ProBlogger: 6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It]

---

6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It] Posted: 27 Apr 2022 10:03 PM PDT The post 6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It] appeared first on ProBlogger. Photo by Luismi Sánchez on Unsplash I’ve read a few comments here on Problogger from bloggers who are feeling low because they’ve noticed a plateau or even a decrease in the traffic coming to their blog. While we all want to see our traffic rise the reality is that every blog has days, weeks and even months where traffic levels out or even decreases. This can be quite distressing for bloggers who have big hopes and dreams for their blogs. Today I’d like to look at some of the reasons a blog’s traffic might decrease and suggest some ways forward for each of them. 1. Seasonal Traffic If you’re still in the first year of your blog you are yet to see what a full calendar year looks like in terms of traffic for your niche. Most niches have natural rises and falls in traffic. For example (see below for a chart of visitor numbers) on my photography tips blog we see spikes in traffic in December and January. December’s traffic boost is generally to do with people researching new cameras to buy and January is generally associated with people working out how to use cameras that they got for Christmas. On the flip side we often see dips in traffic over August to October. What to Do: The first time you see a seasonal rise or fall in traffic it can be quite confusing – however the key with it is to not panic when you see a dip but to identify opportunities to maximize the rises and to minimize the falls. For example it might be that you need to tailor your content for certain times of year and what people are doing in relation to your niche. For me on my photography blog this meant writing content in November-December on how to buy a digital camera (to capitalize on the Christmas buying trend), writing beginner photography tips in January (to capitalize on the trend of people looking for tips on how to use their new cameras) and during low seasons (like July when it’s summer in the US) writing topical tips like Beach Photography Tips or How to use a camera in the Bright Sun. Another Tip – one great free tool for looking at seasonal traffic is to use Google Trends to analyze what people are searching the web for. For example if I type in ‘digital cameras’ I get this chart: There’s lots of interesting stuff in this (the downward trend for starters) but it clearly shows what I’ve observed above – more people are searching the web for that term from November-December each year. This information could confirm a suspicion you have or help you identify a trend to capitalize on in your niche. Further Reading: Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture it for your Blog. 2. Topical Interest Chris Rock and Will Smith | CREDIT: ROBYN BECK/GETTY At other times of year traffic events can be triggered by other current events. For example I know one entertainment blogger who has had a lot of traffic this past few weeks simply because they’d previously had a lot of content that ranked well in Google on Will Smith. Of course in coming months as the news of Will Smith’s bad behaviour at the Oscars subsides it’s likely that they’ll see some declines in traffic. What to Do: The key with topical rises and falls in traffic is to try to capture as much of the rush of traffic as you can so that when the decline comes you’ve got new subscribers/readers to your blog (see further reading below on ‘sticky blogs). It’s also important to be aware of upcoming events in your niche and writing content in anticipation of that. This can be hard in predicting the death of a mega pop star like Jackson but in different niches it’s possible to predict events. For example – before the Athens Olympics I was involved in running a blog where we wrote a post in advance of the Olympics for every single event in the games. The posts included athletes names and any information we could get on the events. We updated the posts with results once they events had been run. As a result we were consistently ranking very highly for ‘Event name Results’ when people were searching for winners of events in Search Engines. Further Reading: How to Create a Sticky Blog 3. Posting Frequency Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash One common reason for lulls in traffic is that a blog has had a lull in new content being published. I saw one blogger writing a post recently about how their blog was failing to gain traction and in the comments of the post a reader pointed out that the blogger had hardly been posting. The reality was that the blogger had produced very little to be read and so people were not visiting. What to Do: Posting more doesn’t guarantee extra traffic but it can be a factor to consider. Chart your last few months of posts and see if there’s any correlation to rises and falls in your traffic – you might identify a trend! Worth noting is that some bloggers report that when they post LESS that they actually get more traction with readers. I know of one blogger who was posting 10-20 times a day and when he dropped things back to 2-3 posts a day he noticed not only increases in comment numbers per post but that his posts were being shared more on social media sites. At 10-20 posts a day posts were coming off the front page of his blog so much that readers hardly had a chance to read and share them. Further Reading: What is the Ideal Post Frequency for a Blog? 4. Shifts in Search Rankings Many blogs see the way that they are ranked by Google (and other search engines) rise and fall over the years.   