4 Things You Can Do For Your Blog When You Don’t Have Time To Write New Content

If there’s one thing I don’t have much of lately, it’s free time. 

I’m graduating university this month and I currently have 5 projects that still need finishing off and handing in, all in the space of two weeks. 

So much for me being organised! 

Admittedly I’ve been struggling with S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder) recently, which has effected how much work I’ve been able to get done. My motivation and energy always plummets when my depression flairs up and unfortunately, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. 

Because I’m having to put all of my time into finishing my projects, I’ve had to put my blog on the bottom of my to do list and I’ve not been able to create any new content in weeks. 

However that doesn’t mean I’ve been completely ignoring it; I’ve been doing a lot of editing and updating of my older content recently which I’ve really been enjoying! 

Proof read

The amount of times I’ve neglected to properly proof read a post, only to later find a ton of mistakes in it is ridiculous. I really hate how unprofessional it looks (especially if its a sponsored post!) but the problem is, spotting things like a missing word or a spelling mistake is really tough for me.

I’m partially dyslexic according to my secondary school; I struggle with spelling and my brain moves letters and words around when I’m reading, which makes proof reading for mistakes difficult. I’m an avid reader but there have been plenty of times where I’ve misread a character name and created something completely different to what it’s supposed to be!  

So whenever I don’t have the time or energy to write a new post, I’ll simply read through my older content and correct any spelling mistakes or add any words I’ve missed out. I’ll also do this with any half written drafts that I might have in my notes.

While I’m doing this, I also look for opportunities to do my next point which is…

Update links

Dead links are really bad for your SEO, so regularly putting aside some time to check your links are still working is really important. Especially if you’re a fashion or beauty blogger who may be linking to a particular item in a post; you might need to change or remove the link once the item is no longer on sale or has been discontinued (such as a limited edition or sessional item). 

You should also have a look back through your old blog posts and see if you can link any of your newer content in them. There have been quite a few times when I’ve gone back to proof read an old article and realised I wrote a topic on something mentioned in an older post, so I’ve linked it up. I had an old pin suddenly become popular on Pinterest a few weeks ago and people were clicking through to some of the other articles I’d written, simply because I’d linked them in that post. 

Plan/Update blog photos 

When I first started out, I had a big problem with blog photography. I was trying to copy what everyone else did and you can really tell from how crappy the pictures turned out. 

Queen of flatlays I’m not! 

Because I couldn’t stand the images I was taking myself, I came to rely a lot on stock photographs. Now I’m not one of those people who think you shouldn’t use them; they’re perfect for people with no experience in photography or who don’t have the time/circumstances to take their own, I just didn’t personally like using them. 

I’ve recently changed the way I take and edit my blog photos and since then I’ve been much happier with my blog. All of the photos have the same look and feel about them and I’ve even had people tell me that they could tell it was my photo without having to check the name, which I think is pretty damn awesome! I’m now slowly working my way through my old posts and taking new photos for them. I recently did this for my Billion Dollar Brows Universal Eyebrow Pencil Review and noticed a spike in the number of views that post received in the days afterwards, because I pinned the images on Pinterest and people liked the look of them. 

Also just because I get asked all the time about my camera and how I edit my photos; I use a Canon EOS M10 to take my photos and the free version of VSCO (with the M5 filter) to edit them.

Brainstorm new content 

I have two different ways of brainstorming content ideas; an old, messy notebook and my Trello boards. I normally start of by just brain dumping any idea I have into the notebook, no matter how stupid or unrefined I think it is. I’ll then spend some time playing around with a title and basic concept of what the post will include, other posts that I could link in and what I could put in the photos. Once I have this, I’ll go over to my blogs Trello board and put the working title onto a card in the “To Write” section. 

I have an annoying habit of getting ideas when I’m just about to go to sleep or when I’m half way through a lecture at uni, so I tend to keep the notebook with me wherever I go so I can just quickly jot it down before I forget it. Recently I’ve found that if I don’t do something the second I think about it, I tend to forget whatever it was that I was wanting to do. Most of the time it will come back to me after a few minutes, but sometimes it doesn’t and I’ve lost quite a lot of good content ideas because I’ve thought “I’m sure I’ll remember it in the morning”… 

I never do! 

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest