Blogging is an incredible opportunity to unleash your passion, knowledge, and expertise in the world. Growing your blog will help you grow your brand, build your authority, and generate extra (early) retirement income. However, blogging is not as easy as it seems. It requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and a dedicated routine to succeed. You need to have a clear vision, a solid strategy, and a ritual in place. You need to monitor your progress, analyze your results, and improve your performance regularly. There are a lot of things that you need to remember to do. The words of Thomas Edison are to create the habit of doing what must be done.
“The successful person makes a habit of doing
– Thomas Edison
what the failing person doesn’t like to do.”
When you are new to all of this, you might be wondering, “How do I make the most of all this information?” Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. I’ve created a comprehensive checklist of the essential activities that you need to do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to take your blog to the next level.
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These activities are based on the best practices and tips from some of the most popular and successful bloggers that I’ve learned from over the years. By following this checklist, you will have the capability to create fantastic content, grow your audience, increase your traffic, generate more revenue than you thought, and achieve your blogging dreams. I’ve also added links to many of the tools (some Affiliate Links) that I use and recommend. These tools will help you save time, money, and effort. As always, affiliate links do not affect your end price, they simply allow me to receive a commission when you join a service or make a purchase.
Become a Master of Your Routine
Read Anything Related to Your Niche
One of my favorite phrases is, Money follows mastery. This can’t be said enough. To become the master of your niche, you need to study the latest trends within your calling. Reading is the best way to learn new things, get inspired, and stay updated on the latest trends and developments. Take the time to read at least one blog post or article every day from sources outside your own, that are relevant to your topic and audience. I strongly suggest that you identify and read your competitors’ content. Consider this as an opportunity to know what someone else believes is relevant, learn from it, and make your version of this topic even better. This will help you expand your knowledge, discover new ideas, and improve your writing skills.
Reading Before Writing
On your daily schedule read something before writing something to help you get your thoughts flowing. Always learn something new, and stay updated on the latest trends and developments. We all understand that when AI creates your posts, it picks and chooses from information from various sites. So by reading first, we can take a small step to avoid plagiarism, duplication, or outdated information in our content. You can use tools like Feedly, Inoreader, or NewsBlur to curate and save your reading material.
If you are working in several different niches at one time, these services will let you separate your reading into different folders. A quick rundown by today’s trusty assistant BING,
Choose Your Reader
Feedly
Feedly was my reader of choice. I did not want to “Tweet”, Post to FB, or be followed by anyone, especially Google. That was before I began my affiliate career. So I did not care for their enhanced features. It is still a very popular RSS feed reader that lets you organize and read all your favorite blogs in one convenient place. It also comes with additional features beyond being a feed reader. For example, you can share content with your team, create notes, and even enjoy the Power Search feature. Feedly is well-designed and easy to use, and it offers great search options so it’s easy to add all your favorite sites. The premium (paid-for) feature includes AI assistance, Twitter, and various other useful things.
Inoreader
This is the one that I have switched to. Inoreader is a powerful RSS feed reader that offers a well-designed interface, good search and discovery options, and a nice set of features that are beginner-friendly and offer plenty of options for advanced users. You can subscribe to RSS feeds, email newsletters, Facebook pages, podcasts, and more. You can also create rules and filters to automate your workflow and prioritize your feeds. Inoreader also syncs with your YouTube account, so you can watch videos in Inoreader and avoid unwatched videos. Inoreader also requires a paid plan for some of its features, such as the offline mode, IFTTT, and Zapier integrations. I have not made the foray into Zapier yet. However the more I learn I may. The free plan is still serving my purpose.
NewsBlur
I had not heard of this one, but Bing had nice things to say about it. NewsBlur is a top choice for an integrated news reading experience across devices. It seamlessly syncs a personalized selection of websites, blogs, and podcasts between its fully-featured web, iOS, and Android apps. Users can train the adaptive algorithms over time to surface the most engaging content and minimize irrelevant stories based on ratings. NewsBlur also cultivates a social aspect by letting you publicly share articles, comment and discover new sources by following other users’ blue blogs. Further customization comes through integrations with apps like Reeder and services like IFTTT. Paid tiers unlock more advanced capabilities for power users, while the free version covers basic needs. With priorities like distraction-free reading layouts in river view or dark mode, customizable features, ongoing development, and simple synchronization across any system, NewsBlur delivers an organized way to access customized news on the go or from any device. If you subscribe to this service, please let me know if it serves your needs.
