Monthly Website Checklist

Monthly Website Checklist

Monthly Website Checklist

Your website is done and beautiful and you feel so good to have it up and running.  But are you aware of what you should be doing monthly to maintain it and drive traffic and engagement?

We have a simple website maintenance checklist that you can use to make sure that your website stays up and running and keeps customers coming back for more!  This article is definitely for WordPress users as that’s what we use and build for our clients.  If you want to know more about why we love WordPress be sure to check out our blog post about it.

And make sure you download the checklist to remind you every month what to do.

#1 Update your Plugins and WordPress Software

At least once a month, you should be checking in on the plugins you have on your website.  Things change rapidly and WordPress and other third-party plugins are making updates all the time.  Having the most up to date plugins will keep your website running smoothly.

It is important that the plugins you use are trusted and updated regularly for the security and functionality of your website.  The image below shows where to look to see the information you should be looking at.

# 2 Review your Analytics

You want to make sure your website is doing what it needs to do to support your business.  Monthly, make sure you review your Google Analytics dashboard.

If you have the Monster Insights plugin, then you can access your analytics right from your website dashboard.

What do you want to look for?  Well, take a look at your business goals and see if you analytics align.  Some things to look for:

  • What location are your visitors coming from?  If you have a local business then make sure they are coming from the right area.  If you’re national or international, still take a look and see if the traffic is in line with your paying customers.
  • What pages are they landing on? Are you pushing a particular product or service, do you want to see if your recent blog post is getting traffic?  This area will show you what pages are most popular.
  • Spikes in your traffic. You’re probably marketing in several different places.  So pay attention to spikes in your web traffic.  Does it coincide with a really popular social post or blog post?  Did you have a guest blog on someone else’s site and they are sending traffic your way?
  • Where are the referrals coming from?  Referrals are other websites that are sending traffic to your website.  Knowing what websites are sending traffic your way can help you build more relationships and also get ideas about other audiences you might want to target with advertising.

#3 Create Content Regularly

Now I get this more than anything else, do I really need a blog?  And do they really need to be 600 – 1,000 words?  Do people really care?  And I should post weekly?

YES!!!!!

If you’re thinking you don’t have time to create content on a regular basis, check out our blog post on 4 Simple Steps to Batch Content.

Creating regular content does several things.

For your customers, it gives you a reason to start a conversation and bring them back to your website to learn more about your products and services.  It also builds you as an expert in your field.  Finally, regular content helps you build out and fill your social media postings and gives you the stuff to share to your email list.

For search engines, it shows your website is active and lets them know more about what your website is about.  Now, I want you to produce the content you feel most comfortable with, but blogging is really king when it comes to building your web presence for search engines.

#4 Review Your Calls to Action and Events

It’s always good to review your events page for your website.  Do you have your upcoming events listed?  Have you removed outdated information?  I bet you’re keeping track of them on your social channels, but maybe not on your website.  Make sure this is being reviewed.

Same goes for your call to action.  I love using Divi bar on my website for email sign-ups, event promotion or just to get people to know what I want them to know FIRST!  But that means I have to keep them updated on what’s happening NOW.   Be relevant in your call-to-action and ensure that it’s in line with where you are in your business.

Do you need to be advertising a holiday special?  Is there a new product launching and you have a discount available?  Make sure that people know what action they should be taking and that it’s timely for what’s happening in your business now.

#5 Check for Broken Links

Broken links are when you click on a link and get a 404 message that the page doesn’t exist.  Fixing broken links is important for the customer experience, but also for your search engine rankings.

There are several free tools that you can use to see if you have broken links.  We like Broken Link Checker.  Running this report monthly is a great habit to get into.  It’s not just linked inside your website, but as other websites change their links, you want to make sure your external links are still valid.

Conclusion

And there it is, 4 simple steps to batching content to ensure the quality and consistency you need, without taking too much time!

I can’t wait to hear about how you batch your content and what your broadcast strategy looks like!

Share this article to your favorite social media outlet, and let everyone know what your batching looks like!

Conclusion

By maintaining your website regularly, instead of just ignoring your website, you’ll ensure that it stays clean, bug-free and continues to grow in the eyes of Google.  Make sure you download the free checklist and keep it on your desk, or in your planner, so you can visit it monthly.

4 Simple Steps to Batch Content

4 Simple Steps to Batch Content

4 Simple Steps to Batch Content

Do you ever find yourself trying to come up with an idea for your blog or email campaign?  All the of the sudden you realize that it’s been days or even weeks since you’ve posted on social media!  But the thought of posting weekly or daily feels overwhelming.  So what’s the answer?  Get ready to learn how to batch content.

