A company blog is a little bit like a New Year's resolution or a workout routine: very easy to start, but a lot harder to stick to on a day-to-day basis when there are lots  of other things to worry about. In fact, keeping the flow of fresh, keyword-rich content coming in the form of new posts and articles is consistently one of the top challenges for our clients.

Simply put, even though they know they should be blogging more, it's hard to find the time to do so.

Obviously, discipline and priorities factor into this equation, but there are also a handful of things you can do to make it easier to keep your blog moving along. A blog that’s frequently updated is one that's going to be a lot more profitable. With that in mind, here are a few ways to keep yours on a predictable—and profitable—editorial calendar:

Break the process of managing your blog into smaller steps. Although your blog might seem like one big project, it actually has several components: coming up with topics, writing and editing drafts, posting them, adding images, and pinging your posts, etc. Once you look at your blog in this way, the small, individual steps become a lot easier to complete.

Assign responsibilities. There is no reason that one single person has to be responsible for writing or managing your company blog. Do you have subject matter experts on your team to whom you can assign regular blogging responsibilities? Are there product or service-specific managers who could share the task?  You may also want to consider outsourcing part or all of these duties and only contributing guiding themes and ideas yourself. When it comes to keeping your blog on track, the important thing is having clear responsibilities and deadlines.

Start an editorial calendar and topic list. Speaking of those responsibilities and deadlines, setting out an agenda ahead of time—one that includes key dates and post themes—is a great idea.That way, you'll always know well in advance what topics you will be posting about in the future, which makes it easier to stay on schedule. Whether you plan out the whole year based on monthly or weekly themes or tackle it one month at a time, an editorial calendar makes keeping to a schedule much easier.You can create an editorial calendar in Word or Excel, or you can use a blog plugin like Wordpress Editorial Calendar to simplify the task.

Focus on what matters. For a lot of businesses, the main benefit of having a blog is for releasing lots of search-engine-friendly content. For that reason, it makes sense to have a list of keywords and popular search phrases handy. On the one hand, you can sprinkle them into your writing, and on the other, they may inspire new topics and directions.

Review your results regularly. Try to add some time to your weekly schedule to review not only your blog and traffic patterns but also those of your competitors, as well as others in your industry. A quick scan of what's going on with your blog, and on others your customers are likely to see, can help you develop new ideas, readjust your priorities, generate new topics for the future, and so on.

A blog can be a wonderful marketing tool with search engine benefits, but only if you add to it regularly. Follow these tips to make the most of yours and stay on a regular editorial calendar. Like sticking to a New Year's resolution, it can be hard at first, but it's well worth the effort.