Blog Planning

I always find it interesting to see how others organise themselves. Perhaps it’s because of my love of stationery, or my obsessive need to feel organised, but I love nothing more than to get inspiration from other bloggers. So, I thought you might enjoy hearing about how I plan my blog and vlog posts, and the things I use to keep myself organised.

This is the folder I use to store all my blog planning. It’s a two-ring A4 ring binder, with a cute polka dot pattern on front and back. To be honest I didn’t buy this folder for blogging – I had been using it to keep old college notes and it just happened to be empty when I needed a folder. I may look out for something more related to blogging at some point, but for the time being it does the job I need it to.

At the beginning of the year I decided that I needed to be more organised with regards to my blog. I’d been blogging a couple of months and was jotting down ideas in various notebooks, when I realised that I needed something bigger to record everything in and keep all my blogging things together. I had a browse on Pinterest and found hundreds of different free blog planners to download. It was a bit overwhelming to be honest, but I came across this planner from Home School Creations and immediately knew it was what I’d been looking for. It consists of 66 pages in total, which range from monthly planners to space for analytics and ideas. What I like about this planner is it’s cute, but also simple and functional – everything you could possibly want from a blog planner. I’ll take you through a few of the most important pages that I find useful.

There are twelve pages of monthly views that are completely blank so can be filled in depending on the year you are using it. I find this overview great as I can quickly glance at the page and see what’s going on with my blog over the next month. There is also space below to write down the topics you want to focus on during the month.

After the monthly view comes a page to record any reviews and giveaways that you’re running. To begin with I didn’t make use of this page because I wasn’t working with any brands and didn’t have a giveaway, but over the last month or so I’ve started using it, both for my own giveaway and for brands that I’m working with. It’s great because it means you can keep track of what you need to review and any timing that need to be kept to.

Next come the weekly view pages – enough for four weeks across two pages. This gives you space to write in more detail about what you are posting each day and also whether you have promoted it on various social media platforms. Something I find particularly useful is the ‘To Do’ space under the week, where I make sure I write what needs to be done each week to ensure my blog posts go up. Again, these are blank so can be filled in for the dates that suit you.

There is then a separate page for recording your yearly blog goals. At the top you write your goals, then underneath you can break them down into smaller steps; helping you achieve the goals you’ve set. I must admit I need to make better use of this page and work out what I still need to do to achieve my goals.

After you’ve been through all of the weekly planners, there is another section labelled ‘Additional Planning Helps.’ I really like the fact this is separate, as I know exactly where to look for all the little things I need to record that are related to blogging.

First in the additional materials is a space to record website analytics for each month. This includes numbers for things like unique hits, subscribers, and followers of different social media platforms. This is really helpful as, when a company asks for your stats you know exactly where to look. I also screenshot my Google Analytics every month and save them in a folder to make it easier when a brand asks for my statistics.

This is a page that I need to make better use of – a space for writing down websites and passwords. I haven’t actually written anything here yet because I tend to just remember this sort of thing, but I can imagine it could be quite useful.

Next comes a place to write any Twitter hash tags you follow and what exactly each one means. Again, this is still blank in mine as I only follow a few hash tags and can remember them, but I think if I wanted to follow any more it would be a good place to keep track of them all. If you can recommend any hash tags that I should follow I’d love to hear them!

This next page would be particularly useful if you run a blog as a business, or just want to try making a bit of money out of it. At the moment I don’t use my blog to make money, but if, in the future, I become more successful this will be a really great place to keep track of any income and expenses I incur for blogging.

The final pages of the planner are simply blank lined paper, perfect for recording any ideas that spring to mind for your blog. I’ve managed to fill about two and a half pages so far, which is so helpful when I’m having a bit of writer’s block and need some new ideas!

As well as using this blog planner, I also carry around little notebooks with me, for jotting down any ideas and information when I’m on the move. I’ve got a terrible memory, so this is really important for me to make sure I don’t forget those great ideas I seem to get when I’m in the middle of nowhere!

So, that brings me to the end of my blog planning and the resources I use to make sure my blog runs as smoothly as possible. I hope you’ve found it helpful to hear about how I plan and organise myself.

Do you use blog planners? Or do you organise your blog in a different way? I’d love to hear about how you plan!

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