My Blogging Tools
Blogging is an amazing world that I’m so privileged and lucky to be able to say I’m a part of. I’m coming up to my one year anniversary for my blog and even though I’m still very much a newbie, there are so many things I’ve learnt. It’s a world you enter where there are endless possibilities. I've never really talked about my blogging tools but I'd like to share them with you.
Really, all you need to get started is a love for writing and creating content, enthusiasm and something you believe in
Planning
Everyone in the blogging world is aware that planning is crucial in terms of creating and maintaining your blog presence. But this is a lot easier said than done.
I start off by writing everything down in my notebook. I used to have a list of post ideas on my iPad, but I found it easier to get them down in writing first and then write them up in more detail on Evernote. This little app is an absolute life saver. My next step is to get a notebook for each topic I post about.
Once I’ve got the basis of some ideas, I transfer them onto the relevant note on Evernote, whether that’s Fashion, Beauty, Inspiration, Lifestyle or Food – see the pattern? This allows me to keep track of the posts I’ve got for different topics and write down exactly what I need to do for each of them. Plus you can add tick boxes next to each point and cross off things as you go along.
Essentials
My blogging platform used to be Blogger which is just so easy to use. It’s allowed me to have everything on my blog layout that I want and it’s so easy to write and publish posts on there.
If I’m ever blogging on my iPad and not my laptop I usually write up my posts on Pages. This is just great for keeping all my posts in one place and it’s so easy to jazz up each post as well with bullet points, italics, sub headings and more. What’s even better is then being able to transfer my posts to Dropbox, where I can access them on my laptop and either finish them off or just have a proof read and publish them.
Your editorial calendar is unique to you. It’s something that you’ve just got to practice by trial and error
I use Sunrise which is an app for my iPad, but you can also get it online too. You can see either a weekly view or monthly view and the weekly view allows you to add tasks by the hour, which is great when you’ve got a few things going on in your day. I’ve tried out a few calendars in my blogging journey and this is the one that’s working the best for me.
Another life saver is Buffer. This little beauty allows you to schedule all your tweets and Facebook posts for the day. You can set up a schedule so you’re sending out links to different posts at the same time throughout the day, or mix it up on a day to day basis. Once you’ve scheduled everything, you don’t need to worry about it.
Social Media
My final tools are my social media channels. They really help to support your blog, find other bloggers and just interact with people on so many different levels.
Twitter is my favourite – you can find me tweeting here. I’ve recently made a list of all the bloggers I follow on Twitter which makes interacting with people and keeping up with their blogs so much easier than just scrolling through my entire feed. Feel free to subscribe to it! I’ve also just started taking part in Twitter chats. I really really recommend taking part in these. You meet so many people in the space of an hour and get to talk about all sorts.
Instagram is another one I use on a daily basis – you can follow me here. I love reading about people’s lives but seeing pictures to go with them is even better.
Google + and Facebook are two others I use quite regularly – you can follow me here and here. I’m still getting used to these but they’re great for sharing content.
Pinterest is another favourite (you can follow me here), because not only can you create loads of mood boards, you can also pin your blog posts too. Finally there’s good old Bloglovin, which basically does what it says on the tin – you make a list of all the blogs you love and get their posts straight to your inbox. You can follow me here.
So there you have my essentials blogging tools. I hope you find use for some of them!
Do you use any of these? What are your essential blogging tools?