Where did May go?

When we near the end of the month, no matter how long the month has felt, it feels in that moment that it went by so incredibly fast. May was a strange month for me. I didn’t publish anything on my blog for 3 weeks! 3 weeks with no blogging.

I look back and wonder where the time went even though, those three weeks were long and confusing. BUT here we are. Ready to welcome in a new month and I want to talk to you today about what you need to do to close out the month before you head into June.

I am all about being organized and making sure that everything is ready to go. I am a mom of three and it feels like I am constantly on the move. There is always something to do and I am sure that you feel the same as me.

Hopefully, this blog post will help you organize yourself for the month ahead and give you direction to where you want to start heading.

ORGANIZING YOUR BLOG EACH AND EVERY MONTH

Organization is the key to blog success. There are so many different checklists that you can have to ensure that you are completely organized. Here is a daily blogging checklist and a monthly blogging checklist that I created as well as how to budget your time as a blogger.

There are so many steps to blogging that if you don’t budget your time or have a plan, you will be completely overwhelmed with everything that you need to do. Knowing what needs to be done at the beginning, middle and end of the month are going to help you to stay focused so that you can reach your blogging goals.

Before we talk about what you need to do at the end of the month, I want to cover what you need to do at the beginning of every month. I did go into this more in my blog post, Organize Your Blog With This Monthly Checklist. Here I will just go over it briefly.

1| Create a monthly affirmation. If you have my blogging planner (if not, you can purchase it here), there is a space to write a monthly affirmation at the top of the My Blogging Space pages. Think about where you want your focus to go and your mindset.

2| Set monthly blogging goals. It is almost June. What do you want to achieve in the month of June?

3| Break down those goals. Do you know how to get there? Create an action plan.

4| Create a weekly focus for your blogging content. This will help you to come up with blog content ideas. If you need more ideas, I did an awesome Blog Brainstorming Content Challenge in my Facebook group, Becoming the Blogger Within. You can still watch the videos in there.

5| Write out your monthly blogging content. That is what I am doing today for June. I already have my content ideas, I now just need to organize them.

6| Write down your social media and blogging numbers. This I always do on the first of the month.

7| Organize your guest blogging opportunities.

That list of 7 things should be done at the beginning of EVERY month to help keep you on track. Since June is right around the corner, get ready to do all of these things in the next couple of days.

Now let’s talk about what needs to be done at the end of every month to keep your blog moving forward.

BLOGGING CHECKLIST FOR THE END OF EVERY MONTH

We are here. At the end of another month. It just seems to be going faster and faster as every month passes. How is that possible?

As you look back on May, how are you feeling? How did the month go? Did you feel like it was successful or you were once again just pretending you knew what you were doing? Let’s dig into what you need to do at the end of every month to stay focused on your blogging goals and creating your big life vision.

1| Look back and see which blog posts did well and which ones didn’t do well. This is great to know because it is going to help you see what your readers are looking for and what they aren’t looking for when it comes to blog posts. How do you measure that? I think that is personal. You can create different categories. Which blog post had the most comments, which blog post had the most shares, which blog post had the most likes.

2| Review the goals that you had written down. Did you reach them? Did you not reach them? For May, I didn’t reach many of my goals but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t successful. Even though I took 3 weeks off, I still was able to get some podcast interviews in and I was able to get 1 or 2 guest blog posts sent off. This is going to help you create goals for the next month as well. Do you want your previous month’s goals to move forward to the next month or do you want to create brand new goals?

3| Write down any money that you made for that month. If you have my Ultimate Blogging Planner, there is space for you to do this. Write down money that you made from products or services, affiliate fees or anything else that you do to monetize your blog.

4| Write down the links for the guest blog posts that went live. If you are looking to Organize Your Blog online, I created a FREE Trello Board template for you to grab. There is a section on there to write down all of your guest blog post links. I found that throughout the years, I never wrote all of them down so I am struggling to remember where they all are.

5| Review your monthly content plan and any blog post topic or idea you didn’t use, decide what you want to do with it. Whether that means moving it to the next month or putting it back on the content ideas list, make sure that you don’t forget to do something with it. You don’t want the idea to go to waste. I go through and I highlight the ones that I published in my paper planner. On my Trello board, I move them to the published list. You can even put the link in your Trello list so that you can easily refer back to it when you need to.

6| Check your site for broken links. I know that I will need to do this today as sometimes my pages change. Especially since I just rebranded. Get in the habit to do this at the end of every month to stay on top of it.

7| Update graphics if you need to. This is a great idea. Check your FB page which you probably haven’t updated in a while. Check your FB group if you have one. Update photos on your website if you feel you need to. This is a great time to have a look to see which photos have been around for a while and need to be updated.

By having a plan at the beginning and end of the month, you will know what you need to do to stay on top of your blog. Plus this is a great way to break it down so it doesn’t feel like you are doing ALL of the things at once.

If you are ready to get help to simplify, organize and grow your blog, I have 2 coaching spaces open for the month of June. I would love to help you take your blog to the next level. Please fill out the contact form and I will reach out.