6 Blogging New Year Resolutions For 2018

We’ve had never really had big ambitions for the old blog, we just travel, take photos and write about it. It started 3 and a little bit years ago and we are proud to say it has grown a lot since then. It was never our intention to earn money from it, work with mahoosive brands on it or be invited on press trips because of it. Yet all those things have happened and continue to happen and we are blown away really.

We love having our little piece of the web to write about our adventures. The fact that anyone other than Chris’ mum reads it fills us with pride. So thank you for taking the time to read this today. Because we have just gone with the flow we have never set aims or objectives for the blog. However, as we prepare to wave goodbye to 2017 and welcome 2018, we thought it would be a great opportunity to set some New Year resolutions for it. We then plan to review them at the end of the year to see if we have met them or at least made moves in the right direction. So here they are, our 6 blogging New Year resolutions.

Continue To Travel

This is obviously the main one when it comes to our blogging new year resolutions as without travel we would not have content for the blog. Plus what’s a travel blog without travel content? We are lucky enough to have the luxury of travel in our lives. It is something we do not and never would take for granted. We work hard in order to be able to play hard. Therefore we have some amazing trips planned and opportunities in the pipeline. It looks like 2018 is certainly not going to disappoint travel-wise.

The Direction of The Blog

Eat Sleep Love Travel is first and foremost a travel blog and will continue to be so. However, in 2018 I would like to add a lot more personal posts into the mix. These will include travel products we use, what we pack posts – things like that. It’s important to us that our blog is great source of information but doesn’t read like a travel review site. We want our personalities to shine through more and we feel this would be a great way to achieve that.

We will definitely carry on with our Guest Blogger Interview series. This is because we love getting to know fellow bloggers. However, we will no longer be accepting guest posts (some exceptions may apply) no matter how well written they are or how interesting the subject. We feel they are diluting our blog. Thank you to all our guest posters over the past 3 years. Your work has been appreciated and it will remain on our site.

We will, however, be deleting some posts. There are a number of posts that we have not been happy with for a while but never had the bottle to delete them. Well new year, new start. Therefore we’ll be sifting through all 625 of them ASAP and sending some to the trash can.

Engage More On Twitter

Twitter is by far our favourite social media channel. It always has been since the inception of Eat Sleep Love Travel. It is also the social media channel that we use the most. However, recently that had started to wain. This is purely because of the lack of time to engage. During the first two years we were regular participants in the #culturetrav (Thursdays at 7.30pm GMT) and #pttravel (Sunday at 6.00pm GMT) Twitter chats but personal circumstances this year have meant that we can actually count on each hand how many times we have been involved in each during 2017. Therefore, 2018 is the year we will re-engage. The chats are full of amazing bloggers and we find we pick up so many tips and recommendations from them not to mention new places to add to our ever-growing bucket list. Feel free to join in – everyone is welcome!

Get To Grips With Pinterest

We set up a Pinterest account when we set the blog up however we haven’t got a clue how to use it. Apparently it’s very addictive once you get to grips with it. We’ve also heard from many bloggers that they receive loads of traffic from it. Now, figures have never been a priority for us, however, if you’re going to take the time to write something, you do want people to read it, right? Therefore we have made it one of our blogging new year resolutions and 2018 is the year we plan to get to grips with Pinterest, so if you have any helpful posts please feel free to send them our way as we don’t really even know where to start.

Also, if you want to leave your Pinterest handle (is it even called a handle on Pinterest?) please feel free to do so in the comments section below and we’ll make sure we give you a follow. Or you can follow us directly here – although don’t expect any major action there just yet, it’s coming, pinky promise.

Persevere With Instagram

Instagram reminds me of Ryanair Air – it’s a love/hate relationship. I detest it but can’t stop using it. Our follower count has dropped by at least 2000 in the past 6 months and engagement on our photos is laughable. Maybe it’s the algorithm or maybe our content just isn’t up to scratch. Whatever it is I’m still going to use it because I do enjoy it and I love having a nosey at other people’s photos. So from now on Instagram is my fun social media channel of choice. Especially Insta Stories, which we love. Maybe we should look at various Instagram advertising agencies who could help us build our engagement rate and the number of followers.

The snap chat phase sort of passed us by but we are certainly making up for it now we have discovered Insta Stories. We love adding to ours (when we remember), especially when travelling and we love watching other people’s. We still haven’t built up the courage to talk on ours yet, we personally don’t think the world is ready for our broad Yorkshire tones, maybe 2018 might be the year that changes too?

Meet More Bloggers

What did your mum warn you – don’t make friends with people on the internet! Well, it turns out there are some jolly lovely folk on there and we are lucky to have met a few of them over the past couple of years across the world. We struggle with events as they tend to be down South and as we both work full time, taking annual leave to attend an event/conference is something that we’re just not prepared to do – they are our precious travel days. So I guess following through on this resolution is going to be tough unless we get invited on group press trips or more events are up north at the weekend like Icelolly’s Blog At The Beach always is (cheers Icelolly!)

I (Vicky) will be flying solo to the next one on the 16th January so if you are too and are a tad nervous or your social anxiety is off the chart at the thought of walking in on your own, get in touch and we can always meet up for a drink beforehand – I am one of the jolly lovely folk on the internet, I promise (well at least I think I am!)

Fingers crossed we can make headway on some of these blogging new year resolutions soon. Who knows where we will be this time next year! Do you set yourself New Year resolutions for your blog? Let us know in the comments section and feel free to leave a link.

Happy New Year – Here’s to a great 2018!

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