Blogging at University | Tips and Tricks

If any of you have ever been to University, or know someone who’s been to University (or College if you live in the US), then you will know that we are busy people! University students are coming up to the dreaded exam time! And people become very busy. Having two internships, two committee positions, being involved in numerous societies AND having a degree gets very very busy indeed, then pile on top of that a blog and a YouTube channel and soon things get out of control. So, here are my tips and tricks for keeping up with both the blog and the degree.

Plan

This will link to the next point a little. But this is blog specific. At the beginning of either the week or the month – depending on how organised or not you are – plan every blog post; even if it’s just ‘make up review’. This will ease the panic feeling you get when you can’t think of a blog post and then you spend hours scrolling through random blogs for inspiration! (Trust me, I’ve been there) Planning at the beginning of the month/week will keep you focused and help save time later. And it also links nicely onto the next point.

Put apart time to mass photograph

Now, this probably sounds a bit bizarre. But, what I mean is take photos for more than one blog post at a time. Then you don’t have to reset lighting, reset your background or any other thing you have to set up every time you take your photos. Then when you’ve done that you will have all your photos for the next few blog posts. This saves so much time for me, and saving time here means there are more times for other things.

Prioritise

This may sound very obvious, but it’s important. You need to work out what needs to be done now, and what you can leave till later. To do this I keep two to do lists. One generic one on the back page of my notebook with the due date next to each one – this list will look insane and long and daunting and might make you despair in life, but we will fix that. Then at the beginning of every day, when I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do is look through that list, but actual diary (with dates and meetings and lectures in) and then create a daily to do list, or even daily timetable, depending how busy I am. I make this list doable and then I will finish it.

When making this list, make sure to put things on that NEED to be done today, and then when you have done this you can move on to other things. However addicting your blog can be, your degree is important, it’s why you’re at University, and in England you’re paying £9000 for it!!

Find Somewhere You Work

I found this the most useful thing this year! Last year (during Freshers) I used to work in my room, and did all my work there. And while this was nice, and food was able to be on constant supply, I found myself procrastinating A LOT, and so I never really got much done. However, the library for me is too quiet, I end up just getting bored, and so I stare out the window and do nothing there. So, I found a happy medium in the Union cafe/bar/restaurant called ‘The Bridge’ and I now live in there, and believe it or not, I get a lot more done. Now, this place will completely differ depending on who you are, some people will work better in their room, but I think it’s something to find out as soon as possible!

Set aside time for BlogLovin’

Right, this is specific for me, I use BlogLovin’ for finding people’s blogs, and I can spend hours on here. So I found out this very quickly, leave time aside for this. If you say to yourself ‘you can scroll through at 5pm’ (or whatever time works) then you will be less likely to find yourself there before you know it. Seriously, it works for me!

I hope you enjoyed these tips, they’re ones that work for me and I thought you would appreciate learning what I do to try and keep on top of things.

Katie x