Setting Up for a Great Year of Blogging in 2016

Hi there! This is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 66 of the ProBlogger podcast where today I am very excited to be starting a new series of podcasts that’s going to take us through pretty much until the end of the year. It’s something that’s going to hopefully help you to really set yourself up for a great year of blogging in 2016. You can find today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/66.

Just as a little aside today before we get going, I am today podcasting from my son’s bedroom. It’s a bit of a strange one. I’d set aside the whole day today to record a number of podcast episodes, and of course, today was the day that our painter—that is doing the outside of our house—decided to start painting right outside my office. He is scraping and making all kinds of noises, so I’ve moved my whole podcast setup into my son’s bedroom. It’s a bit of a strange run. If I do sound a little different today, that’s why. I suspect it’s probably a little bit better for audio in here because it’s a little bit more muffled because there’s stuff everywhere. He doesn’t pack up.

Anyway, let’s get on with today’s show. Do you have a Someday List of things that you want to do in your blogging? If you do, you’re not alone–I do. It’s not an actual list that I’ve ever written down onto paper or written up into a document on my computer but it’s a list that lives inside my head and it has a whole heap of things on it. Some of them are fanciful, and things that probably will never get around to doing—just grand ideas. We all have them but most of what’s on my list—my Someday List—is mainly made up of things that I know I should do but things that I’ve not gotten around to yet. I guess you could say it’s largely a list of things that I’m procrastinating on.

If we’re honest, I suspect most of us have a Someday List but recently, I was thinking about my Someday List and realized a few things about it. Firstly, I realized that many of the things on my Someday List were things that had real potential to significantly improve my business. Some of them would lead to increases in traffic to my blog. Some will lead to a better perception of my brand. Some will lead to a definite rise in income. There were things that I really should be doing.

Another thing I realized about my Someday List is that most of the things on it were things that probably could be achieved and knocked off with a concerted burst of effort. Some of them might take a morning, some of them might take a whole day or even a few days of work, but most of them could be knocked off in at least a week if I really put my mind to it. They weren’t unachievable things. There were things that could improve my business and things that I could achieve if I really put my mind to it and got my act into gear. The other thing I realized about many of the things on the list is that they would lead to an ongoing benefit to my blog, into my business. There were things I could do today that would pay off over the long haul potentially for months and even years.

I guess, I was pretty confronted by these three things and realized I needed to start working on my Someday List and at least move a few of them onto my Today List. Some of you may have seen me jump on Periscope just after I had this realization a couple of weeks’ ago. I began to share some of the things that were on my list and some of the things that I thought bloggers could do today that would pay off for a long time. It was really interesting to say the response to that Periscope. A lot of people really were energized by it.

I came out with a #todaynotsomeday. It was really interesting to see people using that hashtag to talk about the things they were going to do today and not someday. My listeners of that podcast said you really should do this as a podcast series and so that’s what I’ve decided to do. As I tackle my Someday List, I want to encourage you to tackle yours. This is the perfect time to do it with the end of the year approaching. My hope is that as you hit 2016 because you’ve tackled some of these things, your blog will be in so much better shape for the New Year.

Here’s what we are going to do. I’m going to come up with the next 10 episodes of this podcast, which will fit into this Today Not Someday series. Each of the podcasts is going to focus upon a different activity that you might choose to do. Something that you could potentially do today. By today, I don’t mean just today. It could take you a few days, it might even take you a week, but these are things that you should be doing now that will hopefully pay off for the long term of your blog.

I will give you something to do as well as a few tips on how to do it in each of the episodes. It’s a bit similar to what I did with the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog series, which I kicked this podcast off with but they’re different things and perhaps a little bit meatier things. Some of those 31 Days were things that you could knock off in an hour. Some of these may take you a little bit more but I think they have the potential to really be profitable and great investments for your blog in the long run. Some of the activities that I’m going to mention could possibly be knocked off in a few hours but most of them will probably take a week, maybe a few days at least.

Now, I’m not suggesting you do all of these 10 things before the end of the year. Some of them are going to be more relevant to you than others so there might be a couple of the podcasts that you might want to listen to and go, “Yeah! I’m going to leave that one on the show for today or for another day.” But I want to encourage you to at least choose a couple of them to get working on. Knock off as many of them as you can. I challenge you to knock off as many things from your Someday List by the end of the year as possible.

I want to encourage you to use that hashtag #todaynotsomeday. Use it on Twitter. Use it on Instagram. Just share what you are doing that you’re knocking off your Someday List. They don’t have to be just the things we talked about in the podcast. I’m sure you’ve already got things on your mind that you could do them on. I want you to use that hashtag (1) to keep yourself a little bit accountable, (2) maybe to give yourself a bit of motivation, but (3) also to share what you are doing and hopefully that will inspire the rest of us to do some of that type of stuff as well. Hopefully, we can get a bit of community going around the ProBlogger #todaynotsomeday between now and the end of the year.

Now to get these 10 episodes done between now and the end of the year—in fact, I would like to get them done before Christmas—I’m going to increase the frequency of this podcast from two per week to three. For the next few weeks, you’re going to get podcasts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday–that’s Australian time. If you’re in America, that will be Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday but you can listen to them anytime you like and to get notified of them as usual you can be subscribed to our newsletter. You can sign up for that at problogger.com/podcast/subscribe.

Here’s what I want you to do right now. I want you to write down your Someday List and to workout which of the things on your Someday List you’re going to start working on. You might already have something in mind, and you might be motivated enough to actually get that done today or start working on that today. But if you haven’t got something in mind, tune in for the next 10 episodes and hopefully something in my list will inspire you to do something today, not someday.

Lastly, before I finish this episode, I want to welcome a new sponsor to the ProBlogger podcast for the duration of this 10-part series. It’s a sponsor that I think can help you with this exact challenge. I’d like you to meet my friend, Edgar. Some of you know Edgar already but Edgar is a tool that I’ve been using since January of this year that does exactly what this series is about. It enables you to make the work you do on social media keep paying off for the long term.

You put a little work into Edgar today by adding social media updates and highlighting the great content you’ve got in your blog archives, on Twitter or Facebook, and then Edgar goes to work to keep sharing them to your followers not just once but by cueing those updates up to keep delivering them in the future. It’s one of those #todaynotsomeday things. You can spend some time getting social media in order today and it pays off for the long term. We’ll incidentally talk about social media in one of the challenges coming up. You can sign up for a free month-long trial of edgar@meetedgar.com/problogger.

Tune in for the next episode of the ProBlogger podcast where we will get into the first of 10 challenges that hopefully will inspire you to do something today rather than someday that’s going to improve your blog and set you up for a great 2016. I’ll check with you then but for now, you can go to problogger.com/podcast/66 to get today show notes with some of the links and also to check out Edgar. Thanks for tuning in. I’ll chat with you soon.