8 Things You’re Missing Without a Wrap Up Post

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Are you all tied up?  I couldn’t resist the fun photo for today’s post.

You may have noticed the last few months I’ve done a monthly wrap up post.  Have you wondered why?

In no particular order, here are 8 of my reasons…

As you read them see if it might be something that would work for your blog, too.

Point of Reference: It provides an easy point of reference to find all your blog posts from the month and to summarize where you’ve been guest posting and mentioned.

Easy Overview for Your Readers: It gives your readers an easy way to browse your posts by topic and see what might be interesting.

Credibility Builder: It builds your credibility when you can show you’ve been featured on other blogs.

Search Engine Help: It gives the search engines an easy way to crawl more of your blog posts and to find sites that are linking to you (because those backlinks are important!).

Way to Feature Bloggers/Sites Who Feature You: Yep, I’m a fan of reciprocity.  Feature me and I’ll do my best to return the favor.

Sharing Resources: If a site is sharing a guest post or article from you, they’re probably a site your readers would enjoy!  It’s just fun to highlight others in the community of bloggers and work at home’ers who I know my readers will connect with and enjoy.

Way to Feature What Else You’re Up To: Sometimes I forget to blog about events, classes, workshops, etc.  A monthly wrap up lets me include those.  It’s an easy way to share with your blog readers what you’re up to outside your blog (some of your readers may not be on your list, so don’t depend on sending out those emails and expecting all your blog readers to know about it).

Reminder to Share Where Else You’re Sharing: When you post new videos to YouTube and resources on other sites, it may not always “fit” into your blogging plan to share them, but everything fits into a wrap up post.

Some examples from my archives…

Here are the recent ones I’ve done:

• Wrapping Up May: Rainbows, Kreativity, Going Green
• Wrapping Up April
• Wrapping Up March: Causing Insomnia, Blogging, and Where I’ve Been This Month
• Wrapping Up February: What Did You Miss this Month?

As you can see — the titles need a little more work (especially April!).  And I’m still experimenting with formatting and what to include.

What should you include in a wrap up post?

Obviously you’ll want to include all of your blog posts from within the period you’re wrapping up.  You could do them in a list by category (like I’ve been doing) or if you have fewer posts in the period you could do title and summary for each (à la Copyblogger — you’re subscribed and get their wrap ups, right?).

What else might fit?  Some ideas:

• Your guest posts on other sites
• Articles you’ve submitted (on niche sites or sites like EzineArticles or Self Growth)
• New things on social media – a great discussion on your fan page, YouTube videos, etc.
• Sites you’ve been mentioned on
• Cool links or tools you’ve run across
• Big successes or achievements from the time period
• Media appearances/quotes

It’s your wrap up post.  You can do whatever you’d like.  What else would you/do you include?  What else might you like to see in a wrap up post from your favorite blogs?

Helpful tools you might find useful…

Instant Weekly Roundup Plugin for WordPress: This plugin generates a list of all your posts by category based on the dates you give it.  Makes it super easy to create a nicely categorized list.

And you’ll want to be monitoring the web for mentions of you/your brand, too, if you plan to share that.  Here are some tools you can use for that.

From the search engines:

• Google Alerts – http://www.google.com/alerts
• Yahoo! Alerts – http://alerts.yahoo.com

From the social networks:

• Social Mention – http://socialmention.com
• How Sociable – http://howsociable.com

From the blogosphere:

• Commentful by Blog Flux – http://commentful.blogflux.com
• Backtype – http://www.backtype.com/alerts

From everywhere:

• Notify.me – http://notify.me

Now you’re ready to create your own wrap up post!

Photo Credit: RTimages at StockFresh