How the Heck Did You Do That?!? #21 Let’s clean up and refresh

January 10th, 2015 Kimberly Blogger Tips and Tricks 58 Comments

10th Jan

Blogger tips and tricks

Clean up and Refresh

It’s the start of a new year and the perfect time to look over your blog, update your social media and catch up on any maintenance. We are often busy creating new posts, reading and making sure that are blogs are up and running, that we often forget to clean things up, make sure links are working and updating archives.

Social Media Links

  • I am often surprised when a commentor doesn’t leave links or those links are outdated. I love to comment back and visit others.  I readily accept the challenge and try to find you but most will not and you’ve lost a potential follower.  Your social media links are so important. Do you know how I found some of my favorite blogs and closest bloggy friends? I was visiting another blog, saw their thoughtful comment and clicked on their icon. Do you know how often that leads to a broken link or no information? More often than you think.
  • Social icon image. If you are a blogger you should have an easily identifiable icon attached to commenting systems. Be sure and update Comment Luv, WordPress, Blogger, Intense Database, Gavitar etc with your image, and profile links. Comments are a viable way to promote your blog.

I challenge all of you to update your profiles. Double check all links and add any new relevant links.

Sidebars and Widgets

  • Remove the blogs you follow that don’t have images or links that work. Update favorites and add the new blogs you have discovered in 2014.
  • Remove any outdated challenge or images.
  • Declutter. A Good rule of thumb..your sidebar shouldn’t be longer then your post. (consider making pages for memberships, blog love and favorites. You can see mine in the About Me menu)
  • Check all links to social media. Make a habit of checking all of your links periodically.

Blog Maintenance

  • Update archives
  • Clean up Categories and Tags -go through index and check for duplicates, and misspellings.
  • Update your challenges for 2014/2015
  • Archive any old pages
  • Check Bloglovin’ and Feedly. Is your blog appearing more than once? Email them and combine profiles. Some of you have not one, not two but three blog profiles on Bloglovin’. One email can combine them and their stats!
  • Check blog for broken links. For WordPress users you can use the plugin Broken Line Checker on Blogger try this Broken Link Checker

Mini Makeover

  • Streamline your follows by creating uniform social follow icons. Try these free sites: Vandelay Design, Hongkit.com or Line 25 Eliminate ones you are no longer using and use icons whenever possible.
  • Change up the color, add a new header
  • If you are on WordPress organize this year with the UBB plugin and save time

Challenge Yourself

  • Is there something you’ve always wanted to learn to do on your blog? Make this the year you learn and then share your knowledge with a blog post.
  • Evaluate your blog -what works, which posts are most popular
  • Get inspired..mix up your reviews, add a discussion post, try something new
  • Set goals. Start with a few small ones, then set a year-end goal and a 3 year plan. Keep it fun.
Photo of kimbacaffeinate
About Kimberly
Kimberly is a coffee loving book addict who reads and listens to fictional stories in all genres. Whovian, Ravenclaw, Howler and proud Nonna. She owns and manages Caffeinated PR. The coffee is always on and she is ready to chat. BlueSky | Facebook | Instagram

58 Responses to “How the Heck Did You Do That?!? #21 Let’s clean up and refresh”

  3. Shari

    Oh, I have been cleaning up the blog all year after moving hosting providers and so many problems cropped up. Also I have been converting all our reviews into Ultimate Book Blogger plugin so they are easily indexed and searched. Still it takes time to do this and we had over 2000 reviews to convert. I don’t know if I will ever get done getting them in UBB, lol. Great post!

  4. Adriana

    I really need to work on cleaning up categories and tags because I don’t really like some of the tags I have but I feel like that is going to take forever.
    Otherwise I try to keep everything as updated as possible.
    Thanks for the reminders!

  5. Jennifer

    Haha, thanks for the reminder to update my challenge posts! I meant to do it last week, but I forgot (story of my life).

    These are all great tips.