A Personal Example – Back in 2004 (just before Christmas) I woke up one day to find that my main blog at that time had all but disappeared from Google. I’d not done anything to the blog that wasn’t allowed by Google and hadn’t made any major changes to the site – I just disappeared. My heart sank (actually I felt quite sick) because that blog was the main source of income from my blogging and 75% of my traffic had vanished. The lull in traffic lasted about 6 weeks before it magically reappeared. In that time I got myself another job and diversified my blogging and learned a lot. What to Do: Sometimes search engines change their algorithms and occasionally they seem to lose sites from their rankings for no apparent reason. The key with this type of loss of traffic is to not panic, make sure you’re abiding by Google’s guidelines (not selling text links or doing anything else considered to be black hat) and then  apply for re-inclusion using Google’s webmaster tools.This has happened to me a couple of times over the years and each time the traffic came back – it wasn’t quite as good as when it disappeared but things seemed to right themselves. Further Reading: Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers 5. Poor Quality Posts Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash Of course another factor to consider when looking at the traffic to your blog is whether you’re actually building a valuable site for readers and producing high quality, engaging and useful content. This one can be a little confronting to think through and might take you getting an outsiders critique or feedback (sometimes it’s hard to be objective about something you’ve put so much work into). As I look back on my own blogging I know there have been definite times where traffic has suffered when I’ve struggled for inspiration as a blogger and where this has impacted the quality of what I was able to write. On the flip side there have been times where I’ve been inspired to write series of posts that have connected with readers and helped them in practical ways which has driven a lot of traffic to my sites. What to Do: Ask yourself (and others around you): Are You Being Relevant and Useful to Readers? Is your blog helping your readers by providing them with value, solving their problems, entertaining them or giving them a sense of community? If the answer is no then it is likely to impact the number of people reading it. Further Reading: How to Write Great Blog Content 6. Promotional Activities As I look at some of the rises and falls in traffic to my blogs I know that some of them can be directly tied to my own marketing and promotion of my blogs (or the lack of promotion that I’ve done). Writing great content doesn’t guarantee a blog’s success. You can’t just build it and expect that ‘they will come’. Sometimes you need to get out there and promote yourself. Perhaps the lull in traffic on your own blog is partly to do with taking your foot off the accelerator in your own marketing. What to Do: This means different things for different blogs but could include investing into social media sites like Twitter, promoting your posts to other bloggers, networking with other bloggers, running a competition on your blog, leaving comments on other blogs and forums, guest posting on other sites, doing promotions in main stream media, doing some giveaways….. etc Further Reading: How to Find Readers for Your Blog. Keep Moving Forward – Don’t Give Up There are many other potential factors that could be at play (I invite you to share others below) but the key is to not be paralyzed by the declines and plateaus in traffic that you experience but to spend a little time trying to identify the reasons and then keep on motoring on with your blog. You can see from the first chart above that my photography blog has had quite a few months where traffic has plateaued and dipped – but I’ve kept to the vision that I have for the site and continued to keep working. A decrease in traffic from one month to the next is not pleasant but it’s not the end of your blog. If I’d allowed the dips to determine whether I’d keep blogging or not I’d probably have lasted 2-3 months on that blog and failed to see it grow to the point that it has. If you're serious about building an audience for your blog and want to supercharge your traffic ProBlogger's Find Readers Course will give you the roadmap and guide you through 6 clear steps to find readers. This article was first published on July 15, 2009 and updated April 28, 2022. The post 6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It] appeared first on ProBlogger.

