I don’t usually blog about blogging. But since I am coming up on 8 years of blogging I thought it was time to share what I have learned over the years.
I think back on my original website I built back in 2009 and I cringe but it was a stepping stone to where I am now.
I manage everything about my website myself including setting up my hosting and plugins to creating all the content. These are my 10 essentials for blogging in 2017.
10 Essentials for Blogging in 2017
- Bluehost– Bluehost is my hosting provider. What I love about Bluehost is that they make it SO easy to set up a wordpress blog. Honestly it takes a couple of clicks and you are all set up. I have noticed more and more of the uber popular style bloggers are moving off of blogger and onto wordpress. If you haven’t done that yet 2017 is the year to do it! If you are just starting out as a blogger, just start out as a self hosted blog. The cost is pretty minimal and you 100% own your own blog. While I have experienced down times with them over the years the down times are few and far between. And Bluehost is always upfront when there are outages. Back when I was first starting out with my self-hosted wordpress site they walked me through and fixed some issues I created without even charging for their time.
- A great theme – I am always amazed at how much bloggers pay to have their websites set up for them. I get it time is precious and sometimes we just want someone else to get us started. But there are great templates out there that only cost about $50. I am personally using the Hemlock Theme from Solo Pine. It is fully responsive and great for featuring photos. I have also used the Florence Theme from Solo Pine but decided to make a change when I migrated everything to my new URL last October. The Solo Pine team is really quick to respond to questions too. You have the ability to personalize your theme with your own logo and sidebar widgets. These themes look modern and you haven’t spent hundreds to get something custom that really doesn’t look that different!
- Yoast SEO Plugin – WordPress has so many plugins and I have tried quite a few. But nothing floats my boat as much as Yoast. I started out building websites with SBI and they had a similar tool. I tried Yoast a few years ago and I found it confusing but they have made it much more user friendly since then. While I might not use this for all of my posts, it is a must use for evergreen content that will drive traffic to your site year after year. Basically Yoast SEO will make sure you are ticking all the boxes to rank well in Google.
- Pinerest – This is the year you need to dedicate some serious time to Pinterest. Pinterest has been my second highest referring to google for a while now but just in one month of upping my Pinterest game I have more than doubled how much traffic I get from Pinterest every day. Pinterest has always been described as another social media but really it is more like a visual search engine. That means unlike other social media which may not refer that much traffic anymore Pinterest can be a driver of traffic. I may be visible through other social media but I am dedicating most of my time to Pinterest. Follow me on Pinterest HERE.
- Tailwind – Using Tailwind has really upped my game when it comes to Pinterest. It forces me to pin more regularly and I can schedule my own content out far in advance. I have seen my follower count increase steadily and their analytics make it easy to track just that. I can also find out what pinterest boards are really working and which are not. This is especially important for group boards. I was a part of some large group boards that really were not helping me grow my presence at all. I was getting hardly any repins and zero traffic. Tailwind made this more obvious and I got on some group boards that might have fewer followers but result in many more repins. I have also joined in on some Tailwind tribes. While I find the tribes tend to skew towards mommy bloggers rather than style bloggers I have had some amazing virality thanks to my Tailwind Tribes. I highly recommend getting started with Tailwind!
- Pinterest Plugin – Spending time pinning your own content is just smart promotion but you also want to make it super easy for visitors to pin your content too. That means using a great pin it button on your images. I currently use the Jquery Pin it Button for Images plugin. In the past I have made a custom pin it button but right now I am using something that screams PINTEREST.
- Picmonkey – I have never bothered buying some fancy photo editing software. I have never seen the point when I can use picmonkey to make my photos look awesome. I do pay for the premium version so that I get access to the tools I want like curves, clone etc. You also get access to some premium fonts. Unless you are a professional photographer picmonkey is where it is at for what we bloggers do.
- Canva – I started using Canva to improve my pinterest images. I have some older blog content that I wanted to promote but the images were in no way optimized for pinterest. Vertical images do well on pinterest but sometimes it it better to have horrizontal images for our blogs or square images for instagram. I just import these images into canva and optimize for pinterest. I also like some of the fonts they have in Canva over those in Picmonkey so I will do my editing in picmonkey and then optimize in canva. I do not use a paid account at this time but if you want to use stock images this might be worth it for you.
- Power Point – I know what you are thinking, she must do quite a few blogging presentations to think power point is important for her blog! Well no. I did use power point back in the day to create a media kit but I don’t do that anymore. I actually use power point to create blog collages (like this or this). I mentioned above that I don’t pay for fancy photo software. So if you are looking for a way to create blog collages for free let me know and I will share my technique. The newer versions of power point let you remove the background of images so you can layer your images nicely. You can also do this sort of thing in Word I just find that it is easier to do in power point.
- DSLR Camera – Back when I first started sharing my outfits on my blog I had a point and shoot little camera. It was ok but not great. Everything changed when I got a DSLR camera. My blog photos were immensely better. I get that your phone camera has improved too but I am telling you your DSLR will be so much better. Having my own DSLR camera also allows me to take my own photos. I have a tripod and remote which means I don’t have to hire a photographer or rely on friends and family to take my blog photos. Having a friend who is interested in photography is great but not all of us have these. Buying the remote and tripod has been a life saver as I can blog when I want to. Another game changer was buying my portrait lens. This is the lense I exclusively use on my blog. I also am able to take amazing almost professional quality photos of my kids so it is a win there as well.
These are my 10 essentials for blogging in 2017. Do you have any to add? Share them in the comments below.