Want to catapult your blog traffic in 2023? Check out this ultimate checklist of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that will boost your traffic and income. Download it for free now!
Write 500+ Words of Quality Content
You already know this by heart, but let’s repeat it one more time. Quality content is the King of Blogging. You need to produce high-quality content that provides value to your readers, solves their problems, or answers their questions. Even if you do not post the 500-word insight today, it is there to build upon so that you are posting at least once a week. Your goal is to write consistently and frequently to keep your blog fresh and relevant. When you aim to write at least 500 words of content every day, your blog will establish your presence and authority. You should use a tool like Grammarly to check your grammar, spelling, and readability. Don’t rely on your high school education for grammar. As a responsible blogger with aspirations to become an authority, proper grammar is essential. How many times have you left something unfinished due to misspellings? It reflects poorly on your public profile. I have included a link to both Grammerly and Hemingway.
Always Share Something – Your Content or Relevant Content
Consistently immersing your audience with original content and trusted links strengthens your engagement, traffic, and authority over time. Active participation in discussing these topics also builds your network and increases your reach, cultivating engaged communities for success in the digital landscape.
Your followers appreciate your valuable insights and consistent updates on topics they care about. Passing on these insights strengthens your relationship with loyal fans and creates a vibrant community around your work. Sharing also drives traffic to your website through backlinks and attracts new visitors and customers. Engaging with your audience and promoting your content daily helps to expand your organic reach.
Social Media Schedulers
When you are sharing something daily, can you remember what you sent out 4 days ago? I can’t. Which is why Social Media Scheduling is such big business. Here are 3 tools that many people use.
Agorapulse: Agorapulse is an all-in-one social media tool with automation features. It offers scheduling, social inbox, social listening, reporting, and more. It provides a comprehensive solution for managing and automating social media tasks and is known for its ease of use and clean interface.
Hootsuite: Hootsuite is an all-in-one social media management solution that offers content scheduling, social listening, analytics, and collaboration features. It provides a comprehensive set of features for social media management and supports publishing to multiple social media platforms. Hootsuite is rated highly by social media managers and offers a better inbox and smarter analytics compared to Buffer.
Buffer: Buffer is a social media management tool that offers content scheduling and management features, multi-platform integration, collaboration features, and reporting and analytics features. It is easy to set up and use and provides free online education and paid certifications in social media marketing, and social selling.
CAUTION: DO NOT POST TO THE SAME CHANNEL DAILY!!! BUT DO PROMOTE YOUR SITE DAILY.
Want to catapult your blog traffic in 2023? Check out this ultimate checklist of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that will boost your traffic and income. Download it for free now!
Engage and Influence Your Audience
Making daily engagement a priority on social media is integral to cultivating meaningful connections and a thriving online community. Liking, commenting, and replying to questions or remarks on your posts shows care, and accessibility and establishes your credibility as a helpful resource worthy of attention. Prospective followers feel respected when you acknowledge their unique perspectives or needs. Sharing strategic third-party content from experts further spreads useful insights and introduces cross-promotional possibilities. Directly mentioning thought leaders keeps your profile top-of-mind within wider circles.
Be Sincere – Comment Honestly
Looking out for ways to sincerely promote others, such as liking their updates or following kindred accounts amplifies goodwill across the network. Tools like Mention and SocialBee streamline keeping pace with conversations mentioning your work or requiring a timely response. This saves hunting posts manually and ensures consistent customer service strengthens faith in your brand. Over time, being a participative ally nurtures essential loyalty that equips advocates to spread your message further. Trust built through respectful engagement likewise attracts high-impact opportunities for collaborations or events that further cement your authority within the industry.
Be Consistent
Increase Visibility and Discovery: When you share your blog posts on social media, you open your writing up to a whole new set of eyes. By engaging consistently, people can find and follow you more easily.
Spark Meaningful Discussions: Social media gives you space to chat with readers and get insightful feedback. Ask questions, and join conversations – the more you engage, the more you’ll learn how to make your content even more valuable.
Drive Traffic Back to Your Site: Include URL links in your social shares so readers can learn more by clicking through to your blog. Driving traffic is essential for growing your influence and impact long term.