You are subscribed to email updates from ProBlogger. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States

ProBlogger: Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture It for Your Blog

---

Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture It for Your Blog Posted: 20 Apr 2022 11:00 PM PDT The post Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture It for Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger. Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash Don’t Miss Seasonal Opportunities on Your Blog for Spectacular Traffic. Read to the bottom of this post for an example of how I used the same content three times in 18 months to generate 50,000 page views on one post. One of the skills that I encourage bloggers to develop is to think ahead about what events might be coming up that will impact the niche that you’re writing about. The web is a fairly rhythmic place and every year there are waves of activity across search engines and other websites that are quite predictable. For example: In November and December every year millions of people go online searching for gifts in the lead up to Christmas. At Superbowl time people go online looking for the ads that were featured during the game. Every Thanksgiving the numbers of searches for Turkey recipes go through the roof During the Olympic games (every 2 years for Winter and Summer games) people go online searching for results and medal tallies. At the end of American Idol’s season (and other localized versions) people head online searching for results, inside gossip and related information Everytime a blockbuster movie is released people hit the seach engines looking for reviews The list could go on… and on. In fact, if you’re reading this article in April, here’s a great article on April content calendar ideas. The beauty of many of these seasonal events is that they are perennial – relevant year after year. One tool for looking at what people are searching for at any given point in time is Google’s Hot Trends page which shows the latest popular searches. However as bloggers wanting to capitalize on these mini frenzies of online activity around different topics a tool like Google Trends is limited in how useful it is. The problem with it is that it gives information on what people are searching for today and not what they’ll be searching for in a few weeks or months time. The seasonal example I want to talk about today is “4th of July”. One of the keywords people are searching for online that day is ‘fireworks’. It comes up 17 times in the top 100 list as I’m writing this (update – a few hours later fireworks appear in 38 of the top 100 terms). The term spikes on July 4 and at the end of the year (just before New Years) every year. Here’s Google’s Trends graph on the term ‘fireworks’ (click to enlarge in a new window). You can see that this year’s spike is about to happen (or has just started). The problem is – that if you write a post related to fireworks today you’re too late to capitalize on the majority of traffic that is out there for the term. You’ve not allowed long enough for the search engines to find you or for other blogs and sites to link up to you. At the very least you will have wanted to write your post a couple of weeks (if not months) ago. This same principle applies not only to fireworks but any seasonal event that happens in your niche. This is why last year I started writing my How to Optimize Your blog for Christmas Series in November. It’s why the best blogs on the iPhone (did I say I wouldn’t mention it?) started way back when it was announced (or even before) and why I know bloggers starting blogs on events that won’t even happen for over 12 months. Before I give you a couple of tips on how to capture some of this seasonal traffic to your blog lets look at five of the more obvious seasonal trends/holidays/events to illustrate just how rhythmic a lot of it can be. The following is Google’s Trend graphs for Christmas, Easter, Mothers Day, Valentines and 4th July. As you can see, it’s very predictable stuff. Of course it is never really too late to blog on a topic. With tools like Google’s Blog Search, Digg and Technorati a story can still hit it big very quickly – but to be found particularly by search engines you need to be planning well ahead. Take Home Tip – Start a Blog Diary Get a Wall-planner or diary (or use an online calendar) and start brainstorming events that happen in your niche. These might be annual events, one off event or even semi-regular ones. Add these events to your diary but also make a note of them two months and one month before they arrive – telling yourself to start writing on those topics to get ready. You’ll find that with keeping a record of the events in your niche for a full year that you’ll start to notice annual trends that will help you plan for following years. One last tip – Reposting Seasonal Content to Build Momentum Here’s another quick tip if you have seasonal events in your niche – you don’t have to write new content every time the event happens. I’ve previously written about giving Underperforming Posts a Second Chance with Updates. The theory was that sometimes putting an old post back in the spotlight with some good updates can give an old unsuccessful post a second wind. What I’ve found is that this technique is not only good for under performing posts – but also previously successful seasonal ones. The most topical example that I can give you where I experimented with this technique, is my post How to Photograph Fireworks Displays. This post is 15 years old – yet it has appeared on the front page of my blog several times (usually leading up to 4th July and just before New Years Eve) because it is an ‘evergreen’ post that is relevant every time fireworks are on display and people want to photograph them. On each occasion I’ve updated the post with new images and information to freshen it up so that regular readers are not just seeing the same old information. The reason for updating to post is to give it another chance to be read. The information is relevant and useful and as a result the post continues to grow momentum. Every time I repost it, it gets a small SEO boost having been featured on the front page of the blog, it gets fresh incoming links from other blogs and sites, it gets bookmarked by readers on social bookmarking sites and it enjoys larger and larger traffic. This year it’s even reached the number one position for its keywords on Google as a result of the strategy. Readers seem to love it also. I’ve had so many emails today from readers saying that they’ve read the post previously but appreciate me reposting it because they were going to have to go searching for it from last time. New readers have not seen it before and appreciate finding it for the first time. In terms of traffic – this post has grown in it’s readership every time I’ve posted it. The original article, posted leading up to the 4th of July, generated around 5,000 page views. The second time it was re-published, just before New Years, attracted closer to 15,000 page views. And the third time around, again before the 4th of July the following year, views were upwards of 30,000. The alternative to this updating strategy would have been to write multiple posts on essentially the same thing for each time that I republished it (or to link to it from the front page). While this might have driven a few readers back to the post it wouldn’t have had the impact that updating the original post has had. What type of seasons and rhythms happen in your blog’s niche? Do you plan for them? How do you attempt to capture the waves of traffic as they come rolling in? If you're serious about building an audience for your blog and want to supercharge your traffic ProBlogger's Find Readers Course will give you the roadmap and guide you through 6 clear steps to find readers. This article was first Published on July 4, 2007 and updated April 21, 2022 The post Seasonal Traffic and How to Capture It for Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

