Once you’ve created a blog, you need to post regularly in order to keep readers interested. How much easier would that be if you could write posts in advance, and schedule them to appear later on?

If you’re using WordPress, it’s simple to post-date a blog post. Look closely at the Publish Status option window—you will see the option to “Publish Immediately.” If you click the word “edit”, you can change the publishing date and time. The date and time you enter will be the date and time that WordPress publishes your post.

Now, when you know you’re going to be away or busy, you can write posts in advance, then post date them. Easy as that!

One clever way to attract new readers to your blog is to sponsor a prize drawing. If you can relate the giveaway to your blog topic, even better. Downloadable audio files or PDFs are easy to deliver, but you also might consider a mailable item: t-shirt, journal, business card holder, even a Starbucks gift card. For even more impact, use a service such as Zazzle to put your logo on a shirt, mousepad or bag. Relate your giveaway item to your own product or service: if you’re a pet expert, give away a collar or set of pet dishes; if you’re a professional organizer, give away storage containers or an attractive notebook.

Here’s one example of an effective prize drawing: the Indie Fixx Autumn Cornucopia Giveaway. IndieFixx celebrates independent artists, crafters and designers and is somewhat of a clearinghouse for indie goods. Contests and drawings are held fairly often, keeping interest high and attracting new subscribers to the Indie Fixx blog and newsletter.

If this specific giveaway looks like something you’d like to win yourself, here’s how to enter: go to this linkand leave a comment saying that you read about it at Pink Mandala (http://pinkmandala.com/wp/blog). Also, be sure to share your favorite participating contest sponsor. Me, I’m partial to Sublime Stitching and Feto Soap. Feto’s soaps smell so good, you don’t know whether to wash with them, or eat them. (Extra bonus tip of the day: don’t eat them.)

“Blogroll” is just a fancy name for a list of links to sites you want to promote. A blogroll can be displayed on a sidebar or featured on its own page. I prefer creating a separate blogroll page, to keep the sidebar clean and uncluttered.

WordPress has a built-in link manager, but it can be unwieldy if you are featuring more than a half dozen or so links. Managing a large number of links is much easier if you use an RSS reader with sharing features. (However, only sites that publish an RSS feed can be managed this way. Most blogs automatically publish a feed.)

One big advantage to this approach is that the list automatically updates if you add, remove or update a feed. There’s no additional work to do once it’s set up. Here are basic instructions on how to set up your blogroll using Google Reader or Bloglines - two popular (and free) options.
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