Do you have a checklist of things to do when you log into your admin section of your blog? Sometimes, we tend to forget things. Due to having busy life schedule, this is very normal for everyone. When it comes to blogging however, there are many things that we should try to keep in mind. I must admit that I tend to forget some of this myself, so hopefully this post will also serve as a checklist to go through once in a while.

1. Backup your blog – Backing up your data is so important, I can’t really stress this enough. I’m writing this based on my own personal experience. The moment you found your blog crashed and you got no backup data, it feels like all your hard work and countless hours of time spent evaporates right in front of you, and there’s nothing you could do about it.

2. Link to older posts – There several benefits from linking to your older posts that you don’t want to miss. Apart from increasing your traffic, search engine rankings and providing more information for your readers to go deeper into certain subjects, it also increase visitors’ time spent, which in turn will increase your chances of gaining subscriptions.

3. Network – Ask ten bloggers what is the secret of their success, and I am sure that at least half of them will mention their network of contacts and friends. Keep that in mind and try to network with people as often as possible.

4. Proofread – If you browse around the blogosphere you will notice that the vast majority of the bloggers do not proofread. Confusions with its and it’s, your and you’re, and their and they’re are very common. So the next time you finish writing a post or article, remember to proofread it.

5. Answer to comments – You just started blogging not too long ago and few comments comes in. You got excited, and you answer each of them. Usually, this is the case. However, over time, when your blog has become more popular, it’s easy to start neglecting the comments. Although it can be very time consuming to reply all the comments, at the very minimum you want to answer the people that post direct questions to you.

6. Answer your e-mails – E-mails can get overwhelming at times. I’m not going to lie to you and say I reply to all of them. That would be wasting too much of my time. However, I always make sure to reply to any genuine inquiries and questions that relate to my blogs topic. It might be the difference between an upset visitor and a faithful reader.

7. Upgrade Wordpress – I must admit, I usually only upgrade my Wordpress every few months. This is a bad habit as there could be updates that is related to the security hole in the Wordpress version. Try to update it on a regular basis, whenever new version is available.

Nik Imran is the blogger of IMakeABlog, a blog that provides guide on how to make a blog. If you are interested in creating a blog, be sure to check out his guide on how to choose domain name.