The Bloggy Friends Show

What’s up my bloggy friends?!? Today I want to talk about systems for blogging. Here’s the thing – we all have to do so many things for our blogs, and the truth is with all the moving parts of blogging it can get overwhelming FAST!

If you’ve ever looked at another blogger and wondered how she manages to get it all done, the answer might or might not surprise you. She’s got good systems.

It’s true. The most productive people all have one thing in common: they don’t reinvent the wheel every day. Instead, they’ve figured out the best, most efficient way to do every task, and they create a system to do just that.

No matter what you’re blogging about and what projects you find yourself tackling, a systemized approach will help you:

• Work faster and produce more
• Produce higher quality results with fewer mistakes
• Easily outsource the tasks you don’t like to do

Enter The Magic of Templates

How many times do you answer email from potential sponsors or pitches from people wanting to collab? What about responding to readers who want to tell you what they loved or hated about your last post? Or mailing your JV partners about an upcoming launch if your blog is at the stage of course or book creation?

All of these tasks and more become effortless when you create fill-in-the-blank templates that can be repurposed for specific cases/people. Templates can be as simple as a “canned response” in your email client or help desk, or you can use software such as Text Expander (for Mac) or Phrase Express (for Windows). You might even create a template document in Dropbox or Google Drive to house all your templates for easier access. And hey, you can even create templates for your blog posts so that it’s easier to write your posts each time you’re ready to publish something new for your readers.

While templates will undoubtedly save you time, the real beauty is that once they’re created, you can easily outsource things like email and eventually sales. Simply instruct your assistant on the proper use of your templates, and you’ll be free to do other, more important things.

Checklists Prevent Mistakes

It might seem counter-intuitive, but when you perform the same tasks over and over again, it’s easy to miss a critical step. For example, you might think your sponsors all paid you this month—you might even remember invoicing for it—only to look back and see the invoice wasn’t actually sent.

But when you implement checklists, it’s suddenly much more difficult to miss an important task like creating all the deliverables for sponsored content or remembering to pin the latest blog post you published.

You can easily create checklists for all your common tasks and projects using nothing more than a text document. If you’re managing a team, checklists in your project management system allow you to see exactly what tasks are complete, and which are still outstanding.

Until next time, may your page views be high, and your bounce rate be low!

More Show Notes From This Episode:

What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show notes for this and every episode of The Bloggy Friends Show. My new home base for all things Bloggy Friends can be found here: https://www.famousashleygrant.com/podcast/

Be sure to follow me on social:Facebook |Instagram |Twitter |LinkedIn

In this episode, I'm chatting with Chris, one of the co-founders of InfluenceKit. But, what is it and how can it help bloggers? Tune in to find out!

And, if you're ready to get started and create your first report for free, head over to https://www.influencekit.com/

Is it time for you to go pro as a blogger my bloggy friend? Perhaps! In this episode, I'm sharing my key indicators to look out for that will tell you when it's time to take the leap from hobby blogging to professional blogging.

Thanks for listening. May your page views be high, and your bounce rate be low!

You have more than a love for writing.

When you go from enjoying the act of writing to living it, breathing it, not being able to imagine a day without it, you’ve found that sexy, passionate kind of love that tells you this is something real. Perhaps you and writing started dating casually; suddenly, everything in your life is giving you reasons to write more. So you bump it up to seeing each other on the regular. Before you know it, you can’t stop. You don’t want to do anything else but write. You’ve totally found the one and you can’t go back.

You catch yourself making a plan.

You used to post on your blog when the urge struck, but for some reason you sat down and created an editorial calendar in Excel. You started thinking about what topics would get your readers attention, and you even pondered what the best headlines were for clickability.

You’re making enough money from your blog to quit your day job.

Seriously? If you’re already making enough to pay the bills, why are you still working that pesky 9-to-5? It’s quite possible that you could just do this full time — and perhaps make even more money!

You have to claim blogging income on your taxes.

When you start making serious money and accountants have to get involved, you’re a pro, dude! Just make sure you don’t blow this chance to work for yourself doing what you love — be smart about bookkeeping.

A post or two has gone viral.

A viral post could be the perfect catalyst to shift into being a pro blogger. You know that saying, strike while the iron is hot? Well, do that!

You ooze expertise.

What happens when you become an expert on something and start posting a bunch about what you know? You’ve found your niche, my bloggy friend. Good for you! If people are picking up all that knowledge you’re laying down, then I think you might be flirting with professional blogger status.

Ideas flutter from your brain like migrating monarchs.

Even though it might not seem like it, the fact that your mind just keeps churning out blog ideas is HUGE!

Self-starting is no problem.

You have to have the self-discipline to create a schedule and then stick to it — or your readers will tire of your inconsistency and head over to some other blog.

You’re good at interacting with your readers and other bloggers.

The more you engage with your community, the more traffic you’ll drive to your blog. Period.

Words like branding, marketing and reach are in your vocabulary.

When you start treating your blog like a business, you’ve definitely gone pro.

More Show Notes From This Episode:

What’s up my bloggy friends! I'm slowly updating the show notes for this and every episode of The Bloggy Friends Show. My new home base for all things Bloggy Friends can be found here: https://www.famousashleygrant.com/podcast/

Be sure to follow me on social:Facebook |Instagram |Twitter |LinkedIn

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