You are subscribed to email updates from ProBlogger. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States

ProBlogger: Blog Metrics: Why You Need to Stop Focusing on ‘Vanity’ Stats

---

Blog Metrics: Why You Need to Stop Focusing on ‘Vanity’ Stats Posted: 13 Apr 2022 11:28 PM PDT The post Blog Metrics: Why You Need to Stop Focusing on ‘Vanity’ Stats appeared first on ProBlogger. Photo by olieman.eth on Unsplash While having lots of page views, sessions, fans, followers and even email subscribers may feel good, they don't actually tell you anything about the health of your blog. At a previous ProBlogger Mastermind, I shared a slide that seemed to hit a nerve with the group. I included this in my Mastermind session after having several conversations with bloggers that all started something like this: “Traffic is growing, and so is my social following and email list. But I’m not making any money". For many, the monetization emptiness came from focusing on certain results and metrics (such as those I just mentioned) that sounded great, but had very little bearing on actual monetary return. Vanity over actionable metrics isn’t a new thing. The idea of measuring the metrics that matter has been around for a while. People like Neil Patel have made their names and built successful companies through challenging us to think more deeply about the 'Why?' behind our numbers. Today, action-driven data is available to everyone doing business online – including bloggers – so there’s no excuse for not using it. But rather than leaping into the depth of data, I recommend you begin with small steps. Define your North Star Metric, and what might influence it Time is the enemy of most bloggers just starting out, and so focus is critical. A North Star Metric gives you one thing to care about above everything else. "To uncover your North Star Metric you must understand the value your most loyal customers get from using your product. Then you should try to quantify this value in a single metric." – Sean Ellis Your North Star Metric should be a metric that will directly improve the health and prosperity of your blog. Start asking better questions It's time to start ignoring what Google Analytics thinks you want to know. Instead, think about the real value you're trying to give a reader (your North Star), and what observable actions they might take that will show how good a job you're doing getting them there. For example, if your blog teaches others how to run a successful blog, what short- and long-term behaviors would you expect to see from someone you're actually teaching? They could be basic things such as, how does someone…   Find you (first time visit)   Come back again (repeat visit)   Engage (comment on a post, or follow you on a social platform)   Give you their email address (subscribe)   Buy or subscribe to a product (purchase)   Buy or subscribe to a second product (purchase again) Thanks to free services such as Google Analytics, we take comfort in very basic but often misleading blog metrics. After all, who has the time (or the energy) to dive into the numbers? But if think about the questions you need to answer before you start worrying about how to measure them, you'll quickly change your mindset. And once you've got this down, you'll be ready to get your numerical nerd on. Understanding cohorts and segmentation Statistics and mathematics are probably the last things you want me to talk about. But segmentation and cohorts are important terms that you need to understand. So what are they? Segmentation and cohorts are techniques used to collate data into meaningful groups. They let you compare different groups in various ways, as well as over different time periods, and ask questions like, "Are my current first-time visitors behaving differently from the first-time visitors I had a year ago?" While Google Analytics lets you do some basic cohorts, you’ll quickly find the level of detail Google gives you for free quite limiting. But when you look at your data through cohorts and segmentation, you can identify specific strengths and opportunities to improve. What is a cohort? In statistics, marketing and demography, a cohort is a group of subjects who share a defining characteristic. For example, you might notice over time that people who find your blog through search are less inclined to arrive at your North Star than someone coming from a different source. By using research, data, and experimentation you can get a better understanding of the situation, and create a plan to improve the experience of these first-time SEO arrivals. For example, you may need to: create a stronger CTA in your post to help casual SEO arrivals learn more about you find better ways to get readers to check out a second post, or give you their email address spend time building more traffic from those lower volume but higher value-per-visitor channels. Whatever the answer is, you'll find it in your experiments and metrics. And from there you can look at your most recent cohorts to see what impact your new approach is having. Congratulations. You're now taking meaningful steps to grow the prosperity of your blog. The theories are nice, but what about in practice? At 99designs, we began reflecting on our blog's performance by asking deeper questions about the impact we were having on our readers. Some of the results were hard to read. Do people read our content? We knew how many people started reading our content. But we had no idea if they were consuming all those wonderful words we’d put so much effort in creating. We could make some guesstimates based on ‘time on site,’ but that was too general. So we produced two reports – time engaged with the page, and how far