5 Blog Maintenance Things You AREN’T Doing

5 Blog Maintenance Things You Aren't Doing

Welcome to my series “How to NOT Suck at Blogging.”  I decided to start this after numerous requests for written tutorials from bloggers I have helped.  The title is meant to be a joke, but if you suck at blogging (like I did when I first started) I hope you are able to find some useful and helpful information in the series. If not, well, don’t say I never did nothing nice for ya! Here’s a funny thing about blogging:  No matter who you are or what platform you are on, you have to eventually know the basics of how the internet, HTML coding, and servers work.  It’s not to say you have to be an expert and we all choose how much or how little we want to do on our own.  But the fact is, not having some very basic knowledge can really hurt you. Did you know Continue reading

How to Make a Blank Square for Blog Design Using PicMonkey

How to Make a Blank Square for Blog Design Using PicMonkey

This is a quickie tutorial because I think everyone needs to have a plane blank square.  And it’s going to come in handy later on in my tutorials. I use PicMonkey for this, but of course, if you have Photoshop or something like that, this tutorial is unnecessary for you.   First, hop onto PicMonkey and open ANY photo.  Literally any photo will do, regardless of size or color. Then crop the image.  PicMonkey has present crops you can use, so select the square one and plop it somewhere on the picture.  Size doesn’t matter. Crop the image so that you have a square.  At this point, you can opt to resize it if you’d like.  I personally keep mine as a 150X150px since that’s a pretty standard size for blog use. Next, go to the Overlays section and select a geometric overlay.  Square works best.  And make the overlay Continue reading

Ditch Passionfruit and Run Your Own Ad Shop

Run Your Own Ad Shop with Adrotate

As nearly every blogger on the planet is aware, Passion Fruit recently switched how they are doing things and now charge a monthly fee.  Sure they offered a discounted annual rate to those who were already using their service, but if you are like me, the price wasn’t worth it, or, like many of my friends, you paid it even though it was too expensive for a lack of better options. I moved to Adproval, but it’s such a new service that I have found it still has far too many kinks to work out.  I also found that their set up was confusing for those who were wanting to buy my ads and it ended up causing a lot of problems.  I quickly saw my ad sales drop. Well, this month, I had had enough.  There just HAD to be a better option out there.  But I still didn’t Continue reading

Five Things That Are Missing From Your Sidebar

5 things missing from your sidebar

Welcome to my series “How to NOT Suck at Blogging.”  I decided to start this after numerous requests for written tutorials from bloggers I have helped.  The title is meant to be a joke, but if you suck at blogging (like I did when I first started) I hope you are able to find some useful and helpful information in the series. If not, well, don’t say I never did nothing nice for ya! I was originally saving this topic for later in the series, but after the week I had, I had to move it up.  So, let’s talk about your sidebar. Your sidebar is prime real estate.  Let me tell you that it can make or break whether or not someone wants to come back to your blog.  A cluttered and busy sidebar draws the readers eye to it and away from your content.  Given that your content Continue reading

4 MORE Blogging Etiquette Rules You Don’t Know You Are Breaking

Welcome to my series “How to NOT Suck at Blogging.”  I decided to start this after numerous requests for written tutorials from bloggers I have helped.  The title is meant to be a joke, but if you suck at blogging (like I did when I first started) I hope you are able to find some useful and helpful information in the series. If not, well, don’t say I never did nothing nice for ya! Last week I gave you a list of four blogging etiquette rules that you probably didn’t even know you were breaking.  This week, I have four more for you. These rules might seem simple or silly, but they are the most common rules I see getting broken by new bloggers who don’t know any better and seasoned bloggers who SHOULD know better. Don’t comment on stuff for the sole purpose of gaining a new follower.  I love Continue reading

4 Blogging Etiquette Rules You Don’t Know You Are Breaking Part 1

Four Blogging Etiquette Rules You Don't Know You Are Breaking

Welcome to my series “How to NOT Suck at Blogging.”  I decided to start this after numerous requests for written tutorials from bloggers I have helped.  The title is meant to be a joke, but if you suck at blogging (like I did when I first started) I hope you are able to find some useful and helpful information in the series. If not, well, don’t say I never did nothing nice for ya! So, let’s talk blogging etiquette: One thing that grinds my gears is blogging etiquette.  That seems really stupid, but to be honest, many of the etiquette rules we follow are for a really good reason.  Some are just you being courteous, but some things can have negative effects on SEO, numbers, or other things that professional bloggers (and semi-professional bloggers like me) rely on. I could write whole posts on commenting, guest posting and other individual Continue reading

How to Use Hootsuite: The Basics

Hootsuite Basics for Bloggers- How to NOT Suck at Blogging Series// A Boy, A Girl, and the Marine Corps

Welcome to my series “How to NOT Suck at Blogging.”  I decided to start this after numerous requests for written tutorials from bloggers I have helped.  The title is meant to be a joke, but if you suck at blogging (like I did when I first started) I hope you are able to find some useful and helpful information in the series. If not, well, don’t say I never did nothing nice for ya! Hootsuite is one of my favorite blogging tools.  I signed up for it ages ago and didn’t immediately recognize its brilliance in my life until much later.  But really, don’t we all want a simplified way to share our posts, images, memes and info across all our social media at once? My blog auto posts to Facebook and Twitter, but I never did find a great way to autopost to Google Plus, enter Hootsuite!  I mostly Continue reading

How I Doubled My Pinterest Follows in Three Weeks

doubledmypinterest

I’ve been asked to write a series about beginning blogging.  I’ve decided to call it: How to Not Suck at Blogging. So you can consider this post “How to Not Suck at Blogging Part 1.” But really, here’s how I doubled my Pinterest Followers in three weeks. There is a lot of information out there about why Pinterest matters, not just for fun, but as a tool to help promote your blog or business. That also means that there are a million blog posts full of tips on how to get more pins, re-pins, likes, follows and comments.  And I have probably read half of them.  And nothing had really worked amazingly well.  So I decided to test out some other ways to go about utilizing Pinterest to gain followers. The following tips are the things I tested over a three week period of time.  Using these tips, I doubled Continue reading

Save a Tree, Use Evernote Instead of a Blog Planner

Saveatreeevernote

I don’t want you to think for a moment that I don’t plan or think about my posts ahead of time.  Blogging takes work if you are trying to turn your “little hobby,” as my husband puts it, into a part time or even full time job.  You have to spend time planning, thinking about topics, engaging your readers, and all the little nuances of the blogging world to make it work. As a result of this, blog planners have become all the rage.  Every blog that is run by someone who does crafts, design, or has Photoshop, has created a blog planner.  Some are free, others aren’t.  And while these planners are beautiful, and I have downloaded a few of them, I have found that there is really no purpose.  The exception to this statement is people who prefer to write things down vs. having them on your computer. Continue reading

Organizing Your Blog Posts

stackofbinders3

I know that I’m horribly OCD about organization and cleaning… I’m actually OCPD. It’s a real disorder and I’ve been diagnosed with it. Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder is sort of like OCD’s wimpy cousin. It means that I still obsess and agonize about stuff, I still lose sleep if things aren’t in the right place and I still have anxiety associated with it, but I don’t think people will die if I don’t touch the door knob five times and then spin in a circle. It doesn’t impact my life nearly as negatively or as significantly as having OCD can either. But, since I’m big on looking at the bright side, a lot of good things come out of my little compulsive habit, such as blog organization and research. When it comes to trying something new, you will never meet a more prepared, well researched person in the world. And Continue reading