I love summer for many reasons- the long hours of daylight, change in routine, warm weather—to name just a few. And as the famous song, “Summertime” from Porgy & Bess so aptly put it, “… the time when the living is easy.”

And so, it’s no wonder why late August brings up a lot of feelings. After all, I’m still coming back to reality after a wonderful week of vacation. I’m finding the back-to-school supplies lining store shelves haunting, and frankly, the approach to Labor Day weekend is a bit unnerving. Not to mention it feels like all the forces in the world are converging, trying their hardest to shake me back into high gear.

I’ve decided to take the bull by the horn. I’ve decided over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to take a proactive approach to help get back into the groove. It’s kind of the summer version of new year’s resolutions. Here they are:

6 Easy Steps to Refresh this Blogger’s Groove:

1. Utilize Reports for Unearthing Data: Thoroughly review the google analytic reports of our company website, analyze the WordPress reports for the Impressions through Media blog. In particular, I’m going to take notice of the keywords our visitors used to find the site, where the traffic comes from, average time a visitor spends on the site, which are our most popular posts, what are our inbound/outbound links. Based on what I discover, I’m going make any necessary tweaks to our editorial focus and calendar to ensure our blog is meeting the needs and expectations of our returning and new visitors.

2. Catch-up on RSS feeds I didn’t read while on vacation. Since I follow many feeds, there are a lot of them. I’m planning to dedicate 30-60 minutes a day until I’m all caught up!

3. Assess Google Alerts: I receive multiple google alerts on a daily basis which help me to keep up in the social media world. I plan to re-evaluate and see whether these topics are continuing to serve me, whether they can/should be replaced with others. I receive them all daily, and it may be that some would work just as well or even better weekly (freeing up my inbox a little.)

4. Re-visit Blogroll: There are several authors for the Impressions blog, and over the past year our blogroll has gotten significantly larger. I plan to check the links to make sure everything is working properly, and determine with my colleagues if these are our current favorites or if we want to make any changes.

5. Sign Up for a Webinar, or in-person conference to help get the juices flowing. I’ve already signed up for Social Media Marketing: An effective way to engage your customers and stimulate your prospects!

6. Maintain the summertime “living is easy” attitude as long as I possibly can. When I find it beginning to slip away, I’m going to start thinking about where I’d like to go with my family next summer.

What’s on your list for getting back into the groove?