29. Making Time for Your Traffic Goals in 2025

Stephanie 0:00

It's a new year, which means new traffic goals. Let's chat about how you can make time to work on your goals so that you can make the most of your traffic building efforts this year.

Stephanie 0:11

Hey there, teacher business owner. It's time to give your bank account a break and pause that ad campaign. I'm your host, Stephanie Royer, and I'm going to show you how to pay less for traffic.

Stephanie 0:23

Happy New Year and welcome back to the podcast. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that you are looking forward to 2025 with big traffic goals. I feel like one of the major hurdles to blogging and pinning is time. With everything else we have going on in our businesses, it can feel like there just isn't enough time to add blogging and pinning to the mix. I think that's why it's so important that we make time for our traffic goals instead of just hoping to find time. For this episode, I'm going to share three things you need to help you make time for your traffic goals this year.

Stephanie 1:04

The first thing you need in order to make more time for blogging and pinning is a plan. For blogging, this means mapping out the blog post topics that you'd like to cover for the next several months. When you sit down to blog, you don't want to be starting from scratch deciding what to blog about right then. It reminds me of a children's literature class that I took in college. The professor talked about how avid readers always have their next book picked out, usually sitting on their nightstand or shelf, so they waste zero time when they finish their current book and I feel like consistent bloggers are the same way. They have their blog content mapped out so they don't have to waste time figuring out what their next blog post is going to be. And I actually think this is such an important part of blogging that I went ahead and opened up one of the lessons in my course, bring your own traffic, so that you can check it out for free and start that content bank that is going to be so helpful for you as you start to blog. This lesson walks you through a couple of my absolute favorite places to find blog post ideas, and I walk you also through the process of brainstorming blog topics based on your best sellers. So definitely check that out. I'll put the link in the show notes.

Stephanie 2:29

Now moving on from blog post topics, having a plan is just as important for your Pinterest efforts as it is for blogging. But the reasons are kind of similar because when I sit down to create a batch of pins for my clients or myself, I have several criteria that I look at to make a plan for which pins I'm going to create. So when I'm sitting there looking at this list of URLs that I could make pins for, I look at, well, which URLs have gone the longest without a fresh pin. And then I also look at whether or not those posts already have a ranking pin on Pinterest for the different keywords that I would target. And then I also think about the seasonality of the blog posts, because there are definitely certain windows of time that are better to pin for certain seasons. And so once I've taken all of that criteria into consideration, I mark the posts that I'm going to create pins for that week or that month - however, I decide to do it - and then I have this list that I'm able to work down as I have time to create new pins. So while it might seem like an extra step or two to create a plan for your blogging and for your pinning, it is going to save you a lot of time in the long run.

Stephanie 3:46

The next thing you're going to need to help you meet your traffic goals in the coming year is pretty simple - it's a timer. And a timer is really important, actually, for two reasons. The first is that in order to make time for blogging and pinning, you need to know how much time you need. And so I would suggest that you break down all of the different tasks in your blogging and pinning workflow and time yourself. Figure out how long each of those parts of the process take you. Because I don't know about you, but I rarely have uninterrupted time to work on my own business. I'm able to do client blog posts mostly in one work session, but my own business? Absolutely not. I often have to work in multiple sittings. So that's why I like to keep track of how long it takes me to do, first the keyword research and outlining - I do that as one chunk. And then I time myself to figure out how long it takes me to write, you know, an average length blog post. And then I time how long it takes me to upload everything to WordPress and get it ready to publish. So for me, the blogging workflow is kind of like in three chunks. It could be different for you, but that's when I was figuring out how long it takes me, I broke it into those three parts. And then once I had those three times, I was able to add them together to figure out exactly how long a blog post takes me - if all the stars were to align and I could get it done in one sitting, how long would that take me? But it really is helpful to have those individual chunks of time, and we'll talk about that just a little bit later in the episode of why those can come in handy.

Stephanie 5:38

And then I do the same thing for Pinterest. I break it into three chunks of time, I track how long it takes me to create a batch of, you know, about 10 pins. And then for the second chunk of time, I figure out how long it takes to write the titles and descriptions, because I do all of that kind of in a staging area in airtable, because then I'm able to then track how long it takes me to copy and paste everything into the Pinterest scheduler. And just as a side note, the reason I do that is because we all know the Pinterest scheduler can be glitchy, and the last thing we want to do is backtrack and have to write titles and descriptions from scratch after losing them all. And so that's why I stage everything in airtable and then copy and paste it. So that's another little time saver as well.