At a very simple level, batching is creating like content for days, weeks or even months, all at the same time.

This could be writing a months worth of blog posts, creating all the graphics you need for social or writing the captions, or even taking a bunch of photos you know you need.  The idea here is that by focusing on one part of your marketing, you can get a lot done all at once and then simply schedule it out for the days and times you need it to go live.

So how does this work?  Let me break it down for you in 4 simple steps!

Step 1: Define your strategy

Before you can start to batch, you need to determine the content you need to create in the first place.  Start by:

  • determining the content you’ll produce and how often you’ll produce it each month.  Is it a blog post, podcast, or video series?
  • choosing the platforms that you’ll use to promote this content.  Is it Facebook and/or Instagram, YouTube, email?
  • creating your broadcast strategy.  With each piece of content you create – you should have a distribution strategy.  See example to the right!

Your broadcast strategy will outline how you promote your content and will give you the checklist of items you need to create for each piece.  By repurposing the same content on different social media channels and outlets on different days, you are maximizing the chances that your audience will organically see your content.

Make sure your version only includes that outlets that you’ll use!  Remember, you do NOT have to be on ALL social channels.

Creating your Broadcast Strategy

Your broadcast strategy should include all the social channels that you are on, as well as email – if that’s a part of your plan.

It should also be specific for the platform.  While the content your promoting is the same, the format/layout/design should be reflective of the platform you are using.

For example,

  • Facebook has several options for you.
    • Lives are a great way to talk about your content and get organic reach.  Boosting a live in Facebook is also a great thing to do.
    • Create a long-form post to share a bulk of the post as a status update. Make sure you include a great photo.
  • LinkedIn also loves video – and also has its own publishing tool.  So by utilizing both platforms, you have two days worth of content on that platform.
  • Instagram has three different ways you can promote your content:
    • Instagram Feed – post a photo and an excerpt from your post.
    • Instagram Stories – go live to talk about the post, screenshot parts of the post to share, ask people to DM you with their favorite parts of the posts, or with questions.
    • IGTV – this can be a longer form video if you’d like to share about the post.
  • Twitter – great place to post snippets and encourage people to check it out.
  • Pinterest – by publishing here, you are encouraging people to head right back to your website.  This is the best platform for links back to the original blog post.

Step 2: Plan it out on a Calendar

Set the intention you have with your strategy and put each piece of content into your calendar.  Due dates will be so helpful in holding yourself accountable.  

You should also fill in your broadcast strategy into your calendar for when you need to schedule your content promotion.

Use whatever calendar or project management tool you are most comfortable with.  We use a combination of Google Calendar, Trello, and ClickUp.

It’s important to note that we are just making a template at this point.  You do NOT need to be worrying about exact topics that you are writing about just yet.

See my example below using the broadcast strategy from above.

From here, you can create your checklist of what needs to be created with each blog post.  For this example my list for each piece of content would be:

  1.  Write blog post.
  2. Image for blog post (this same image can be used later for the article on LinkedIn)
  3. Write copy for email announcement.
  4. Image for Instagram Story and copy written
  5.  Graphic for Pinterest

By creating all the assets you need at the onset, you will be able to execute smoothly and consistently each time.  If you are producing content weekly, you’ll also have quite a few of your weekly posts already created just in promoting your content.

Step 3: Brain Dump Ideas

The idea here is to make it easy and we’re leading towards batching your content right!  So take some time to just throw out a bunch of ideas you could use for your content.

Think about upcoming events, collaborations you have, and the questions you get over and over again from your customers.  These are all great places to start generating ideas.  If you need some more ideas, here are some places to go:

Once you’ve got the ideas you like, you can add them to your calendar and define what will post when.

Step 4: Batch

Now that you have all the ideas, know where you want to promote and your checklist for what images, graphics and copy you need for each post, it’s time to get into action.

When you sit down to batch, you’ll find that you’re much more efficient!  When you work on one activity at a time, your brain doesn’t have to switch gears so much, and can really power through.

Designate a day to write all the blog posts you need for the month.  Then designate a day where you can create all the graphics and copy for the social posts you need.

In less than two days, you should have all your content done for the month, and a lot of the social posts you’ll need for the month.  Fill in your social media calendar with social holidays, events in your business and a few behind the scenes or sneak peeks, and your entire social media strategy is done!

Conclusion

And there it is, 4 simple steps to batching content to ensure the quality and consistency you need, without taking too much time!

I can’t wait to hear about how you batch your content and what your broadcast strategy looks like!

Share this article to your favorite social media outlet, and let everyone know what your batching looks like!

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