After 10 years of blogging- through a lot of trial and error, I’ve found some great resources.
Since I often get the same questions from both new and experienced bloggers about what I use or can recommend, I created this page for other bloggers in an effort to share what worked best for me!
Some of these are affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase or sign up through these links, I might make a commission.
If you’re new to blogging or just deciding if you should start a blog at all, I recommend doing a little research.
This book, for beginner bloggers came highly recommended to me from a few people I know who recently started their blogs.
My first (and most important tip) learn from me and my mistakes and start out on WordPress NOT Blogger…
Scroll down for the rest of my tips:
Photos and photo editing:
If I’m taking my own photos, I take them with my iPhone! I have the latest edition iPhone X and love the camera on this so much. I try my best to only shoot in natural light, but in a pinch, I’ve found these fun little phone ring lights are pretty amazing!
For editing, I use the VSCO app, I bought a few of the extra filters in the app. I tend to always use S2, but I recommend playing around with the app and getting comfortable with what works best for you.
BLOG GROWTH STRATEGIES:
I tend to listen to a lot of podcasts.
Currently I’m loving The Simple Pin Podcast, Fohr Ground and the Influencer Business one by Trove.
The Theory of Content podcast is one I’ve just started listening to and the advice has been so insightful!
It’s produced by the Mediavine ad agency, which is the ad group I’m with. However, you don’t need to be with this group to take advantage of their very informative podcast. Highly recommend!
Milotree– I just started using this plug in which creates a pop up on my home page and it’s been SO great! HIGHLY recommend for organically growing Pinterest, Instagram and your Email list! Can’t recommend it enough!
Tailwind-I feel like I’m so late to the Tailwind party, and I don’t know why I waited so long to join! Anyway, for those not familiar – it’s a social media platform used for growing your Pinterest following. As a design blogger with a lot of imagery on my site, I rely on Pinterest to drive traffic here. So, I’m CRAZY about Tailwind! It saves me so much time every day! It was a little confusing at first, but hang in there, if I can figure it out…you can too! Get your free 30 day trial here.
There’s a million different apps for scheduling Instagrams and Tweets, but I don’t use any of them. I’m not too active on Twitter, and for Instagram I had a business account, which is now a “creative account” – it lets me see a lot of stats, so I just try to post once a day, during my account’s peak hours, usually in the evenings.
SO that’s it in a nutshell! If you have something very specific you’d like answered, please leave me a comment or send me an email! Hope you found this helpful!
xx,
Sue
