The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 103. How to Get Your Blog Ready for the New Year

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Is your blog ready for the upcoming year? It's Jennifer here and I’m sharing tips with you as we head into 2024 on getting your blog ready! When thinking about your blogging business, you’ll have 3 different areas that you want to think about - blog preparation, financial management, and goal setting. I share the areas you need to focus on and what is important to empower you to feel prepared and in control for the new year!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsWe have a goal to reach 100,000 downloads by December 31 and we need your help! Share an episode you love with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! We would be so grateful!Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode103

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm, and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. This is Jennifer, and I've got a solo episode for you today. It is now getting close to the end of 2023, and we're getting ready to head into 2024. Can you believe it? Some of you may be still full speed ahead into content creation, and some of you may be scaling back and taking a little bit of a break. But either way, what we'd like to do today is give you some helpful tips on what you can be doing over the next few weeks so that when you start off 2024, you feel prepared, confident, and ready when it comes to blogging. And this would apply whether you're still a beginner blogger or whether you're a

more experienced blogger. You will be able to take some or most of these tips and apply them to your blogging business so that, again, you can just feel confident and ready heading into 2024 that you can create a really successful year for yourself. I'm going to break this down into three different parts. There's three things I want to talk about today. One of them is getting your blog specifically ready for next year. Another is the financial part of your business. And then the final thing will be goals and organization for your blog.

So let's start with actually just some of the technical details of what you can do so that your blog is ready for next year. Now, some of these, you may be on top of things and doing them on a regular basis. And that is fantastic. But I think as we get busy and we're doing some of what we feel like are the bigger parts of our business, some of these can easily get neglected. So I just want to do a few quick reminders of things that you should be doing for your blog.

If you haven't been, it's okay. You're going to do them now. And you're going to make sure that your blog is functioning and running properly and efficiently so that you can head into 2024 and not worry about some of these little things. So let's start with logging into the back end of your WordPress. Do a quick plugin audit for yourself. Look at each of the plugins that you have installed on your website and make sure that you know why you have that installed. Are you still using it? Do you still need it? Because sometimes we've installed things that we don't need anymore. And the reason that we don't want plugins on our site that we don't need is that they just can create a security or performance

risk for us when something isn't working right. So now is a great time to go through and make sure we know why we have each plugin on our site and make sure we are still using it. And don't be afraid to get rid of things that you are no longer needing or using. In that same regard, if you have neglected updating any of your plugins throughout the year, make sure you do that now. That is something you should definitely be doing on a regular basis. So let's just get those plugins up to date so that, again, you're not creating any sort of security or vulnerabilities on your site. Another thing that you have to make sure is up to date is your theme and your WordPress. So take a look at what versions of both of those

you have installed. And if those are out of date or needing an update, make sure you go ahead and get that done as well. Now there's a few other things you're going to want to check. So you likely have a backup plugin installed on your site and you can make sure it's up to date. But the next thing to do is make sure it's actually still doing backups for you. I've had times where mine has quit and if you don't see the email or something, you might not realize it. So just do a visual check. Check and see when your last backup was. And if that's not functioning anymore, dive into it and get that fixed. Also make sure your images are still optimizing. You should be using a plugin

that optimizes your images when you upload them. But if you ran out of credits and didn't realize it or something got disconnected, you may not know that your images haven't been optimized. So you can go into your media library and look at your most recent images and make sure they say that they have been optimized. Something else you can do is go into your posts and look for any drafts that you have started

that you now know you're not interested in writing. So if we have ideas, sometimes we'll go and we'll set up a new post in WordPress, and then we never do anything with it. So it sits there as a draft. So there's no reason to have all of those old drafts in there. A, it makes it kind of cluttered when you're looking at your list of all your posts. And B, it just takes up space that doesn't need to be taken up. So go ahead and delete any of those that you know you're not going to ever write. Another thing that we don't always think about is reviewing the list of people that have access to your site. So go into WordPress and look at your users. If you've had anybody help you with anything, or you've hired somebody to do some work on the back end

