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As a travel and lifestyle blogger, I find I spend time traveling, then writing madly, then waiting for the next big adventure. Before my next trip I have some time to read up on the latest and greatest things to do with your blog to make it better. As so often happens, we start the new year full of enthusiasm and good intentions, we get through a few tasks and then we come to a stop. I came across a FB post that was written by fellow London blogger, Cyn Gagen. If you find yourself looking for something to do which can be productive and serve your blogging business well, take some well seasoned advice from her. She’s been blogging for over 10 years at Creative Cynchronicity. Here are some of her great ideas on tasks to tackle if you are feeling stuck or you have time on your hands.
SEO, broken links, updating blog posts
🏡 Where to Stay: Top Accommodations
🥾 Explore: Tours & Experiences
🚙 Hit the Road: Car Rental Deals
🛫 Get Away: Find Flight Deals
🎒 Shop: Travel Essentials
I’ve seen a lot of people talking about how slow work is right now. Perfectly normal for 1st quarter for many people but still, can be a bit unsettling. So, if you are experiencing a “quieter than usual” business period, what are you doing to work on your business? Might as well put in the time now while you can before things pick up again!
Ideas for slow times:
1. Freshen up those older posts. Take new photos for them. Add pinnable images to ones that need it. Add images period. (Ahem. Yes I still have some oldies with no images at all). Clean up the text – get rid of broken links and information that’s no longer relevant. SEO the heck out of it! 
😉 If you have no dates in your URL (something my techie person is working on right now for me), you could even republish those freshened up posts again. Honestly, while just going through my blog to find these older posts to work on, I even found posts I had completely forgotten existed. Yikes.
2. Speaking of broken links, now is a good time to run a broken link checker and deal with those links once and for all. I have SO MANY to do. Better now than when things are crazy busy.
3. Start creating a database. I have spreadsheets for nearly everything I do. In one, I’ve started keeping track of when and where I shared my blog posts and for some I’ve even written copy ahead of time for those shares (3 different tweet options for example).
4. Blog ahead or develop an editorial calendar. Believe it or not, I am already working on blog posts for Halloween and Christmas. These are big traffic drivers for me and I decided I really should spend more time on them and get these posts out earlier. (Not this early lol). So I’m getting a jump start on some of them.
5. Get ahead on your social media scheduling. Personally, I am scheduling WAY ahead right now. I figure, I can just take a peek at it every day and see if I want to reschedule something so it’s not set in stone. I can always work in something more time sensitive and socially relevant if I need to but at least I have a skeleton there. And at least I have something that will continue on if I get sick or something comes up.
6. Take a long hard look at your blog. Does it need some freshening up? Check your side bar. Header. Footer. It’s like spring cleaning for your blog! Get rid of the dead weight and freshen things up. I always notice when a blogger has changed things up and it makes me take a fresh look at their blog overall.
7. Update your About Me. Ugh. I know. If you’re anything like me, you hate doing this but again, it’s good to change things up and give them a fresh coat of paint so to speak. Update any bio information on your sidebar and LinkedIn profile. Keep things current.
8. Take your own stock photos. No, I’m serious. Take a series of generic photos that you could use in the future. Backgrounds perfect for sharing quotes or for setting the scene of a blog post. Even generic photos of your family that could be added in (or popped onto Instagram) when you need them. Hint: you could even sell some of these to other bloggers. OR how about taking new photos to use on social media – make a new header for your FB page or Twitter account.
9. GO COMMENT ON OTHER BLOGS. If you have the time right now, why not share the love with some other bloggers? Especially some other Canadian bloggers. Especially some other bloggers in your niche. 
😀
10. Go through and review Facebook groups and email subscriptions. Are there some that you can let go of? Do it. You need to focus on what serves you (whether it be by sharing great information, offering you support, or just making you smile). On Facebook, you can go into your notifications and change how often you get notifications – or if you do at all. Customize it the way YOU want it to be not the way FB has decided it should be for you (yes, they totally did). Some email options allow you to receive weekly or daily digests instead of constant email notifications. If you’ve stopped opening the emails entirely, why not just unsubscribe? Oh and do you have a bunch of emails just languishing in your inbox? You know what I’m going to say, right?
Okay. There are my ideas. Feel free to add yours in the comments below.
🥾 Explore: Tours & Experiences
🏡 Where to Stay: Top Accommodations
🚙 Hit the Road: Car Rental Deals
🛫 Get Away: Find Flight Deals
🎒 Shop: Travel Essentials
Margarita Ibbott is a travel and lifestyle blogger. She blogs about travel in Canada, the United States and Europe giving practical advice through restaurant, hotel and attraction reviews. She writes for DownshiftingPRO.com and other online media outlets.