It feels like summer is already in full swing here in NYC, which means more time outdoors and less time indoors working on your blog. Don’t panic! When you use your time efficiently, vacations, more family time, and outdoor activities won’t be a factor in your busy blog schedule. Yes, you can continue business as usual in the summer and I’m going to show you how with 4 blog hacks every blogger should use.
#1 Batching
Batching is my #1 blog hack because it is truly a game changer. Batching is when you bang out a bunch of tasks at one time. As a fashion blogger, this can be done by writing posts for the following week on the same day or even in the first few hours of a day. You can also batch your e-mail by checking it once a day as opposed to every so often throughout the day.
The benefit of batching is that it makes you more productive and it frees up the rest of your time for other things. When you bounce back and forth from one project or another you’re wasting time and you’re not giving either project your all. When you sit down and focus for a few hours on one task, the quality of your work will be better and you’ll finish faster than you would have otherwise.
I batch my meals, blog posts, picture editing, laundry, and e-mailing all at one time each week. You can spend 2 hours editing all your photos in one shot or 4 hours editing photos over the course of the week. What would you choose? I’ll take the first choice, please!
#2 Turning off your phone
Turning off your phone is easier said than done, I get it. When you finally do decide to unplug, you will be so laser focused on batching, you may get your tasks done faster than you thought because you won’t be distracted by social media. Turning off your phone can be treated like an intrinsic reward in the sense that you get to treat yourself at the end with social media. (Sad but true.)
Think how much more we could accomplish if we didn’t have Facebook videos, Snapchat stories, and Instagram memes to distract us.
#3 Automating
When I started writing this post I was gung-ho on automation. Now my thoughts have changed slightly only because I’ve noticed the blog front changing.
It is almost impossible to post on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter all at your highest engagement hour. People can’t expect fashion bloggers to be slaves to social media so automation comes in handy in that sense. Automation services like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and MeetEdgar are productivity hacks that free up a lot of time.
At the same time, you don’t want to automate a generic post like “Sign up for my e-mail list and get blog tips straight to your inbox!”. Instead, automate something a little more personal and make sure you personally respond to as much feedback as possible. Nothing is more frustrating than supporting and engaging on a blogger’s social media feeds only to never have her/him respond back to you. The readers are the reason you’re where you are so the least you can do is give them a shoutout here and there.
#4 Working longer hours during the week
At the time, working after your full-time job is going to suck. The last thing anyone wants to do after a long day is to have it linger into the night. But if you want results and free time in the summer, you gotta do what you gotta do. In the winter, it’s not such a terrible thing to work on your blog on the weekends, but come summertime, you are ready to get out there and enjoy life… which you should!
The point is instead of making sacrifices, start utilizing blog hacks this summer that will help you work smarter and harder to get you the results you want.
What’s your #1 blog hack? Tell us in the comments below!
xx Brittany
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