Cement Your Expert Status: High-quality, regularly shared content shows people that you’re a go-to source on your topic. Stay active, discuss interesting issues, and your community will see you as a leader
Check Your Blog Analytics and Metrics
Google Analytics is in your business. Like it or not. Yes, there are alternatives like MixPanel, Matomo, and Woopra who want to earn your business, but you are not going to beat the 1000lb gorilla in the room. I laid out an excellent explanation at Seriously? Google Analytics? Do I Have To? This is the lifeblood of our business. What is ranking, what is lagging, and what is nonexistent? Google will tell you. This is one time when Google still reigns supreme.
Update Your Blog Backup and Security
You definitely do not want to lose your website in a catastrophe, so back it up and back it up often. You had also better make sure that your site is secure. You do not want your service provider to take you down for harboring hackers, and incessant bots that have infiltrated your site. Backup and security are crucial to protect your blog from data loss, malware attacks, hacking attempts, and other threats.
As a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you can save time and relax at the end of the day knowing that your site is safe and secure. It is protected and backed up every night for you.
These are the tasks that you need to do every week to keep your blog running smoothly and efficiently. Want to catapult your blog traffic in 2023? Check out this ultimate checklist of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that will boost your traffic and income. Download it for free now!
Write Daily – Publish Weekly
You might wonder why I suggested writing 500 words every day earlier, but recommend only publishing a blog post once a week. Isn’t writing and publishing the same thing? Well, not exactly. They are both essential for blogging, but they have different goals and methods.
Writing every day is a way to keep your creative juices flowing, your writing skills sharp, and your content ideas fresh. You don’t have to worry about making everything perfect or ready to publish right away. Just write whatever comes to your mind, and you’ll have a stash of drafts and topics to work on later. This will help you avoid writer’s block and procrastination.
Publishing every day, on the other hand, can be counterproductive. It can overwhelm your readers with too much information, lower your quality standards, or drain your energy and motivation. That’s why I recommend publishing only once a week, or every 3-4 days in the beginning if you prefer. This gives you enough time to edit, optimize, and enhance your posts before you share them with your audience. You can also use tools like Microsoft Designer to make your posts more visually appealing and attractive. Every picture in this post was created by the Microsoft Designer.
So, writing daily and publishing weekly are not contradictory, but complementary. Writing daily is for you to improve your writing and generate content. Publishing weekly is for your readers, to deliver high-quality and engaging content regularly. By following this strategy, you can grow your blog and your audience effectively and sustainably.
The SEO Marathon
Trying to change your SEO every day is like trying to run a marathon at full speed. You’ll get tired quickly and won’t make much progress. Search engines are very smart – they use hundreds of factors to decide how to rank your website. And they’re always changing their rules to give users the best results.
That means SEO results take time. You need to be patient and consistent with your SEO efforts. You won’t see big changes overnight! SEO also depends on your niche, audience, goals, and competitors. You can’t just copy what other websites are doing and expect it to work for you. You need to do your research and analysis to find out what your audience wants, what keywords they use, what content they treasure, and how to optimize your website for their specific needs.
You also need to experiment with different SEO techniques and see what works best for you. You can’t do that if you change your SEO every day. You need to use tools like Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker to check your organic share of voice (SOV), which is the percentage of traffic you get from the keywords you target. You also need to use tools like Google Analytics to track and analyze your website’s traffic, conversions, bounce rate, click-through rate, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).
So, instead of doing SEO optimization every day, we suggest that you do it weekly or even bi-weekly. This way, you can plan, collaborate, test, and measure your SEO more effectively and efficiently. SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, so pace yourself for long-term sustainable wins.
Sharing Daily Versus Promoting Weekly
You might be wondering how often you should share and promote your blog content. The answer is: that it depends. Sharing and promoting are both important for your blog’s success, but they have different goals and methods. Sharing is about engaging your audience and building your community. You do this daily. Promoting is about reaching new audiences and growing your website traffic. You need to balance both, but not at the same frequency. You will find it best to promote to different platforms on different days. This will equate to promoting your blog daily, but weekly to the different platforms. For example, Monday is for Facebook, Tuesday is for Twitter, Wednesday is for Linkedin, Thursday is for Instagram, and Friday is for Pinterest. This keeps the promotion going daily, but the schedule is weekly.
Sharing something relevant and valuable every day is highly encouraged. It can be your content or someone else’s content that you find useful or interesting. By sharing content daily, you can keep your readers updated, informed, and curious about your niche or topic. You can also start or join conversations on social media, forums, or other platforms where your audience hangs out. This way, you can increase your visibility, authority, and network.
Share something daily and promote your blog post weekly. Engage your audience and build community. Reach new audiences and grow traffic. Boost your blog’s success sustainably.