people were scrolling down the page. The results were hard to read at first. "What do you mean, 'Only 5% get to the end'?" But with visibility, we’ve managed to improve this percentage significantly in the past year. What do people do after they finish reading (or abandon) a post? We’d tried cobbling together an answer using sign-up rates and other things such as page views per user. But those were meaningless aggregate results. So we created a report on what people do after reading (or not reading) a post. What's driving growth – our old (evergreen) content or our new content? We assumed our new content was fuelling growth. But it was actually a combination of the two. But wait, there’s more These graphs are interesting. But when you start to segment things become more insightful. We can look at this graph by channel, post category, author and more to find patterns in what's being read and what's providing value to our readers. These insights are now intrinsic to our growth plans for our blog. Upping the ante for key transitional pages Our blog is what we call a top-of-funnel page type – one that's consumed early in a relationship we hope to build with our readers. As people progress through our funnel, we've identified key transitional pages that signal a significant potential shift in the relationship from reader to customer. One example is our logo design page. On this page, a reader or visitor is deciding whether to pursue getting a logo with us — an obvious turning point. While we have great tracking measures on our blog, we track ten times as many events on our logo design page to learn even more about our transitional pages. And we use this extensive data to continually improve the page with changes both large and small. The dangers of misinterpretation I’ve been fortunate to work closely with some brilliant people who see numbers in a way I sometimes struggle to comprehend. And there have been some less than inspiring moments where I’ve been shown how quite clearly how 'wrong' I'm interpreting the data — publicly and privately. As you get access to more data and learn how to use it, you'll undoubtedly face the same  challenge. While you may be tempted to scurry back to a comforting world of vanity metrics and intuition, try looking your data critics in the eye and asking them to help you do better. Chances are your first blog post wasn't very good. Why would your first analytical endeavor be any different? That said, here's how to avoid some of the mistakes I've made: 1. Become a student of data interpretation There are a lot of resources, books and courses that can be really helpful. I’m currently doing a Data Science course on the very subject to help me lift my analytical game. General Assembly, Skillshare, Udemy, Lynda and Udacity all have data- and analytics-related courses you can subscribe to. 2. Don’t go it alone Collaborating with someone on your analysis — even if it’s just talking through your data and what you’ve learned — helps you find not only mistakes in your logic, but also any subconscious biases that may have crept into your analysis. 3. Find your devil’s advocate This one is hard, but super important. Find and work with someone who will tell you you're wrong more often than right. The secret to making the most of this critical view on your decisions is learning when to listen to them and when to ignore them. Now, how do you set all this up? The point of this post is to challenge you to step outside ] your data comfort zone. While tools such as Google Analytics can take you some of the way, you might need to look for data in other places. At 99designs we have a pretty complicated data configuration. You won’t need anything near this level, — but here are some basic tools that can help take your analytics beyond Google. Segment We use Segment as the central point for collecting events and distributing them to the various tools that use them. Indicative We then use Indicative as our reporting tool for all that wonderful event data. But it's not cheap, and alternatives such as Mixpanel offer better entry-level plans. Setting up your new analytics might feel impossible at first. But try not to get too bogged down. A specialist can help set it all up for you. Instead, focus on figuring out the questions that are important to your business. Start with your North Star Metric and work downward. Once you can describe the questions you are trying to answer with confidence, it’s easy and affordable to get help setting up the analytics you need. Love over metrics? Nope, love and metrics. During the Mastermind event, I was fortunate to spend some time chatting with one of the most authentic community builders online, Jadah Sellner. Her session was titled "Love Over Metrics," which proposed a slightly different direction than the one I was heading at the event. But as Jadah and I chatted I realised that although we started at different places, we had common middle ground. We both believe that while meaningfulness is in the value you give to your audience, it's also important to align how you measure yourself to these goals. Results driven from loving your readers can live right next to a love of data. This post doesn't have all the answers. But I hope it helps you understand that there's a life beyond those headline stats we’ve clung to for so long. Mastering these measures may not give you schoolyard bragging rights with big headline numbers. But it will give you a better chance of building that profitable blog you always dreamed you could.   This article was first published on 15 September 2017 and updated 14 April 2022. The post Blog Metrics: Why You Need to Stop Focusing on ‘Vanity’ Stats appeared first on ProBlogger.

