How Would You Rate Yourself on a Blogger Report Card?

Remember how when you were in school, your report card gave a window into your strengths and weaknesses, and if grades weren’t up to par in certain subjects, you had to work extra hard to improve them (or you’d be grounded and no allowance!)? Although clearly there aren’t as extreme of consequences, I thought about blogging and self-improvement and a way to identify what items each of us can work on by creating a “blogger report card” to honestly evaluate where we as bloggers stand.

Sometimes taking five minutes to write something down, take pause, and reflect can get our heads in the right place to clearly see the path that we are on, the one that we want to be on, and how to get there.

I thought of this concept not as a way to compare oneself to other bloggers, but as a way to truly know thyself better in the realm of all of the tiny little facets that come together to make a blog. If you’re feeling like some constructive criticism may also be of help, create your report card criteria and have a close blogger friend “grade you,” and vice versa, to gain some additional perspective.

Of course it is all subjective as to the relevancy of these categories in relation to each person’s own blog, so here are 12 jumping off points to consider that will hopefully spark ideas on which areas are most relevant to you to build into your report card:

Posting Frequency/Consistency

Quality of Posts

Blog Design

Posting to Social Media

Social Media Interactions

Replying to Blog Comments

Tagging Posts for SEO

Using Hashtags/Handles on Social Media

Quality of Photos

A Solid Mission Statement/Blog Branding

Checking & Using Analytics Info

Linking to Affiliates/Monetizing of Content

Editing/Copy Editing/Fact Checking

When I think about myself personally in this list, I feel that I pass everything except for “linking to affiliates/monetizing content” and “checking and using analytics info,” in which I would give myself a D and D , respectively (for me, a grade of C- or higher is considered passing). It’s been a nagging thought in the back of my mind to eventually improve in these areas, and now that I’ve confronted myself with it it’s certainly time to do it! After all, I’ve been depriving myself of my own allowance!

Do you find creating and grading yourself in a “blogger report card format” helpful?

What additional categories would you suggest?