  6. Michelle

    I really need to do some of this sometime soon. I did change the layout of my blog because I got tired of how the other one looked, it looks much cleaner now. Fantastic tips as always Kimba!

  7. Tyler H Jolley

    I’m terrible at this! I am more of a blogger follower than a blogger. I am not exactly technically savvy so my blog always looks very amateurish. Whenever I try to do an overhaul it just looks sad. Lol.

  8. Bookworm Brandee

    I keep a running list of things I should do to my blog, Kimba…you’ve added a few things! 😉 These are great ideas and most I hadn’t thought of. I feel like such a newbie about certain blogging/tech things and they are things I should really figure out. I did just update my review archive. Whew! That really needed to be done. *ha* Thanks for the tips!

  9. Michelle James

    There are so many things I want to do with my blog, but never seem to get around to. I am bookmarking this post. I so need to do so much of this. Thanks for the great tips.

  10. Kathy

    These are great tips! I especially like your rule of thumb for the side bar. I just need to clean up mine now. Thanks!!

  11. Lark

    Wonderful post, Kimba! I need to do a whole bunch of these, though I’ll have to spread them out with everything else I’ve got going on!

  12. Berls

    Great tips Kimba! I need to go through and do a bunch of clean up from 2014. It’s on my to do list for the bloggiesta next weekend! I’ll have to come back to this post when I’m making my list.

  13. Karen

    I didn’t archive ANY of my reviews last year :-(( I was barely hanging in there lol so I’ll just be sure to do better this year.

    I’m also going through and deleting old posts – like giveaways/cover reveals & trying to clean up categories and tags.

    Karen @ For What It’s Worth

  14. Candace

    It also amazes me how many people don’t have their social media links easy to find on their sidebar. That one drives me nuts.
    Very good points. I need to check over my sidebar and see if there’s anything that needs removed.

  16. Ramona

    Wow, Kimberly, you’re like THE GODDESS OF EFFICIENT BOOK-BLOGGING, “all lesser non-goddesses bow down to me”. This is a frightfully efficient post that scares the stuffing outta me (I’m a new blogger). Awesome piece, kudos!

  18. Braine Talk Supe

    Coolio! I have to discover bloglovin more this year, amongst all my social media accounts that’s the one I want to utilize the most. Thanks for the tip, I don’t know why I have a blog and personal profile.

  19. Katherine

    Great tips! I need to get better about updating my images on commenting. And it’s a good reminder about checking links periodically.

  21. Christy

    I still have about a year and a half of archives to update. Every so often I go on an archiving spree. lol.

  24. blodeuedd

    That first thing, I agree so much! Not to mention when someone enters a contest and I click the profile and nothing

  25. LuAnn Braley

    I pinned this post to give me kind of a checklist of things to work on during the upcoming mini-Bloggiesta.

    My Coke Zero will have to count for my caffeine right now (I’ll have coffee later), but I’m supplementing with Godiva milk chocolate salted caramel dipped in Kentucky Bourbon Caramel Sauce. I hope that passes the decadent snack quota.

  26. Nicci

    I really need a new website design. I agree about Bloglovin’ and Feedly. These are great tips, Kimba.

  28. Kristin

    I’ve been slowly going through old posts from a few years ago and updating them, adding featured images for “related posts” plug in, and just cleaning them up since they got jacked up when I switched and bought my own domain a couple years ago. It’s been a slow process since there are a ton of posts to go through.

  29. Liza Barrett

    Wonderful post; I’ve just moved my blog to a new domain, so a lot of your tips will make a great checklist to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything — Thanks!
    ~Liza

  30. Nikki-ann

    What a great post! Definitely a reminder that us bloggers need to keep things up-to-date. Something for me to do tomorrow, I think 🙂

  31. Amber Elise

    I needed this Kim. I’m apart of a Book Blogger Organization challenge but I have NOT been keeping up with it at all. I need to go back and declutter EVERYTHING in my online life.

  32. Kathryn

    These kind of posts were the very first ones I ever read on your blog and loved many of them. My weakest point is broken links at the moment, when I put my blog into one of the sites Ashley mentioned – I er.. had quite a few. Maybe I should check them out a bit more.

