10 Blog Tasks you can do on your Lunch Break

Many of us bloggers also work full or part time in addition to writing a blog, so finding time to work on it can be a push. While I used to use my lunch break to eat my lunch (obviously!) and faff a bit, I’ve started trying to be more focused on it recently – for me, it’s an hour’s worth of time that I can be using on something productive. Most of my lunch breaks are filled with yoga, but sometimes we do half an hour’s yoga which leaves me half an hour free still.
So whether you’ve got an hour, half an hour, or even just 10 minutes leftover that you want to fill with something productive for your blog, I’ve created a list of a few things you can use that time for:

Write a blog post

The obvious! The wordy part of a blog post is usually the easiest for me and in an hour’s lunch break, I can sometimes whack out the content for two or three blog shorter blog posts (if I’m feeling particularly inspired). If I’ve got 10 minutes, that can even get me 300 or 400 words of content written that wouldn’t be written before.

Edit photos

I would say “take photos”, but unless your workplace is near somewhere photogenic and you have a willing friend or colleague, this will be hard. Instead, you can take 20 minutes to edit photos and upload them to your blog for future posts. My problem is often that I don’t have photos ready to publish a post, so having them there and prepped is always super handy.

Check your broken links

A boring admin task that no one likes doing, but is necessary if you want to make sure that your blog is at its best. Broken links are annoying for readers and can cause problems with search engines too, so check if you have any (this is a useful site) then deal with them. Mine are usually products that are no longer available (so I change the link to the store homepage) or where readers have left links in comments (these usually get deleted), so they’re quite easy to sort.

Schedule your social media

Blog promotion is really important in the super speedy world of today’s social media, so making sure your posts are in front of readers’ eyes at any given time is a necessity. Spend half an hour scheduling posts on Twitter and Facebook for the week ahead – you can include links to old posts (#ThrowbackThursday) or reshare new posts that have gone live that week, or even just ideas to spark discussion with your followers.

Read and comment on 5 blog posts

Share the love! Think about how awesome you feel when you receive a comment from a reader, so head over to Bloglovin’, Twitter, Facebook, wherever you read or find new blogs, pick a few posts that interest you then read them (like really read them) and leave a proper comment. If you’re really loving it, share on social or give them a heart on Bloglovin’ – I’m trying to do this more recently.

Post an Instagram photo and check out relevant hashtags

It’s easy to just stick a quick photo on Instagram, but research a few hashtags relevant to your photo or blog so you’ve got the best ones to tag your photo with before publishing. Then when your photo is posted, go back to these hashtags and explore! Like your favourite posts, check out the people that have posted them, comment on their posts if you really like them. You’ll notice that these people, who are all relevant to your niche and likely to become new followers if they like what they see, will come over to your profile and check you out too.

Reply to 5 emails

We’re all guilty of getting snowed under in our emails, so take the time to check back through your inbox and reply to any outstanding ones. Or maybe just work on deleting some of the 8000 unread ones (who me?! They’re all store newsletter ones, promise!).

Spend half an hour on Pinterest

I love Pinterest, so not only is this one really fun, it also helps to increase your engagement there. Rearrange your boards, set up new board covers and pin, pin, pin! You’ll get your profile in front of new eyes and have fun at the same time.

Update your media kit

If you don’t already have a media kit, take half an hour to set one up. If you do have one, do a check on your stats to make sure they’re all up to date on your media kit, make sure you’ve got all the right links in there, check that your bio is up to date and maybe swap some photos around on it.

Sort your Twitter following

Every so often, I go onto Twitter and make sure that I’m getting the best out of who I follow. I like to follow people who are relevant to me, who are interesting, people who interact, people whose Tweets I like to read basically. I also check out new people to follow and interact with.

Explore your Analytics

Getting your head around your Google Analytics is really important if you want to take your blog seriously. Maybe read a few articles on what everything means and check out how you’re doing; maybe set up a spreadsheet and note down your analytics now, what improvements you’ve seen over the past year, and any improvements you want to make in the year to come. It always helps to have goals!

Do you have any ideas of blog tasks you can do on your lunch break?