11 Ways To Prepare Your Blog For the New Year

New year, new blog! Or maybe just slightly updated blog. A lot can happen in the blogging world over the course of a year. And like with most other areas of life, at the end of the last long 12 months, you might find that your blog and everything involved in your blogging life is a bit cluttered. Well let’s look at how to prepare your blog for the New Year.

I always find at the beginning of a year, I’m SUPER organized when it comes to my blog. I typically have months of content planned and scheduled, ideas coming out of my earholes, organization galore when it comes to folders with images and documents.

This level of productivity and organization does fluctuate throughout the year, depending on what I have going on and whether I’m feeling a bit frazzled or having a period of low mental health. But in general, my blogging life is pretty organized.

But as the end of the year rolls around, things always seem to go a bit sideways.

Which is no surprise and if that sounds like you as well, then don’t beat yourself up!

There’s a lot involved in blogging; writing, pitching to brands, taking photographs, social media promotion and more so it’s hardly surprising that when the Winter months roll around and you’re exhausted from prepping for Christmas that some areas can take a bit of a backseat.

But don’t worry – there’s always next year to get back on the organization kick! It’s a good idea to start now and whilst this is by no means an extensive list, here are just some things that will help you prepare your blog for the exciting New Year!

11 Ways To Prepare Your Blog For the New Year:

Brainstorm blog content ideas for the first quarter

Having your blog content planned for the New Year – at least the first quarter – can take a whole lot of pressure off throughout December, as you know you already have what content you’re going to be writing already outlined!

You will want to consider what evergreen content you can write for the first quarter of the year and any seasonal content, such as gift guides, Valentine’s Day and Easter themed blog posts as well. You can also take some inspiration from these posts for other types of content to schedule:

• 25 Blogging Themed Blog Post Ideas To Use
• 45 Blog Post Ideas for Book Bloggers
• 25 Spring Blog Post Ideas

Create or buy a content calendar

Planning your blog content effectively and efficiently is really important when it comes to preparing your blog for the New Year. It’s great to have a list of blog post ideas to use and ideas of what to add to your content calendar but of you’re not planning when or how to publish them then then it’s all going to look a bit of a mess.

Personally, I use a very simple (and not very attractive) Google Spreadsheet for my content calendar. It’s completely free to make and you can highlight in different colours and add different columns depending on what you want to keep track of.

De-clutter your phone or camera of past blog photos

This is one I absolutely HATE doing. But always make the effort to do it, not just for the purpose of freeing up space on my devices for a new year’s worth of content to shoot (although that is a valid reason in itself!) but the clutter of all these photos (most of which you didn’t use!) isn’t necessary to keep.

So take a bit of time to go through your phone and your camera (if you use a separate camera) and delete all the old blog photos that you’ve either not used (if you haven’t used them by now, you never will) or have used and no longer need!

De-clutter your computer of documents

And continuing on the theme of de-cluttering, you’ll want to de-clutter your computer whilst you’re at it! How many images do you save and compile throughout a year of blogging that just sit there on your laptop after you’ve used them? This is a really boring job but it’s so nice to have a really clean and un-cluttered laptop at the start of the year.

Update your media kit

Now is a good time to update your media kit because chances are your stats have improved quite a bit over the course of the last 12 months, so make sure you take the time to update your media kit to reflect that. And if you don’t have a media kit, now is the time to make one for the start of the new year! Here’s how to make a free media kit for your blog.

Compile a list of brands you want to pitch to

If this next year is the one where you want to start working with brands, then it’s a good idea to start thinking of what brands you want to work with now. Take into consideration what content you have lined up and which brands would benefit from those pieces of content.

Check out my Beginners Guide To Pitching To Brands for a comprehensive guide on how to pitch to brands, with real-life examples of my own pitches and a template for you to use in your own pitches – plus much more advice!

Reflect on your last year of blogging

You can learn a lot from the previous 12 months of your blogging career, so make sure you take some time to look back and reflect on how it went, in order to figure out where to go from here. Grab my FREE End of Year Blogging Reflections Workbook for some guidance on how to reflect on your last year of blogging.

Switch up your theme

If you’re thinking about completely revamping your blog, then a New Year is a GREAT time to do that. A clean slate can mean a fresh new theme for your blog and it’s a great time to maybe hone in on your brand messaging, colour palette and more! Check out this post on the best feminine WordPress themes!

Create a batch of pins for Pinterest

Pinterest isn’t my cup of tea but I know when you’re using it well, it can have a great impact on your blog traffic. Now is a great time to do a bit of research into your Pinterest account and what posts are doing well and create a batch of pins for you to use in the first few months of the New Year. Sign up to my mailing list for access to my freebie library, where you can grab 15 free Pinterest templates!

Do keyword research for upcoming blog posts

Now you have some great blog content outlined and ready to write for the New Year, it would 100% benefit you to do some keyword research for those blog posts now and make a note of the keywords you’re going to use. This will save a lot of time when it comes to actually writing the posts later on!

Set some blogging goals for the New Year

And finally, goals! Us bloggers love setting goals, so now is a great time to set some brand-new ones for these next 12 months of blogging! Don’t fall into the trap of these goal misconceptions and make sure your goals reflect your current wants and needs for your blog, whether it’s a career or a hobby.

Again, if you sign up to my mailing list, then you can get access to my freebie library where you can grab my Goal Setting + Action Plan Workbook to help you set more intentional goals for the New Year.

I love this exciting time of year and going into a fresh year with a clean slate. It’s exciting to contemplate the possibilities that you might get in these 12 months ahead and where you’ll be this time NEXT year, setting goals and reflecting on how you want this next year to be, both personally and with your blog!

Do you prepare your blog for the New Year? Which of these things will you be doing?

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