Here we are, sharing the first blog progress report of 2021.
If this is the first update, you have read, I started sharing these last summer, to update you on my blog and business plans and to bring you along for the journey.
I know lots of you like reading these and I always appreciate your feedback on them, after all the blog and all other content is only created in response to you and what you’re looking for. So do feel free to let me know your thoughts on all that I’m up to, I do always enjoy hearing from you.
Anyway, onto this month’s activity, following up on December’s blog progress report.
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Blog Progress Report
SEO Course
I got started on an SEO course last month, and I am still making my way through this.
The course creator adds in new videos, workshops and updates every January so this is very well-timed. At the moment, she is sending out a brief challenge per day, with tutorials, to ensure the ground work is all laid properly, so I am staying on top of those daily.
I will continue to work through this one and get into the new updates and content that will start coming out this week.
I can already see that my search engine traffic is hugely up on this time last year and significantly up week on week at the moment, so it is good to see progress being made in this area.
Bring Back Paper Memberships
I love working on the Bring Back Paper Memberships.
The packages have gone out for this month and I have ordered the goodies ready for next month’s parcels.
January’s activity, all about journaling, has been a good one to join in with, with a great tutorial from a guest blogger in there.
February’s writing paper has now been designed and uploaded ready for next month and I recorded the video ready for the next activity last week so that is all set to go. It’s a fun one!
Bring Back Paper Activities
We have had a stationery swap and book readalong this month.
The stationery swap is always a popular activity, so I knew it would keep my busy, but I hadn’t quite anticipated how well it would go this time!
We have had more sign ups for this one than ever before, it’s great to think of all of those parcels being received and making people smile.
Related to this, we are now at over 1,000 members in our Bring Back Paper Facebook group and this only looks sets to increase as I am now receiving several requests to join daily. We hit 1,000 members a couple of days before Christmas and we’re already hurtling towards 1,100. The activity in there is brilliant to see, so many people sharing and chatting, it’s a fun and friendly space and I am so pleased with it.
Product Design
This is the area that I have not made progress in this month. When I made my plans last month, I did not foresee the national lockdown and the kids being back at home and homeschooling again. And as you’d expect, this has thrown a spanner in the works!
Something had to give, and this is the area that I moved down the list.
I prioritised Bring Back Paper activities as I know so many of you enjoy those, creating new blog content and developing my memberships. The Etsy store has continued to tick over and sales have come in this month, but I am keen to get some fresh products in there so I will work on those in February.
On the plus side with this one, I did get a freebie planner created for my newsletter subscribers a couple of weeks ago and I added a free Valentine’s paper download here to the blog last week so I have popped my design hat on a couple of times.
Content
This hasn’t quite gone as well as I had hoped, but again, this month hasn’t really gone as expected!
I have been pleased to have maintained my plan of getting 2 blog posts up every week, on Mondays and Wednesdays. And then after that, my creativity kind of slumps! Working on fronted adverbials, fractions and French can suck the creativity out of you!
I have recorded one video for my members, and then I do have a new video coming to my YouTube channel shortly, so I have got some content created in this area. I wanted more and that’s still the plan, just bear with me and I will get there!
Email Subscribers
The newsletters are still going out weekly, every Friday, and I still love putting these together. I don’t tire of it! I know using Flodesk is part of this reason, it’s just so easy to use and I like designing the emails.
Newsletter subscriptions continue to grow so it’s lovely to be reaching new readers each week. I’m sure this was the main contributory factor to this month’s busier stationery swap, so it is nice to have more people involved in the papery world.
I hope to maintain this rate of growth going into February, I have no particular plans to alter how I am doing this at this point. Of course as I grow my traffic, this should continue to grow, so hopefully that will go to plan.
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Blog goals for this year
I spent some time reflecting on the goals I set and plans I put in place last summer. I have looked into where it’s going well and those areas that I have yet to work on. This has enabled me to redefine some of my targets and focus my mind on the areas to develop.
Plans for next month
As mentioned, I have not managed to add new products to my Etsy store this month, so I want to do that next month. I have lots of ideas, so I will go with whichever ones grab me when I sit down to work on them.
I will continue to work on blog content and sending weekly newsletters.
I want to get at least 2 YouTube videos onto my channel, as well as recording a video for March’s Bring Back Paper Memberships activity.
I am running a new Bring Back Paper activity here on the blog and a new readalong (details on these will be here soon), so I will be promoting these and getting on with them.
The Bring Back Paper Memberships happy mail parcels will need to be put together and sent out and I can then plan the next activity and design fresh writing paper.
I’ll complete the SEO course and then work on going back over old posts and putting into place my learns.
And that’s the lot for this month. It’s been a funny old month. The homeschooling is taking up time and the lockdown is draining my reserves, two things I hadn’t planned for.
I am being realistic with the work that I do and taking care to prioritise. I will keep that going into next month and refer back to these plans and ideas throughout to keep me on track.
What do you think?
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