Reviewing your goals for your blog is so important to making sure that the hard work you’re putting into your blog is working. Setting aside some time to do this every quarter is a great way to make sure you’re routinely auditing your efforts. In this episode I’ll share what you should be reviewing on a quarterly basis to make sure your blog is staying on track!

It feels like it has been so long since I’ve recorded a batch of podcast episodes! You may have noticed that last week I republished one of the most popular episodes all about what should be on your homepage of your blog. If you didn’t notice that it was a republished episode, let that be a sign that your audience probably won’t notice if YOU republish old content either. 

As we are nearing the end of Q1, I thought it was a great time to share some thoughts on quarterly reviews and how you should do them! This can (and should) be done any quarter, so if you’re not listening to this in real time that is totally fine.

Goal setting is something I just started doing over the past year and it has made a huge impact in actually reaching new goals and getting things done in my business. It is so easy for me to spend the majority of my time working IN my business instead of on it. Goal setting is one of the best ways to make sure you are always moving forward and not getting stuck in the day to day work of running your food blog. 

I’ve really liked the concept of quarterly reviews because it helps make sure you don’t go through an entire year feeling like you haven’t achieved your goals. It’s easy to set them at the beginning of the year but not follow through with them throughout. Quarterly reviews allow you adjust your goals, set new ones, decide on projects for each quarter and more. 

Review analytics and finances monthly

It’s really helpful to look at metrics like your analytics and finances on a monthly basis so that your quarterly review can really focus on reflecting and analyzing your last quarter. It takes a good amount of time and energy to review finances and analytics monthly, so doing it for an entire quarter can be draining. 

But if you haven’t been doing this, this can be a great time to catch up and have some numbers to look at. You just may want to spread these things out so you aren’t trying to do it all at once. This is also a great use of your CEO time (listen back to episode 59 all about why you need a CEO day). 

A few things numbers to have on hand and ready to review are: 

• Top 10 blog posts for the quarter (potentially comparing those to the last year)
• Financial review (income, expenses, and what you’ve paid yourself)
• Breakdown of income streams

Once you have these things in front of you, ask yourself how you feel about these numbers. Are they where you thought they were? What would you like to see changed?

Review any goals or projects you set for the past quarter

If you set any projects or goals, pull those out to review what progress you made on them. There is no shame in what didn’t get accomplished. The point of reviewing is simply to have knowledge of what did or didn’t happen and make a plan for it moving forward! 

Reflect on the past quarter

As someone who is a wing 3 On the Enneagram I know that some of you are probably rolling your eyes here and me talked about sitting and reflecting because it doesn’t really feel like doing anything productive. but so often we may feel like we don’t like the direction that our business is taking we don’t sit long enough to really recognize that and then be able to make changes to it.

Ask yourself these questions and allows yourself to think through them and reflect:

• What are you most proud of from the last quarter?
• What is working well in your business?
• What areas of your business need some improvements?
• Are there any services you’re offering that are working well?
• Are there any services you’re offering that aren’t working well?
• What does your current team look like and where could you use more support?

Set intentions for the quarter ahead

Now that you’ve looked backwards and reflected, you can start making a plan for the next quarter ahead. 

Ask yourself what results you’d like to achieve in the next quarter. These should be things that are within your control. So instead of saying you want to increase pageviews by 10%, you want to work backwards to map out the steps needed to make that happen. The result may be that you want to increase your traffic, but the actual goal or task is that you are going to hire a Pinterest manager, revise 10 blog posts each month, or increase how often you are publishing new content.

Write out 3-4 results you want to see happen during the next quarter. Maybe you want to hire a new team member, launch a new freebie or even a digital course. You can write more than this, but be realistic about what’s possible within a quarter. Each month, I’ll choose ONE of these results to focus on, even though it almost always feels like I could do all of them in one month. But when I try to do that, I usually can’t get them all done which can be discouraging. You can always add more if you get them all done early!

Once you have these written out, figure out what specific tasks you need to do within the next week to start making this happen. (reflect, set tasks in project management system, etc.) 

Then figure out what steps need to take place further out than the next week, all the way to the 120 day mark. 

I find that spending some time really outlining EVERY step for a result or project I’m working on can really help me to see how much work each project will be and then be sure to make progress on that goal. 

I would LOVE to know if you enjoyed this episode and if you follow these steps, I’d love to hear one result you’re hoping to achieve next quarter. Going through this process has been a huge game changer for me to really see momentum within my business. And I truly hope it does for you too!