30 Ways to Improve Your Blog (In Under 10 Minutes)

Do you ever feel like blogging takes up so much of your time, despite only posting once or twice a week? Long are the days when bloggers just poured out their feelings to a laptop (AKA Carrie in Sex and the City) and the readers flocked to them- now we have to work for our readership. This includes everything from promotion, to blog maintenance to replying to comments. It can often seem the admin that comes with blogging is far more time consuming than the blog writing itself and we have days like this…

Today I’m sharing 3o ways to improve your blog- each of these tasks only ten minutes or less, perfect for tackling your blog to-do list in bite size chunks. You can also print off this as a PDF worksheet by joining my mailing list.

1.Check for broken links.  Use a broken link checker to suss out whether you have any broken links- lots of these could bring your DA score right down and create a very messy blog. Make a note of any links that are broken and come back to them another day.

2. Download a media kit template. Creating a media kit is daunting and no one is really sure if it’s valuable use of their time and money. Test the waters by downloading a free template that you can pop your details into. Downloading this template and editing it in PicMonkey took me less than 10 minutes.  Of course, if you notice more and more brands are          asking for one, it might be worth spending more of your time but, for now, this is a perfect way to get the ball rolling.

3. Read and comment on 5 blogs in your niche. Take the time to read other’s content!

4.  Go back to step 1 and delete 10 broken links. To do this simply type the broken link into your blog’s search posts    function to quickly find it. If nothing shows up, check your blog comment sections. It’s best to replace the link                        (perhaps with a company’s homepage rather than specific URL that no longer exists) but you may have to delete it.

5.  Schedule 10 tweets for the next 2 days using Buffer or HootSuite; leaving you time to interact on twitter.

6. Revisit 5 old blog posts. Is there anyway you could rework them to create a new post ? (for example update last year’s  valentine’s days post with a few more links and tips and voila a brand new post) You may find posts from years ago that     could be really relevant for your readers- give it a revamp and republish.  I found an old post on juicing was insanely       popular from Pinterest so I jazzed it up and republished it for those that missed it the first time around!

7.  Pin 10 posts to Pinterest. Use Canva to make pinnable buttons.

8. Create 5 categories for your most common blog posts to help readers’ find them more easiy.

9. Register with MailChimp to set up a newsletter.

10. Make a list of free downloads (e.g. worksheets, recipes) you could offer as an incentive to get people to join your mailing list. It could be as simple as converting a popular post into PDF format.

11. Share your 3 favourite blog posts (by fellow bloggers) on twitter.

12.  Go back to 5 posts and add descriptors to the images to help google find them more easily. Here’s a guide to doing this.

13.  Email a brand you love, enquiring about working with them. Send over your new media kit!

14. Write the introduction for 2 blog posts.

15. Study your google analytics and make a note of what type of posts are more popular and what keywords are linking to your blog.

16. Respond to reader’s comments.

17. Comment on 10 Instagram photos or regram your favourites.

18. Pick 2 key blog posts and aim to improve their SEO by using targetted key words. There’s lots of plug-ins to help you if you have WordPress- Yoast being the most famous.

19. Verify your Pinterest account as a business one. You’ll get loads of useful analyics to help you measure engagement.

20. Send out your first mailing letter- use this to highlight your strongest posts, e.g. a giveaway you a running or a helpful blog post.

21. Reach out to your favourite blogger and enquire about guest posting (be realistic- Zoella is probably busy right now!)

22. Delete any spam comments.

23. Use you Crowdfire app to delete any inactive followers.

24. Delete blog posts that no longer fit your niche (unless you really like them)

25. Revisit 5 blog posts. Embed links of 2 previous blog posts within each post- make it natural, e.g. ‘I also blogged about this…’ Internal linking will improve your DA.

26. Offer to critique another blog in return for a fresh pair of eyes on yours– ask them to focus on layout, usability and quality of posts.

27. Change the URLs of your most recent post to keywords (e.g. Gluten free Birmingham) rather than the random generated numbers. This is super easy to do in wordpress (you just click edit next to the url) and here is a guide to mastering it for Blogger.

28. Blog for ten minutes about what is frustrating you about life right now- it may end up being a great post or it might just be therapeutic

29. Pin your favourite post to your twitter profile.

30. Favourite this blog post (or print off the printable) and complete one thing each day for 4 weeks (ok, this is a bit of a rubbish final one but give me a break- I just gave you 29 other suggestions!)

That’s the end of my mamoth post- I hope you find it hopefully and be sure to follow me on twitter for more helpful tips!

If you want to get a free downloadable worksheet of this blog post (with al the tips on one page) just click here to join my newsletter (no spam I promise) and you’ll be sent it by email.