Network with Bloggers in Your Niche
You might already know this, but networking with other bloggers in your niche is a great way to grow your blog and your audience. By networking with other bloggers, you can build relationships, collaborations, and opportunities that can benefit you and your blog.
How can you effectively network with other bloggers? Regular and strategic networking is key. Depending on your niche and audience preferences, we suggest networking every week or at least once every two weeks.
To network with other bloggers, you need to find and connect with influential bloggers who share your interests, goals, and values. You can use tools like BuzzSumo or NinjaOutreach to find and connect with influential bloggers in your niche. These tools can help you discover popular blogs, analyze their content, and reach out to them via email or social media. Learn about your competition and find out what makes those authors tick.
Networking with other bloggers is not hard, but it requires time, effort, and value. You need to be genuine, respectful, and helpful when you network with other bloggers. You need to provide value to them by sharing their content, commenting on their posts, or mentioning them in your content. You also need to ask for opportunities to collaborate or promote your blog in a polite and relevant way.
Learn New Skills or Just Something New
Learning new skills or knowledge related to blogging is essential to improve your blogging abilities, creativity, and productivity. You need to learn new skills or knowledge every week by enrolling in online courses, watching videos, listening to podcasts, reading books, etc. that teach you something new or useful about blogging.
You can also use platforms like YouTube or Podcasts to watch or listen to educational content that teaches you these skills or knowledge. For example, you can watch the video [How To Write Blog Posts Faster (And Better)] on YouTube, which gives you tips and tricks on how to write blog posts faster and better. You can also listen to the podcast [The Blogging Millionaire] on Podcasts, which shares the secrets of how to make money from blogging.
Improving your blogging abilities, creativity, and productivity is achievable by learning new skills or knowledge every week. This can also lead to sustainable growth for your blog and audience. Let them know what you learned.
Monthly Activities
Review your blog goals and progress monthly to improve performance sustainably.
Step 1: Set Your SMART Goals SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Your goals should be clear and specific, not vague or general. Reviewing your blog goals and progress is a monthly activity that can help you improve your blog performance and results. By reviewing your blog goals and progress every month, you can:
- See how far you have come and how much you have achieved with your blog
- Identify your strengths and weaknesses, celebrate your successes, and learn from your failures
- Analyze what works and what doesn’t, and optimize your strategy and tactics accordingly
- Adjust your goals and actions if needed, and plan for the next month
- Stay focused, motivated, and accountable for your blog
You can use tools like Google Data Studio or DataBox to create and visualize your dashboards. These tools can help you collect, analyze, and display your data clearly and interactively.
Step 2: Track Your SMART Goals You need to track your progress and results for each of your SMART goals. You can use tools like Google Data Studio or DataBox to create and visualize your dashboards. These tools can help you collect, analyze, and display your data clearly and interactively.
Step 3: Review Your SMART Goals You need to review your progress and results for each of your SMART goals at the end of the month. You need to compare your current situation with your previous situation and see if you are moving closer to your blog vision and mission. You need to find out what you are good at and what you need to work on and use this information to improve your skills and knowledge. You need to acknowledge your wins and mistakes and use them as motivation and feedback.
Step 4: Optimize Your SMART Goals You need to optimize your strategy and tactics for each of your SMART goals based on your progress and results. You need to figure out what is working and what is not working for your blog and use this data to optimize your strategy and tactics. You need to test different ideas and methods and see what works best for you.
Step 5: Adjust Your SMART Goals (if needed) You need to adjust your SMART goals if they are not realistic, relevant, or time-bound, or if they are not aligned with your blog’s vision and mission. You need to change your goals and actions if they are not helping you grow your blog or achieve your desired results.
Step 6: Plan for Next Month. You need to plan ahead for the next month and set new SMART goals and actions that will help you grow your blog. You need to keep your blog vision and mission in mind and remind yourself why you started blogging in the first place.
You have just learned about the essential activities that you need to do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to make your blog successful. These activities will help you create high-quality content, attract more visitors, engage with your audience, and monetize your blog. But don’t just take my word for it. Try them out for yourself and see the difference they make. To help you get started, I have created a free printable checklist that you can download and use as a guide. This checklist will help you stay organized, focused, and motivated. It will also remind you of the important things that you need to do to grow your blog. To get your free checklist, just enter your name and email address below and click the button. You will receive the checklist in your inbox in minutes. Don’t miss this opportunity to take your blog to the next level. Download your free checklist now and start blogging like a pro!
