She Had So Many Blogs She Didn’t Know What To Do

I’ve been creating and setting up several blogs recently, while learning Wordpress (and moving webhosts!) at the same time. Yesterday it all of a sudden became too much.

My head was spinning. My computer desktop was full of Notepad “to do.txt” lists which seemed to be constantly refilling themselves with odd reminders …

“Add this blog to Technorati
Add that blog to My Blog Log
Upload the new plugin to all blogs
Finish fixing the settings on that blogs plugins
Burn a new RSS feed on Feedburner for …
Start a new blog on ….”

Ahh!

After a while I found myself staring lifelessly at my screen

I tried to break away from it all and watch a movie. But I found myself continuously remagnetizing toward my “To Do” list and making confused efforts to chip away at it.

Finally I had a breakthrough. An idea!

Not a new software, not a new service. And no, I didn’t hire a virtual secretary.

I used … a spreadsheet!

To keep track of every one of my blogs and every single step of its set-up, SEO, creation, etc.

No more wasting time logging in and out of accounts due to forgetting which blog has already been submitted, which setting has already been set, which plugin has already been installed, etc.

And no more three mile long confusing “To Do” lists on Notepad.

Here you can see a rough idea of what my spreadsheet looks like. Although it has several more blogs than this and my “real” spreadsheet has the actual names of the blogs on it.

Of course, everyone is different and I think everyone probably has there own “to do” items which they would add to this grid. But you get the general idea:

By using this grid I am able to do away with many lines of my Notepad “To Do” lists and just refer to my grid when I am working on my blogs. Every time a step is done I can just color it in. Then I don’t waste time later on, going back and logging into accounts to “see if I already fixed that setting yet” etc.

I hope that (if anyone reads this entry ) this idea can help other multi-bloggers to organize the confusion into a patterned flow of progress.

Anna V. Williams