, I was posting three times a week on two blogs and now it’s twice a week).

As you can see – my July has been pretty straightforward. I used different colors to tell me what is posted where. Light green is social media (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook), dark green is for #100DaysofAbner, purple is for my author website (www.mltishner.com), pink is for my blog (www.adventuresoflamari.com), orange is for my giveaway run (just to remind me how long it’s running), and the blue at the bottom is the newsletter.

Holy shit, it’s a lot. I know. No one has to go as hard core crazy as me, but knowing exactly what is getting posted at what day (and at what time) has been a HUGE weight off my shoulders.

So how did I do it? Easy. I went to Google and found a template for the correct year (you can use Google’s, I discovered theirs after I already found the one I used). All I did was add my post plans in color.

Now this list, I did use from google’s list of templates, but I tweaked it a little bit. I changed the drop down menu to have the different types of blog posts (blog, author interview, book review, newsletter, etc). Then I tweaked the status depending on where I was: not started, in progress, upload (meaning the written part is done, but the photos needed to be added), and scheduled (my content is only done when it is scheduled for the date on my calendar). The last two were necessary because I could write the content a long time in advance and not upload it or schedule it right away.

I didn’t need to have everything uploaded and scheduled, but I needed them mostly ready and on deck. I also have a huge fear of something happening to WordPress and I lose everything I have scheduled. So I only schedule about a month in advance (thought sometimes two) and the rest stay in a different file until it’s time for be uploaded.

If you want to learn more about why I made my plan so, you should head over and see Jenna Moreci’s skillshare class on marketing your book. It’s brilliant and you will walk away with a huge trove of knowledge on the subject.

What about the rest of you? How did you plan your book launch?

In the meantime, if you follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook – you probably already know this. If you want a behind the scenes peek of my upcoming novel, The God Queen, then sign up for my newsletter! Just click the subscribe button below!

Are you interested in more? Check out the first four chapters

If you are already set in buying The God Queen go ahead and preorder

And don’t forget to sign up for my pre-sale giveaway once you buy!