Organized Blog Planner

Since I write a blog about organization, I thought it was about time I showed you guys how I organize my blog.  You guys know I love planners, so it was only natural that I have a planner to organize all things blog related.  For a while, I was using a binder style approach, but I recently switched things up and loved where I ended up

I while ago, I had bought a Martha Stewart Home Office discbound planner.  I didn't have a use for it in mind at the time, but I just knew I had to have it!  When my blog binder stopped really working for me, I decided to move all my bloggy organization stuff into this beauty:

My previous binder only had four sections, but after blogging for two years, I knew that wasn't enough anymore.  There were gaps in my planner that didn't leave room to organize certain aspects of the blog.  With more experience under my belt, I was better able to come up with useful sections for my new planner.  The sections I ended up with were month, week, post, to-do, plan, money, design and advertise.

I like to break things down in my planners so that one section never gets to heavy.  I hate having to sort through 50 different pages to find the one I'm looking for.  I like to have a separate section for each aspect of planning I may need.  This leaves each section short, sweet and to the point.

The first section contains nothing but 12 months of month on two pages calendars.  I use these to plan out larger 'events' and anything father in the future.  This way I can easily glance and see how many posts I've planned for a month, or if I have any deadlines coming up.  I keep these monthly calendars very simple, so they don't get clogged up with day to day clutter.

I keep all the day to day stuff saved for my weekly calendars in the next section.  I use week on one page printables to help me stay organized and keep on track with all the nitty gritty things that have to get done.

I use a to-do list planning style on these pages.  When planning out a week, I write out what I want to get accomplished on each day, like finishing a project or editing pictures.  Once I finish a task, I check it off and can move onto the next one.  This section mostly helps keep track of the progress I'm making on each post I'm currently working on.

Once I finish and publish a post, it's time to move onto the next section, appropriately named 'post'.  In this section, I have a separate page for each month.  I record the post title on the date it was published within the chart on each page.  To the right I have several boxes to check to make sure I complete all the steps required after publishing a post, like sharing on various social media sites.

At the bottom of each monthly post page, I also have a few blanks to fill in with analytic data at the end of each month.  These include things like followers of each social media platform, and number of visits to the blog that month.

The next section is for my major to-do list.  I use the now and later to-do list available in my shop here.  Using this page, I can separate out to-dos that I need to get on ASAP, versus those that can wait until I have time for them.

This list is usually reserved for larger scale to-dos, as opposed to my weekly schedule.  This is a place to jot down tasks I need to do, but that I want to work into my schedule at a later time.  If I see a gap of space in my weekly plan, I can turn to this page to see what I can fit in.

After my to-do section is another place for me to jot down lists.  This section, labeled 'plan' is specifically for me to plan out future post ideas.  I have bulleted pages for simply writing out ideas I'd like to possibly write about.  I also have blank paper in this section, so I can outline any posts that may need a little more thought put into them.

My next section is all about finances.  While my blog is not a major source of income currently, I want to be prepared and have a system in place to organize any finances that may come out of or go into the blog in the future.

Each page has room for two years worth of financial recording.  Each year's chart has a place for monthly income and expenses, as well as overall profit (income minus expense).  At the end of each year, I can tally up each column to see how much money I earned, how much I spent, and what my total yearly profit was.  It's a fairly simple system, and I'm sure I'll go more in depth once I start earning more, but for now it's all I need to keep track of.

The last two sections, design and advertise, are currently just full of lined paper.  These sections are mostly so I have a place to write down any ideas or notes I have for each of those categories.

I hope you enjoyed peaking around my new blog planner!  I'm so excited to have a pretty new space to do all my planning in.  For those of you with blogs, how to you keep everything organized?  Did I forget any must-haves that you couldn't live without in your blog planner?  I'm always up for adding more organizational goodness to my planner, let me know any ideas you have in the comments!