Starting January off with a productivity challenge is the best way to start the new year, right?

I am hosting a blogging productivity challenge in my Facebook group and you are more than welcome to join but I wanted to break it down in this blog post so that you can learn how to be more productive and take your blog to the next level in 2023.

Knowing what needs to be done and when is going to make a difference in how productive you can be. Whether it is monthly, weekly, or daily, there are tasks that are going to help you be your most productive self.

We are going to focus on the four steps to being productive and then we are going to break it all down so that you can easily create magic.

THE FIVE-STEP PROCESS TO BEING PRODUCTIVE IN YOUR BLOGGING PROCESS

Where do you begin when it comes to productivity in regard to blogging and your creative content?

Step One: Knowing the tools you need to use

These tools are going to vary from person to person. There will be many factors including…

• • Budget

• • What works for you in your creative genius

There seems to be an endless list of different tools that you can use, however, there are still basic categories that these different tools will fall under.

• • Planner. Whether digital or paper, you are going to want a way to help you plan your content. I prefer paper planners. I am in my creative zone when I can physically map and plan out my content.

• • Social media scheduler. There are so so many out there to choose from. I absolutely love Social Pilot. (If you join my FB group, I show you the dashboard of my account.) Having a scheduler is going to help you free up your time by scheduling things in advance.

• • Time tracker. If you currently do not know how long tasks take you, having a way to track your time is going to be a huge help when you are creating your monthly, weekly, and daily time. I love using Clockify. It is free to use and you can label each task so you know specifically what you were working on and how long it took you.

• • Content organizer. This can also be used to map out your content but they are two different pieces for me. Content organizers include Trello and even Evernote.

Once you know what tools are going to help you, it’s time for step two.

Step Two: Know the tasks that you need to do

Blogging is a compilation of many different moving parts. By knowing what needs to be done, you can easily plan out your days and months. Right now, you are posting all of the things that you need to do. You do not need to organize them right now. You need to first recognize what needs to be done. We will worry about organizing them in a little bit.

Tasks that you need to do for blogging…

• • Create your graphics

• • Create the written content for your graphics

• • Write your blog content

• • Edit your blog content

• • Schedule your blog content

• • Engagement

• • Outreach

• • Plan your blogging and social media content

• • Schedule your social media content

• • Check your analytics

Write down anything else that you do and then we will move on to step three.

Step Three: Know how much time each task is going to take you

You can’t really be productive if you have no idea how long these tasks are going to take you. In order to boost your productivity, you need to have an estimate of how long each of these will take you to complete.

Start using a timer to determine the length needed for each task. I love using Clockify. This is going to make steps four and five much easier.

In the beginning, you may be just guessing and that is alright. It gives you a starting point and you can always add or subtract time when you start to build your schedule out.

Step Four: Break your tasks up into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks

Now that you have a list of all the tasks that you do, you are going to break them up into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks.

How do you know when to do certain tasks?

This is going to depend on how you plan to do certain things.

Are you planning your content out for 30, 60, or 90 days?

How far out are you wanting to create your content?

How many blog posts are you going to publish per 30 days?

By knowing the answer to these questions you are going to be able to better know when the tasks are going to need to be completed.

For example, I plan my blogging content out 30 days at a time. However, I plan my social media content out a week at a time. That means that a monthly task for me will be mapping out my blogging content but a weekly task will be mapping out my social media content.

Does that make sense?

Once you know how often the tasks need to be done on your list, you can move to step five.

Step Five: Create your plan

Now it is time to create your plan. Grab a planner and begin to brainstorm the days that you need to do certain tasks from above.

You will probably want to do this on a monthly calendar as well as a daily calendar. On your monthly calendar, map out the days that you need to do certain things. For example, on the first of every month, I check my analytics. This is a non-negotiable for me and so every first of the month, it gets done.

For the daily and weekly tasks, you can use a daily planner to help you map out your day. How long do you have to work on your things?

I have a full-time job which means that from 8-4 every day, I do not work on my business things. That means that I have to be super clear on when I can work on all of my business things. By creating a plan ahead of time, I know what needs to get done and when.

This is when productivity expands and allows me to build the blog, business, and life that I am working towards.

I can give you all of the steps needed to be productive BUT if you are not going to implement any of these steps then your productivity is going to be nonexistent.

Implementation is the key to making sure that you can boost your productivity.

If you are needing help planning out your content, book a strategy session today. In two hours, you will have at least 30 days of content planned and mapped out. You can even do this as a membership option and save money. Every month, we will have a 1:1 meeting to help you plan out your content so you can create your graphics and content to help your blog and business grow. Reach out today!