You are subscribed to email updates from ProBlogger. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States

ProBlogger: 5 Ways to Make Your Blogging Life Easier

---

5 Ways to Make Your Blogging Life Easier Posted: 07 Apr 2022 04:18 AM PDT The post 5 Ways to Make Your Blogging Life Easier appeared first on ProBlogger. Photo by Chris Thompson on Unsplash Blogging. It goes a little something like this: Think of idea Write a post Take/source/edit a photo for the post Format the post Schedule or publish the post Push the post to social media Respond to comments But that is just the beginning, right? That doesn’t include planning, goal-setting, editorial calendars, blog design, design tweaks, multimedia, multiple updates on social media, a social media workflow plan, guest blogging, networking, sponsorships, affiliate sales, creating products, launching products, email marketing, creating newsletters, being part of the blogging community, going to events, keeping up with trends… There’s so much to do. In the five years I’ve been blogging I feel like I’ve made all the mistakes. One of my biggest ones was wasting time. When you’re blogging on top of work and life and other responsibilities, that time you have to spare is is finite. After crashing and burning with my poor habits, I learned very quickly what would work to cut down wasted time, and I then created strategies to be more efficient. Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash 5 Ways to Make your Blogging Life Easier Batching Batching is when you complete the same or similar tasks in one period of time. Instead of writing a post with a headline, image, post body, etc, you might like to write all posts for the week in one go, edit and upload all images in one go, etc. It means you’re in the right headspace for each task, rather than switching between what you need to do, then the next task, then back again. Batching is also super-useful for returning emails, scheduling social media, general writing, researching, image sourcing, and the menial task you hate but must be done (accounts, anyone?!). I’ve even gone so far as to choose which days I batch process. Mondays was content creation, Tuesdays was email and images… I’ve had to make some adjustments this year, but picking days when I was most useful was actually the most successful strategy I tried. Scheduling This applies to both time and content. I schedule my time when I have it, and I schedule content. For example, if I have a few hours spare, I’ll spend a couple of minutes before I get started prioritising my tasks and adding them to blocks of time. I usually try and “eat the frog first”, i.e. doing the thing that’s the hardest to do, so the rest is easier (and also can be added to tomorrow’s to-do list if I get interrupted, as they’re not as time-sensitive as the frog). My frog is usually content creation. I need to do that when I’m motivated and have space to think. Image processing I can do later, and with less brain bandwidth. So I schedule creation first, then other tasks. Darren’s low-tech editorial schedule Scheduling content is super useful for when you don’t have time to blog every day, or you’re taking a break. Scheduling content on your blog and scheduling your social media means less hands-on work, and more time to work on other things. Like binge-watching Netflix and eating popcorn. If you’re scheduling your social media, do make sure you pop onto the platforms at certain times to respond to people. It’s best if you can post and respond in real time, but if that’s not always possible (I know for me it certainly isn’t), then schedule the updates, and respond when you have time. Or when you’ve scheduled time in your day to respond! Figure out when you’re most efficient I’ll never forget one morning I woke up before the birds and wondered if I should just study for my upcoming test seeing as though I wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon. I was soon surprised to realise how clear my thinking was and how well I understood what I was reading. My attention was focused and things made perfect sense. I felt like I had mastered some pretty difficult concepts (it was a third-year psychology exam, after all) and was well on my way to acing a test – all before breakfast! I knew right away I was a morning person. While working in the early hours hasn’t been achievable for me in the last few years (two kids who don’t sleep, heaven help me), I do know I’m more efficient for brain tasks in the morning, and can satisfactorily respond to emails and requests, upload recipes, and do admin later in the afternoon. I’m pretty fried by night and can barely string a sentence together, so I don’t even bother. A friend of mine is the opposite – she doesn’t really get her writing groove on until late afternoon, and will write up until bedtime. It’s all