Blogging 101: Monthly Blog Checklist | Don’t Just Create More Content but Maintain Your Blog

If you’re anything like me, you often get caught up with thinking of all the future content you want to make and spend most of your time creating new content. Whilst this is good, some days you do just need to take a step back and run through what I call “Maintenance” tasks to ensure your blog is running smoothly, and sets you up for a better month. Here’s a monthly blog checklist of items you should be working on at least once a month.

Back Up Your Blog

First things first, you should make sure you have a back up of your blog. After hundreds of posts and thousands of hours the worst thing that could happen is losing your site from a technical issue. If you’re using WordPress you can backup from the admin view by going to “export” under tools and this should be similar on other platforms too. You may be thinking this isn’t necessary, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Update Plugins and Themes

Next up you should make sure everything on your site is running optimally by updating your plugins and themes. Whilst many of you will likely have these on auto-update, it’s always a good idea to check through them. In this step also think about the plugins you actually need and get rid of any that are unused. This should help because too many plugins and unoptimised plugins can lead to slow loading speeds, poor perfomance and even site crashes and security breaches.

Clear your Emails

Inbox zero is a freeing feeling, and you can start or end (or even in the middle, depending when you do this step) your month with a clear inbox too. Get rid of spam messages, reply to the messages you need to and file away any important emails in a organisational system that works for you. You won’t believe how much easier to manage your inbox will be once you have the urge to make it look de-cluttered. Whilst this isn’t always focused on your blog, it belongs on the monthly blog checklist to improve your organisation when it comes to finding what you need for a blog post in your inbox, or planning content with sponsored posts.

Check Broken Links and Images

Next up make sure all your links and images are working on your site. Use a tool like brokenlinkcheck to look through your links, and update them where possible. If the link is just gone, find a substitute or remove it. Images are a bit more complicated, but having a scan of particularly your older posts can always help find some. Doing this more often will make the task shorter in the long-run as you may only find a handful each month.

Clear Your Drafts and Bin

I always end up with so many draft posts and it always ends up overwhelming me. So clear out drafts for any posts you probably won’t be needing, and then clear out your bin too. If you have a draft for an idea you love but just haven’t wrote anything yet, you should transfer that into your ideas list which should be separate from your WordPress drafts.

Update About Me page

This might not need to be a monthly thing to actually update it, but making sure you’re checking your about me page this regular is important. I believe I was 22 for a lot longer than a year if my blog had anything to say about it, and so just double checking your info is up to date is why this is part of my monthly blog checklist. Make sure you add in any accomplishments from the month, is it still meeting what your niche is? Does it fit your tone of voice? Just make sure it still fits your blog.

Track Your Stats

For some this is the boring part, for others like me I love tracking stats and seeing where things have improved or not improved. Taking some time to look through your general website stats on Google Analytics, social media stats and even figuring out which post was the most viewed for example can help you steer your content output. If you know a particular blog post has worked well for you, then you can create similar posts and you know there’s an audience there.

Improve X Old Posts

Next up is a big part of the maintaining I mentioned in the headline. You should try to look back on old posts not just to check images but to improve them in general. As time goes on, bloggers will naturally improve their writing style, photography and design and even just change up how they format content. Ensuring your old content is cohesive with this can help build out more content that your newer audience will enjoy too. Add in internal links, add new images, improve the format, and improve the writing.

I’ve using X instead of a specific number as it really depends on you. You may have a vastly different amount of posts to look through, or less time than another blogger to update the posts and so you should set yourself a target and aim for it based on this. Adding this to your monthly blog checklist keeps you on top of it, so you’re not 5 years down the line and have hundreds of posts to change up.

Update your Media Kit

And last but not least, if you’re monetising your blog you should keep an up to date media kit. Updating month by month is important, especially if you’re including stats that are growing and will be important for brands you work with.

Monthly Blog Checklist

• Back up your blog
• Update plugins and themes
• Clear your emails
• Check broken links and images
• Clear drafts and bin
• Upate About Me page (as needed)
• Track stats
• Improve X number of old posts
• Update your media Kit