There are quite a number of fellow bloggers who read my blog and have requested more posts on blogging, so I have a line-up of posts over the next few weeks which I’ll share. This one is kind of a checklist for travel bloggers sharing what tasks I do each day and/or weekly ones. If you could care less about blogging, you can go read this post with some beauty packing tips.

Checklist for Travel Bloggers

This is by no means all the tasks you should be doing and you might find that some things that you find important for your blog, are not on my list. I used to do a lot more, but over the years, I have simplified what I do each day and taken out anything that I didn’t see making a huge difference in the grand scheme of things.

The feature image is where I literally do everything, haha, the couch with coffee and catching up on my TV shows in the background.

I’ll start with daily blogging tasks which I do every day.

Okay, mostly every day but I mean some days I don’t do anything if it’s a day off. I guess I take about two days off per week and just check emails.

I actually have all the websites I need to access to do my daily tasks in my toolbar and I open them all at once so that I can do each one and close them as I go along. That way, I have to do the work as I won’t exit the tab until it’s done! I start with the easy quick ones.

I start with the easy quick ones:

  1. Twitter – just check notifications and tweet something random :p
  2. Banking – I check any payments and update my income and expenses excel sheets which I keep track of all year so my taxes are easier.
  3. Pinterest – I have just hired a VA to help me with Pinterest, so I just check any comments that need replying and see what new pins she’s added.
  4. Triberr – I am not super active on here, but do go through and tweet out some relevant content so my Twitter account has some outgoing tweets scheduled. Tribber is set every 6 hours to send out an article I liked on there.
  5. My own blog – Next I check my blog and see what post went live (I have them scheduled so forget) then I share that post to Twitter. I scheduled it on Facebook. My VA adds it to Pinterest for me.
  6. WP comments – Lastly, I check my comments on the blog and reply to ALL of them unless they are spam.
  7. Facebook – I reply to comments on posts on my page. I started a Facebook group as well, so I go in and moderate that and reply to traveler’s questions.

These are the quick things I do each morning before I have coffee. Then I make coffee and scroll through Instagram and reply to comments and DM’s on there.

The last big daily task I do each morning is Email. I use Microsoft Outlook and organize important emails by flagging them. So, I answer all new emails then I go through my flagged emails and see if there are any I need to follow-up on.

After this, if I had no time to do nothing all day or something came up, it would be fine because all that’s left after this is writing blog posts and editing images! An upcoming post is about how I organize blog posts and another which is live now is how I stay on top of working during a press trip.

This is what I do whether I’m at home or traveling. Even on a press trip, I will do these things each morning. The first things only take 10 minutes. Only email takes longer which will end up getting put off, but I’ll read them all and flag important ones.

To stay organized, I then know which emails to follow up on first when I do have time. I have a Word Document that I list all my articles I want to write, all the sponsored things I have to write, and all my freelance articles I need to write. I also have all my “should do but don’t want to do” bits on this list. I also keep track of all my brand partnerships, features, and a list of everywhere I’ve traveled. The list is great when someone wants to hire you freelance and asks where you can write about! On that same document, I have my blog post calendar typed out.

During the day, once these tasks are done I can write blog posts if I’m feeling creative, work on sponsored content, or take the rest of the day off if I don’t feel like writing.

At the end of the day, I post an Instagram image before I go to bed.

My Checklist: How to Plan a Trip From Scratch

Read More: How to Make Money As A Travel Blogger I share about how I make money and what travel blogging is all about.

Next, are the daily tasks I stopped doing or never started.

I no longer use HootSuite or bother scheduling tweets anywhere else, as I find that it doesn’t bring me traffic and they weren’t getting a lot of engagement. Honestly, I don’t like Twitter and pretty much use it to talk about tv shows, books, and share selfies with my dog. It is good to answer travel questions quickly, though.

I don’t share my posts on Facebook groups except for if I have one that really needs a boost, I will share on Female Travel Bloggers Facebook group. I mention that if someone pins my post, I’ll pin there’s back. It’s a thread called #BlogPostSaturday and everyone shares. Other than that, I find people always share in these groups but never look at other’s content.