of your site, you could have added somebody as a user. And what you want to do is just make sure there's nobody there that shouldn't be. Whether somebody somehow got into the back end of your site and signed up or you intentionally added somebody but they don't need access anymore. For the health and security of your site, I recommend going in and removing any users that no longer need to have access. Another thing that we may miss is if we are getting close to using up all the storage we have with our hosting plan. So this is a good time to log in to your hosting company and take a look at your usage, your site usage. See what percentage that you are using up and figure out is there

anything you can remove? Are your images taking up too much space? Can you do better optimization? Or do you need to purchase an upgraded plan that is going to give you more storage space for your website to make sure it's functioning quickly? Next is another thing that we often neglect as bloggers, and that is just making sure everything is actually functioning on our website. So instead of going into the back end, go to the user-facing end of your website

and pretend like you're just a reader coming to your site. Are all your links working okay? Do your menus function properly? Is your contact me form working? Fill it out and see if you get an email. Sign up for your email list on the forms that you have on your site and make sure it's adding you for your email list on the forms that you have on your site and make sure it's adding you to your email service provider. Make sure that any links you have to social media are

working. Make sure your social sharing links like your Pinterest share button, etc. are working on your site for your readers. Make sure there's nothing broken because a lot of times people won't take the time to tell us, hey, this isn't working. They'll just leave your site. So this is something we should be doing on a regular basis. So now is a great time to make sure that nothing has broken along the way on your site. It's also a great time to update your About Me page. I see About Me pages all the time. I am completely guilty of this too, where you talk about your small children and your children are now teenagers. So if we go in once a year and just kind of update some of that information to make it more relevant and current, I think that is a great plan. Take a

moment and review the categories that you currently have on your site. Are you using them? Do they all have enough content? Do some of them have too much content? And decide whether or not you need to remove or add any category pillars for the content on your site. And last but not least, go into your comments and make sure that you've responded to all users that have left a comment. It's easy to get behind on these and it can feel a little bit stressful when you haven't replied to someone. So make sure those are all up to date. If you do all of these things, I think your blog will just feel a little fresher. You'll know that everything is working properly and you'll be able to head into the new year with your site optimized.

be able to head into the new year with your site optimized. Hey, I just wanted to pop in real quick and say thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Ultimate Blog Podcast. We are coming up on our two-year anniversary in January of 2024, which is really, really exciting, but we need your help with something. I have set a huge goal to hit 100,000 downloads by December 31st. And we are inching in on that goal each and every day. But there still needs to be more downloads. And so I'm just going to ask for your help here. Just shamelessly plugging the podcast. If you would take one minute right here right now, as long as you're not driving, and if you would just leave the podcast a rating and review, it would be so instrumental to the success of this podcast. Not only that, we thank you so much for taking the time to do it. We know you're busy. We know

that you'll have the choice of literally thousands of podcasts to choose from. And we are honored that you chose ours. And so thank you so much for just helping us spread the word about the Ultimate Blog Podcast. And thanks for taking time to listen to today's episode. It really does mean so much to us. And we hope that you are learning a lot from us and that we are helping you along your blogging journey. Thanks again for leaving the rating and review. It means the world to us. of you. It means the world to us. Okay, let's dive in to the financials of your business. This is something that is really easy to neglect. It's honestly something that's easy for me to neglect. And I was an accountant in my former life. But it's time to make sure that your financial statements are up to date. Even if you don't have a ton of income coming in on your blog yet,

let's make sure you have all your expenses fully documented. You can use a lot of different tools to do this. And there's free ones out there. I use Wave Accounting. It's free, super simple to use. You can pull in all the information from your credit card or your bank account, and then you're able to categorize all your income and expenses. And that way you can just see what the financial health of your business is. How much did you spend? How much did you make?

