Bullet Journalling is something I’ve always quite liked the sound of, but never full got my head around. I’m very creative but also rather lazy and the motivation to do something – lay out a whole diary – that someone else can do for me isn’t particularly strong. I’m also a complete perfectionist so I just know that within about 28 minutes of starting one I’d have torn it apart and started a small fire on my bedroom floor with the disappointing remains as kindling. Drama queen, I know. That being said, I’ve been looking for a really good way to track my blogging and social media stats and plan out my posting schedule for a while now and nothing has quite hit the spot. 

The beauty of a bullet journal is that you are completely in control of the pages and I realised that I was going to have to succumb to my fears and give it a go. Amidst my New Year stationary binge I ordered a very standard gridded bullet journal and this week I got to work laying out the basics reading for January.

What I’m about to show you below really is bullet journaling in its most simplistic form. I know that some people are total whizzes but I struggle to remember what day of the week it is, let alone to number my pages and keep track of bizarre little symbols and a corresponding key. Hell, you can buy books that tell you how to bullet journal! There are reams and reams of Pinterest pages full of ideas that make me want to run and hide under the bed. It’s just not for me; what I have laid out is a set of 4 easy pages which can be replicated for different months and different purposes. 

 

HOW TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR BLOG USING A BULLET JOURNAL

 

 

What you will need

A bullet journal: I use this one here

A pen: my go to are the erasable ones from Muji because they write really well and ERASABLE

A ruler 

A cup of tea

 

Keeping track of page views and unique visitors 

To keep track of my growth (hopefully!) in views and users I drew a really straightforward line graph and my intention is to plot both on in different coloured pens at the end of each month. I based the increments upon where I am now and something a bit aspirational for the end of the year! 

I then replicated this exact graph for Instagram followers and Twitter followers and you could use it for whatever data you’d like to track throughout the year. Simples! 

 

 

Monthly pages and post scheduling 

My January page is looking as bare as a Hollywood wax at the moment, but it’s a space I’m going to use at the start and end of each month to jot down basic stats as well as things I’m proud of and things I want to work on for the following month. 

The real star of this show is the scheduling page. My goal is to write a post every other day, scheduled for the following day (does that make sense?) The key to the righthand side – yeah okay…I used a key… – gives me a place to tick off each stage of writing and publishing a post. P = photos, T = text, S = scheduled, I = link shared on Instagram, T = scheduled tweets and the L gets a big fat tick when everything is live! 

I’m personally not going to fill the entire month out in one go as I know my brain doesn’t work quite like that. Instead I sit down each week and plan the content for the following week. The few that I have scheduled for future dates are where the post may be more temporally specific; for example, I’ve reminded myself to publish an annual style post on my birthday! 

 

 

Ideas

Make sure you’ve got periodic pages for brain-storming. I’ve always got so many weird ideas floating around in my head and I either forget to write them down or have them wandering all over the shop in the notes of my phone and on random scraps of paper.