I used Tailwind for about one year which is a tool to schedule new and old pins to your boards on Pinterest. It spreads them out on an interval so every few hours a pin goes out. But, as mentioned I hired a VA and she does this now on Board Booster.

She also goes through my new posts and pins any nice looking vertical images, which is something I used to do with all my posts.

Next: These are the weekly blogging tasks I do.

Weekly tasks are something I usually try to do on Monday so I’m all finished for the week.

The first one would be checking in with my web developer and share any issues I have with my blog or follow-up with anything we are working on. There’s always something techy going on behind the scenes. Right now, it’s working on my site load speed which has something to do with a caching plugin not working. I can’t really deal with this daily or I go crazy so I try to just work on this one day a week if there is work to be done. Sometimes I have to talk to my host and be a middleman which is always stressful. I was with Siteground, my favorite but when my blog passed I think 250,000 page views, I started having issues and while my Go Geek plan was cheap and awesome, their cloud plan is expensive. I had to change to a VPS server with a less expensive host, A2. I’m totally totally down with A2, yet. It’s been about 6 months and there’s nothing wrong with them but I don’t love them like I did Siteground. If you’re under 250,000 PV’s, stick with Siteground. But, if you’re a newbie and just starting a blog the best cheap option is Bluehost and they offer 2.95/month with this link.

I then focus on my freelance. I like to do my freelance writing all in one day. This is pretty much what my Mondays consist of. I usually submit them, invoice, and pitch for new articles all at once.

I can also do some shares on my Facebook group for India Travel Tips so once a week I need to go in there and schedule posts with tips, topics for discussion, and whatever else I want to share with the group. Scheduling in FB groups is a new feature!

Weekly, I plug my phone into my computer and move over any images I took that I want to save and add them to the right photo folder.

Lastly, these are the monthly things I try to do.

Once a month, I go through my “projects folder” which is where I keep emails from clients that invited me on trips and timing didn’t work out, or wanting to collaborate but said to reach out in August, etc. I see if any need follow-up on and do so.

I have just started a newsletter and the first one was July. So, writing this up each month and sending it out is a new thing I’m trying to do.

Monthly, I try to write at least one semi-boring SEO article I’ve put off. The most recent one was “Everything You Need To Know About Uber In India”. What this means is that it’s something people are Googling and I can answer. I use Keysearch to find keywords I might rank for.

Usually, by the end of the previous month, I get a list that grows of things I want to be done but I have too much writing to do or I don’t know how/have the patience for. I use Fiverr to get small tasks done (graphic design, better HTML email signature, and use Upwork when I need to hire someone for something a little bigger like fixing affiliate links in old posts and want to pay hourly. I used to do everything myself, the first full three years of blogging but after I got a web developer and saw the stress that came off me, I started outsourcing other things that I hated doing.

The last little thing I do is update my bucket list in case I can cross something off, and update my Work With Me page and Featured On page to update any news, partnerships, or stat changes.

What about the actual blogging?

Ah ha, that actually blogging… turns out there is a lot more other stuff that there is blogging! 

So, if I do a personal trip or press trip and have article ideas the first thing I do after a trip is write the article, edit images, and the get the post ready to go, including any hotel reviews and making pins for Pinterest. I then add it to my calendar (which always gets moved around).

So, I always have destination posts ready to go and scheduled at least a month out. Therefore, I don’t feel pressured to write more and during the week whenever I am in the mood, I’ll write other types of posts like This is India series, Ask My Anything series, general travel tips, sponsored articles where I’ve partnered with a brand, blogging, luggage reviews, or whatever else I have on my list of “things to write about” (like this post!).

I always edit all photos after any trip and delete at least 2/3 of them. I hate duplicates and wasting space on my computer! I have them edited and ready after a trip so I don’t need to do this very often. When I edit images, I also send the best ones to my phone so I have them ready for Instagram.

If you have any blogging questions, please leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them in my next blogging post.

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