I mentioned in my Monthly Goals for May post that I had recently set up a Bullet Journal for my blog. I found that the little diary I had been using didn’t provide me with enough space to plan out my blog schedule and add many notes. I had been using a bullet journal in previous years for my general life which worked really well for handling different elements of my day to day life and thought that a bullet journal may work better for me and my blog than my current planner.
I happened to be perusing the aisles of my local Flying Tiger one week day while waiting for my Mum and found a cute little dotted journal that would be perfect for the task of a blog planner.
The journal itself is A5 with a rubbery feel hard coated cover which has dotted punch out detail and an image of the star constellation Ursa Major (which is also known as The Big Dipper, the Plough or the Saucepan!) in a silver print. I chose the pink colour although there were several other colours to choose from! I can’t remember how much I paid for the journal but I think it was around the £6-£8 mark which I think is a fairly reasonable price to pay!
The inside front page is blank and the rest of the note pages are dot grid in a grey tone print. The pages are not numbered though I don’t find that to be a problem as I don’t really use an index system anyway though it would be easy enough to hand number them if you so wished.
The note pages themselves are of a thicker gsm paper than a Lechtturm and I would say that they are very similar to those of the Scribbles That Matter pages. The paper is smooth and lovely to write on with no catching of pen nibs or pencils! Pencil lines rub out really easily with no damage or marking to the pages and ink seems to dry fairly easily and quickly. There is hardly any show through from one page to the next, the only shadowing I had was from using highlighters and going over the highlighted parts a few times, but a quick swipe over with a highlighter does not show through at all.
The first page in any bullet journal that I set up is dedicated to a key which can be symbols or colours for different things. I kept my key simple with a colour code for each of my blog categories (which are the same as the colour code I use on my blogging spreadsheet). I use this key in my journal so I can see at a glance what posts fall on what days and have a variety of different post categories through the month.
The following double page is used for my yearly overview which is basically the year from May to December laid out in grid format where I colour code each posting day with the colour of that posts category. This layout means I can plan ahead any posts that I want and spread out the topics so that they are not all similar through the month. I added a strip of washi tape to the edge so that the page is easy to find (and to hide the unused grid dots…)
Following this page I then have my Monthly Overview page which I use to plan out the posts I want to write. I add the working title to the day I want to publish the post on. I use this page as a working planner and also to tick off posts that I have written and scheduled.
Next up is my Monthly Title Page. I like to put my title page on the right hand page as I find it easier to locate that month when flicking through the journal. I have kept the page pretty simple, with a square containing the initial of the month, so that I can write any ideas of things I’d like to add to my blog in the month that I have not yet scheduled into my monthly pages and am still thinking about. This helps me to keep the ideas in my mind and gives me something to work on in the month and develop.
I added another monthly overview page after the monthly title, this isn’t really necessary though I have been using it as a forward planner for items that I want to make a regular feature in my blog. I’m not sure if this will be something that I will continue with as, at the moment I’m not really using it.
The next series of pages are taken up with my Weekly Pages. I use one page for my weekly blog notes and the other for any extra things relating to my blog. I have also added sections for my social media accounts so that I can jot down any ideas that I have for them that are related to the blog.
And my final pages for the month are my monthly goals page and a page I added for social media. I thought that having my monthly goals page written out at the end of the month would help me to construct my Monthly Goals blog posts a little bit easier, at the moment these posts show my Goals for the month just gone and whether or not I have completed them and then list my goals that I am hoping to achieve for the following month. The social media page is an experiment and I’m hoping to track how many times I post to these sites and how many followers I gain or lose…
What sort of planner or planning do you do for your blog? Let me know in the comments!
Blog Bullet Journal I mentioned in my Monthly Goals for May post that I had recently set up a Bullet Journal for my blog.
