Backup Tips: Where did your blog posts—and your book—go?

 Today’s guest post is by author Roger C. Parker, a book and marketing coach who has author 38. His most recent is a blogged book found at Published & Profitable blog.

If you’re not religiously printing and backing-up your blog posts as you blog your book, you may wake up one day and find your blog posts–and your book– have disappeared!

It doesn’t happen often, but, when it does, the loss can be devastating.

A friend of mine was blogging her book and lost all of her posts in what her host called a “regrettable incident” that took place during a “routine backup.”

Last week, one of my Seacoast, NH, friends had a similar, higher-visibility experience. He lost a day’s productivity talking to technical support while trying to use his host’s back-up feature. When he finally got it to work, only the header graphic and the sidebar appeared.

Because I’m now engaged in blogging my book of answers to my 99 Questions Authors Must Answer before Writing and Self-publishing a Brand-building Book on my Published & Profitable blog, I’m especially aware of the need to back-up my blog posts as I write them.

Redundant, 4-step blog post protection

Here’s the 4-step solution I’m using to back-up my work on my computer as well as off-premises, on the Internet.

1. Print. Immediately after I finish a new blog post using WordPress, I copy and paste it into a new word processed document. I then print the latest blog post on 3-hole punched paper, and save it in a 3-ring binder devoted to my current 99 Questions writing project.
2. Save. Before closing the new file, I save it in a “99 Questions” folder on my computer. Each filename contains not only the question number, plus a shortened version of the question I’m addressing. Note: I use a 3-digit number in each filename, i.e., the filename of my first blog post began with Question 001, the second filename began with Question 002. This way, the filenames appear in the proper order when I open the folder.

3. Re-save. Next, I immediately back-up my newly-created word-processed back-up, plus any graphics I created for the post, to the Internet, using my Evernote account. Lately, I’ve been using Evernote more and more. Backing-up my work to Evernote is not only an important part of my routine, it’s become a habit.  In the above example, the top file is the Word.doc file, the bottom file is for the accompanying graphic.
4. Link. Finally, I add each new post to a mind map I created using Mindjet’s MindManager. The mind map contains links to my word-processed back-up files as well as the blog posts. The mind map helps me quickly relocate posts for editing or copying and pasting into the manuscript for my book. You can use also add comments to the mind map to track the popularity of each post. You can read more about creating a blogging dashboard here.

Get in the habit of protecting your blog posts

It takes just a few moments to protect your blog posts immediately after you’ve finished them. Invest in a 3-ring binder and some 3-hole paper. Get in the habit of printing, saving, and linking each time you create a new blog post….and save your guest posts, too. Protection is always cheaper and easier than trying to recreate years of hard work.

More important, the back-up habits you create while blogging your book can be used to safeguard all of the other important writing you do for yourself and for your clients.

Best wishes on your writing, blogging, & publishing success!

About the Author

Roger C. Parker invites you to visit his Published & Profitable blog and follow along as he answers the 99 Questions Authors Must Answer before Writing & Self-Publishing a Brand-Building Book workbook. You can (currently) download the workbook for free. You can also catch up on previously-answered questions here.

Photo courtesy of by imagerymajestic