These are important things that you need to know for several purposes. One being so that you know how your business is performing and two, you have to get ready for tax season. So that brings me to another piece of your financial health. Make sure that if you hired anybody to do work for you throughout the year that was an independent contractor, that you have collected a W-9 from them so that you can report for tax purposes if necessary. And also like when you make sure your financial statements are all up to date, make a list of anything else, any supporting documentation you're going to need to provide for your accountant in order to do your tax return

starting in the next year. So you might not have all of the information you need right now at the end of the year, but you will be doing yourself a huge favor if you get your financials up to date and you have a list of what you're waiting for. So that might be 1099s that you're waiting on that will be coming in later in January or February. And then that way, when it's time to pass all that off to your accountant or sit down and do your tax return, you have everything you need and it's not a huge stressor. Once you have all that financial information put together, it's a great time to sit down and look at all of your expenses for the year. It's easy to sign up for things, especially things that are just a few dollars a month and kind of forget that we did it. And so it's a great time to go through those and say, do I need all of

these things or can I cancel some of them? Some of them are very small, but those things just tend to add up over time. So taking a moment and getting rid of any excess things that we don't need is really a good idea. On the flip side of that, if your income is starting to rise and you have some more room, can you invest in some things? It's a good time to sit down and take note of, do you have room to invest in some help for your business or some products for your business that will help you grow in the new year? our final section that we're going to talk about for getting our blog ready for the new year. And that's going to be our goals and our organization. And I don't want to dive too much into goal setting. But I think knowing your goals for the next year are going to be really important when you figure out how you want to sit down and organize your year. So one thing I want you to do is I want you to go through your important statistics for the year. So you've created your financial statements, and that is super important. But also look at your blog traffic,

look at your social media traffic, look at all of those important metrics, and find a way to document those. If you are not somehow documenting at least a few of the most important stats, like your monthly blog traffic, Then create a system for yourself where you can do so. If it's a spreadsheet or however simple or complicated you want to make it, just make sure you have a way to track some of the most important stats so that as this next year comes along, you're able to update those and see how things are going, because that is going to be a really important piece of your business in 2024, is to make sure that you are actually performing in the way that you want to. So speaking of that, you want to take a moment

to review what your goals actually are for next year. So think about, you know, what are your financial goals? How much income do you need to make? What are your personal goals? How much time do you want to spend on the business? Think about all those different things. What impact do you want to make? What are those big picture goals? And then also sit down and look at your year and realistically decide,

how much time do I want to spend on this business? How much time am I available to spend on this business? How much time am I available to spend on this business? I think it's really important to be realistic with yourself so that you set attainable goals. You want them to be challenging, but you want them to be attainable. So really knowing what you want your year to look like, big picture wise, will really help you as you go into the new year to know what you're working towards. So you want to make sure those goals in your schedule are truly in alignment with each other. And that way you can step back, you can create a high level content plan for yourself. So knowing what your goals are, you can start to think about

how much content do I need to create? What kinds of content do I want to create? And what platforms do I want to spend my time on? If you're pulling back from work this year, you may say, you know what? I'm not gonna spend more than five hours a week on social media. I'm gonna spend my time on than five hours a week on social media. I'm going to spend my time

on creating blog content and being on Pinterest or spend it on my email marketing strategy. Or maybe you're upping your game this year and you're like, okay, this year I'm adding TikTok or Instagram, and I'm going to have a solid strategy for that. It's really good to know going into the next year, what you think you're going to want to spend your time on. And that way, you can now implement some kind of a tool to help you. So we really recommend implementing some type of project management tool. We have recommended ClickUp if you've heard any of our previous episodes. If you go back and listen to episode number 63, we talk about it quite a bit in terms of setting up systems for success and just really setting up a simple project management

tool that can incorporate your schedule, your availability, and the main things that you want to be working on for the year. You can set up your recurring tasks that you need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, etc. So those things that we talked about earlier with your blog, you could have those things in there on a regular basis so that you're not getting to the end of the year and being like, wow, I really dropped the ball on a lot of things because you're going to stay on track throughout the year.

And that's really our goal in creating this episode is to help you feel more empowered and in control of your blog. Instead of feeling like you're reacting to things throughout the year, we want you ready to go and feeling like you have a plan headed in to 2024. I hope you find these things helpful. And of course, as always, if you have any questions, we'd love for you to shoot us an email, reach out to us on Instagram, and we'd love to chat about any questions that you have. I really hope that you found this helpful and that you will implement some of these things that will help you and that you will implement some of these things that will leave you feeling confident, excited, and ready for 2024. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about

blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes for those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes, go out and make today a great day.