about knowing when you’re the most efficient so you aren’t trying to write a 2000 word post on Facebook algorithm changes when you’re dog tired and fuzzy. When you’re efficient, you don’t waste time –  and as a bonus, you complete tasks faster. Automate Bless you, internet automation tools, where would we be without you? They are fiercely discussed, loyalties are strong – it’s hard not to love something that makes your life so much easier. There’s been plenty of discussion here on ProBlogger about what kinds of tools everyone loves to use for automation – everything from social media scheduling apps to creating reports in Google Analytics so they’re sent to you regularly and it saves you going looking for them. You can automate plenty of things for your blog: If This Then That (IFTTT) is huge for automated behaviours. It can do anything from posting your Instagram pictures to your twitter account (thereby bypassing that pesky issue of Instagram images not showing up in newsfeeds), you can be emailed when someone mentions you online, you can “like” a track on Soundcloud and have it directly downloaded to your Dropbox – plenty of things you can set up to automatically happen after a trigger of your choosing. I had to giggle when I saw this automation for parents: Email canned responses are a wonderful thing if you find yourself answering people with the same information over and over. Gmail in particular is useful for this – it will send a pre-written response as a reply to inquiring emails. You can automate the responses to be sent based on the criteria you choose – often sender, subject, keyword, etc. Very handy for freeing up your time. Automation doesn’t get much better than apps that manage your social media. No longer do you have to wait for posts to go live before you manually update them to your Facebook! Or set reminders for when you wanted to tweet out your link based on when your audience is online. There are plenty of places to go where you schedule a bunch of posts to go out at a time of your choosing. Darren uses Sprout Social (see his social media scheduling workflow here), I use a combination of CoSchedule and Buffer, and there are plenty that will help you out when it comes to Instagram and Pinterest, too – namely Sked Social, Hootsuite, Agorapulse and Tailwind. Photo by Gaining Visuals on Unsplash Planning I cannot recommend this enough! I haven’t always done it, but it made a huge difference to how I spent my time, and how efficient I was when I finally had the time. After I nailed the planning of time, I moved onto the planning of content. It was important for me to take a step back and see the bigger picture of what I needed to do and what I wanted to achieve when it came to blogging. It was no longer enough to just show up every day and do what needed to be done, I had to plan first so I could be in control, rather than always running to catch up. I hate running. The first thing I did was figure out when I was most efficient now that I couldn’t do the early mornings any more. Then I figured out which parts of the day would be used for which tasks. Then I made the holiest of holies: the editorial calendar. Even if I didn’t know exactly what day I’d be blogging that pot pie recipe, knowing I had a post to write about pot pies (or creating achievable blogging goals) meant I wasn’t faffing around wondering what to do or what to write. When I finish one post, I look at my list and move onto the next. I move the calendar around when I write spontaneous posts, but having an overarching framework with which to reference has been the breakthrough for me. You can listen to the webinar Darren and I did with Darlene of Digital Photography School where we discuss how we approach editorial calendars on each site, and how to plan one for yourself. I use good old pen and paper plus CoSchedule for Veggie Mama, and I use a Google Doc and Google Calendar for content here on ProBlogger. Bonus tip: Outsource Sometimes it’s just necessary. Here’s 44 Things Chris Ducker Thinks Bloggers Should Delegate to Virtual Staff. And there you have it! Five (well, six) ways you can streamline your workflow to get more done. So what about you? Have you found some shortcuts that help you blog effectively? I’d love to hear them! Stacey was the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.com: a writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd balancing it all with being a stay-at-home mum. She writes about all this and more at Veggie Mama. Chat with her on Twitter @veggie_mama or be entertained on Facebook.   This article was originally Published 16th February 2015 and updated 7th April 2022. The post 5 Ways to Make Your Blogging Life Easier appeared first on ProBlogger.

You are subscribed to email updates from ProBlogger. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States