Stephanie 6:24

So now your timer comes in handy for another reason, because once you've used it to figure out how long all of your tasks will take you, then you can start using your timer to hold yourself to those times. If you've ever heard of Parkinson's Law, it says that work will expand to fill the time available for its completion. So if you say you're going to blog on Saturday, then writing that blog post will probably end up taking you the better part of your Saturday. But when you set a timer, you can keep blogging and pinning from taking over your life, and it will feel much more manageable to make the time to do those things and then to move on with the other tasks in your business.

Stephanie 7:09

So now you know how long your blogging and pinning tasks take you. You have a timer, and you're ready to hold yourself to those times. And you have a plan for your blog posts and the pins you're going to create. The last thing you need is a realistic schedule that you can stick with. When are you actually going to be doing these things? You want to make sure that you're setting aside time in your work week to take care of your blog posts and your pinning. I think one of the first steps in setting up a schedule for yourself is to decide how often you want a new blog post to go live and how often you want fresh pins to be scheduled to your Pinterest account. Once you have that figured out, you can then work backwards to figure out your schedule. So let's say I want to publish one blog post per week, and I know, thanks to my timer, that a blog post will take me three hours start to finish. So I need to set aside that amount of time per week to get that post ready to schedule. I need to create those blocks of time in my schedule. Instead of saying, Oh, I'll get to it if I have time or Yeah, it takes me about three hours. I should have that amount of time, maybe Thursday or Friday. Actually schedule it. Put those blocks in your planner, wherever you keep track of your schedule and make sure they happen.

Stephanie 8:35

So you might already be thinking, yikes, there's no way I can find a three hour block of time in my jam packed week like that's just not gonna happen. And so going back to when we were talking about the timer, that's why it's so helpful to know how long those smaller milestones will take you. So if you know that keyword research and outlining takes you 30 minutes, then you can set aside a 30 minute chunk of time on your Monday schedule. If drafting a blog post takes you an hour, then you can set aside that time on Wednesday and so on. For Pinterest, you could set aside time to just get the pin designs created on one day. Then you could use a second work session to write the titles and descriptions. And then the third session would be the scheduling. You could also have a more open ended schedule where you just give yourself a set amount of time per day or per week to work on your traffic goals. You commit to working one hour per day, and whatever you get done is enough, and then you'll just publish your posts or your pins when they're ready. But no matter how you decide to break down these tasks in your schedule, I highly suggest setting up those recurring calendar events for yourself where you can see those tasks on your calendar right there with all of those other to do's that you have. When you set it up more like a non-negotiable on your schedule then you will be more likely to make it happen.

Stephanie: 10:07

Now, as I mentioned before, I love airtable. I use it for everything, but I did start using Asana to keep track of my daily to do list, and this is where I keep my blogging tasks and pinning tasks front and center. And I absolutely love it. I thought I would be able to just figure it out on my own, and I probably could have over time, but as we all know, time is limited, and I just wanted someone to show me how to set it up and optimize it for my schedule. So I actually just took a DIY course, and I was able to set it up on a weekend, and I'll put the link below to that course if you're interested in looking at it, but I found it really helpful, and I was able to just get up and running with my schedule. And I know, since we're in the season of, you know, the New Year and wanting to set up new systems, that would be a really great option if you're finding that you need a little bit more accountability in your schedule and to see everything right in front of you for the day. So again, I'll put that down in the show notes.

Stephanie: 11:09

I hope that these tips have helped inspire you to make time for your traffic goals this year. With a plan, a timer, and a realistic schedule, I'm sure you'll be well on your way to blogging and pinning more consistently this year. I am right there with you, trying to make time for blogging and pinning for my own business. Like I said, I do a lot of blogging and pinning for clients, and my business often gets pushed to the back burner, and so I'm actually sharing my journey to revive a very old and neglected blog of my own, and I'm sharing that journey with my email list. So if you'd like to follow along with that, just subscribe to my Tuesday Traffic Tip newsletter. In addition to these updates, the newsletter also gives you a quick tip for blogging or Pinterest, just something that will help you get more traffic to your products. If you'd like to sign up for the newsletter, just head over to Stephanie Royer solutions.com/tuesday-traffic-tip You can also find the link in the show notes.

Stephanie: 12:16

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it. If you could share it with a teacher biz bestie. You have created high quality resources. Now let's help teachers find them. I'll see you next time.