Periodic Task Checklist for Bloggers + Solopreneurs. Planning your days is essential to your success. As Jim Rohn said, “Either you run the day or the day runs you.”
Periodic Task Checklist for Bloggers + Solopreneurs
I get my kids off to school at about 6:30 a.m. and they’re back home by 3 p.m. I start my workday right away and also reserve an hour to workout and shower. This leaves me roughly 6 hours a day/30 hours a week to focus on my business.
Planning enables me to be a highly productive solopreneur. Since seeing other people’s checklists is super helpful for creating your own, this blog post outlines my daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual tasks.
P.S. When I refer to my VA, I’m talking about my Virtual Assistants. I use and highly recommended the ladies behind WestPar Media House.
Daily Tasks
- Plan the day. (20 minutes) Planning is essential to maintaining and growing your business, especially when you’re a solopreneur. I start every day by sitting down with a coffee and planning out my day in my Passion Planner. I focus on setting and completing 1-3 goals for each day.
- Email. (10 minutes) My goal each day is to have my inbox at zero by responding to things that need immediate attention, deleting anything unnecessary, and filing anything that I need to keep. I use Gmail and have my inbox organized with a ton of labels and folders. I add a star to anything significant or that requires future follow-up.
- Blog. (10 minutes) Approve and respond to blog comments.
- Tech Check. (5 minutes) Review Google Analytics and AdThrive Dashboards to be sure everything is working as it should be.
- Social Media. (15 minutes personal, VA handles the rest.) Respond to comments, moderate Facebook groups. I don’t spend much time on this as I focus mainly on email. I have Facebook messages turned off for my Facebook page, and my Instagram instructs my followers to email me and not use DMs. Centralizing things saves me time and ensures I don’t miss anything important.
- Daily Focus Work. (4-5 hours) This is my dedicated time to focus on the things that move my income needle the most. I strive to batch work. For example, this is how my daily focus work typically looks each week
- Monday: Blog Posts + Email Lists (Newsletters)
- Tuesday: eBook and Lettering Product Creation
- Wednesday: Photography (styled shoots for blog posts and mockups for shop and freebies)
- Thursday: SVG Day. Design and prep cut files and bundles for blog freebies, my shop, and the Silhouette Design Store.
- Friday: Catch-up day or Fun Day! Take an online art class, continuing education class, or take the afternoon off for self-care time (lunch with friends, day date with hubby, or spa time)
Weekly Tasks
These tasks are typically worked into my daily focus work timeframe.
- Content Creation. (about 24 hours per week) This includes planning and working on new e-products, creating and writing blog posts, and doing SEO Research.
- Guest Bloggers. (up to 1 hour) This is the time I spend editing, optimizing (for SEO) and scheduling any guest blog posts on my site.
- Social Media Marketing(Less than 30 minutes) Largely automated via Co-Schedule and Tailwind). Schedule social media and Pinterest campaigns for new blog content and products.
- Tailwind Tribes. (20 minutes, my VA largely handles these). You can read more about how I use Pinterest and Tribes in my post on 6 Ways to Harness the Power of Pinterest.
- Newsletter. (2 hours of Daily Focus Work Time on Mondays) Create and send out the weekly Happy Email Club newsletter for Dawn Nicole Designs subscribers.
- Financials. (10 minutes) Pay any invoices for guest bloggers and VA work. Check business bank accounts for accuracy. I use Bank of America for my business checking and credit card accounts.
- Tech Check. (5 minutes or less) Run WordPress Plugin updates.
- Ongoing Education. (1-5 hours a week) Taking online lettering/art/business classes, attending local networking meetings/events.
Monthly Tasks
One day a month, usually the first of the month, is dedicated to completing these tasks.
- Monthly Report. Track blog stats and compile income report. Post in the mastermind group to review and discuss.
- Planning. Review main goal(s) for the month. Plan out my Editorial Calendar and remind guest bloggers of due dates. Review what products will be created and launched this month.
- Sponsored Work. Create an actionable to-do list for any sponsored work going live this month.
- Financials. Update books. I use Quickbooks Online to manage my bookkeeping. I hate accounting and this makes it super easy on me to keep up with despite my distaste for dealing with credits and debits. Pay any balance on my Business Credit Card in full.
- Networking. What local events can I attend? What relationships/collabs can I foster via email?
- Blog. Update Partner Program ads and affiliate links as needed.
- Newsletter. Create and send out The Monthly Memo newsletter for Dawn Nicole Co subscribers.
- Social Media. Schedule Facebook and Facebook group recurring posts and prompts.
- Pinterest. Pull monthly maintenance pins for VA to schedule out. This is also detailed in my 6 Ways to Harness the Power of Pinterest article.
- Tech Check. Are automated email series, plugins, Zaps (via Zapier), etc. functioning properly?
Quarterly Tasks
- Blog. (1 hour) Update Work With Me Page and Media Kit.
- Financials. (1 hour) Pay quarterly taxes and VAT Moss Taxes.
- Email List. (30 minutes) Purge cold subscribers. Review and update automated email welcome series and sales funnels.
- Planning. (1 Day) Plan next 90 Days. I started treating each quarter as a year when I read The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Get Done in 12 Months. I also recently enrolled in a similar but more in-depth program by Todd Herman called The 90 Day Year. It costs nearly $2k so start with the book. I’m still working my way through the 90 Day Year course, so I’ll keep you updated on whether or not it’s worth the investment.
- Tech Check. (30 minutes) Anything that needs updating? Site speed on track?
Annual Tasks
- Financials. Prepare annual taxes and submit to CPA for filing.
- Legal. Review site policies and disclaimers and update as needed.
- Planning. Annual Business Review and Goal Setting. Review product sales. Order Business Cards and a new Passion Planner.
- Networking. What Blog Conferences will I plan to attend this year?
- Tech Check. Be sure domain, hosting, paid plug-in renewals are set up properly and with current billing info.
- Annual Reader/Customer Survey
- Blog. Review top 10-20 blog posts and update links, graphics, info as necessary. Update legalese dates and the copyright info in footers and site policy pages.
- Email List. Update legalese dates and copyright info.
I hope seeing a breakdown of my Periodic Task Checklist for Bloggers + Solopreneurs helps you create your own task checklist. If you have questions on any of the tasks I’ve listed, leave them in the comments section below. ⬇
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