  34. Rita

    Wonderful post! I too am distressed when someone comments on my blog and I can’t find a link to a blog or Goodreads or somewhere I can visit them and see more of their interests.

    I even have that problem with some of the folks whose comments I see on other blogs and I want to connect with them. If your profile goes to google+, as some do– that’s fine– but please put your blog link on that site. You’d be surprised at how many do not make it accessible.

  35. Diana Leigh

    Yes, great tips! I agree it’s so important to link back to your blog (or web home) when you leave a comment. That’s how I found my good book friends.

  37. lisa thomson-the great escape

    Great tips. Thank you, Kimberly! I’ve checked all my links and there are a few broken ones. My instagram link isn’t working for some reason. I will check out those plug ins you mention. Do you know much about linking your work to google+ authorship? It might be something worth looking into. Great housekeeping post and thanks for the 2015 inspiration! 🙂

    • kimbacaffeinate

      According to Google they are nixing the Google authorship schema. However you can html or verify yourself through jetpack or Yoast plugins.

  38. Kay

    This post is perfect for the new year! Love it. I will have to save this post for reference next time I put some time away for blog maintenance.

    Sometime in the very near future I plan to doll myself up a little and take a new cute profile pic for everything, because my photo on Twitter is kind of out dated and not very well done. Not to mention I don’t even have any photos uploaded for my comments, I am however planning to make a blog button very soon. I am having my blog totally re-designed in February. I am super excited!!!

    Kay @ It’s a Book Life

  41. Ashley

    I would be lost without the UBB plugin. It is helpful in so many ways. I’m headed over to the Broken Line Checker now. Thanks for keeping us straight!!!

  42. Melanie Simmons

    These are all great suggestions.

    I’m with you about the social icons. I like to share posts and I like to use people’s twitter handle when I do so. Sometimes I can’t find one. That just amazes me. Or sometimes, I do find them, but their buried three quarters of the way down the sidebar under other crap that no cares about. I think social media is one of the most important things for a blogger, therefore should be listed in the top quarter of the sidebar on every page easy to find.

    • kimbacaffeinate

      Share buttons for a posts are a must. Yes I am often surprised by placement.

  43. Lola

    I often don’t get a picture when commenting on someone’s blogs (I think I have the standard wordpress logo here as well), but I have no idea were to upload a picture so that it shows up. On my own blog my own profiel pick shows up and I am pretty sure I have uploaded a profile pick on both wordpress and gravitar. So I am not sure what the problem is.

    I cleaned up my sidebar recently, but probably wil do so again soon, I like showcasing my favourite blogs, but I am not sure if that really get’s other bloggers to visit them. Maybe I should make a page for that as well. Will think about it.

    Great tips Kimba!

      • Lola

        I finally figured out why my gravatar image didn’t show up. My garvatar profile included e-mail addres A, while I always use e-mail addres B to comment. So that’s why my image didnt show up, so I added e-mail addres B to my profile as well. So my image should show up from now on. Thanks for encouraging me to finally look into this!

  47. Trish

    The one I really must do is the broken link checker. I will download the plugin today and see just how bad it is! I’m afraid!

  48. Shelley Munro

    A timely reminder. I definitely need to do some of this housekeeping cleanup on my blog. I’m working on a blogging plan, so at least my thoughts are heading in the right direction!

  49. Sara Viti

    Amazing post ! Thank you !
    I really want to work on my blog this year, change the design, keep it updated and try some new discussion post !

    Thank you for the tips ^^

  50. Alreem

    Great Post Kimberly! you always bring a really good tips and useful advice 🙂

  51. Stacy (StacyHgg)

    I love these posts Kimberly! Great tips 🙂
    I use the UBB plugin and it is a lifesaver! I literally moved to a self-hosted wordpress site JUST so I could use it, LOL
    And you’re right I have been neglecting checking my broken links so I’m going to go do that now!