I went to bed at 4 AM last night, er, this morning. I’m still a bit bleary.

Why? I was up late working on some things for blog consulting clients.

It’s not fun but that’s what you gotta do sometimes to make sure your blogging efforts yield good fruit.

Here are 13 ideas to help you sleep better (and, I hope, longer) at night knowing your blog is doing what it should.

1. Keep your blog content churning out regularly. Miss a beat and you’ll lose some winks. Get your posts published or scheduled for publication before you’ve been awake one hour. That way you can bask the rest of the day. I’ve lost more sleep from this one than I can shake a very large stick at.
2. Set clear goals for your blog in at least the following areas: content, design, community, traffic, subscribers, search presence, social presence, conversion and value. Drill down farther if you like, but at least have long-term (say, 60-month and 12-month) goals and short-term (say, 30-day, 7-day or even daily) goals in these nine key areas. If you don’t know where you want to go, the pointlessness will drive you nuts at night.