For many bloggers, one of the biggest issues seems to be time constraints. There’s an expectation that you turn out multiple posts per week — and if you’re writing for multiple blogs, well, you can wind up with a task list a mile long. I should know: I write for half a dozen blogs on at least a weekly basis, usually multiple times per week.

The secret is batching tasks together. While I tend to write several posts in a row, I’m actually talking more about the other steps that go into getting a post ready to go live, as well as promoting it once it’s up.

1. Ideas: My RSS reader is set up so that I can quickly skim topics from my favorite sources on a particular topic. I’ll make notes about the topics of the posts I plan to write in the near future, trying to keep about a week ahead of my writing schedule. Already having topics in place makes it easier to drop in a particularly timely story, at least in my experience.
2. Formatting and Photos: I actually write in plain text most of the time, to avoid the distraction of formatting. I’ll type in HTML tags for important things like links, lists and block quotes, but any major formatting isn’t really a concern while I write. That includes finding photos and getting them placed.
3. Promotions: I tweet links, enter blog carnivals and all the various tasks that go along with making sure that people actually see a blog post. But I do it once a day or perhaps once every two days — I just sit down and promote several posts while I have all those services already open.

Exactly how you batch process for a blog post depends on your own writing style, of course. If you need visuals as you put together a post, it makes sense to already have your photos ready to go. If you don’t particularly like HTML, my approach isn’t going to work for you. But pay attention to your blogging routine and you’ll start to see which tasks break you out of the writing flow — those are the tasks you need to find a way to process separately from writing.