I know I am all about that digital life, doing most of my writing a designing via my laptop, but the truth is that paper is still a major part of my creative process. As much as I love the clean, sleek feel of a Macbook Air under my fingers as I type away endlessly, writing in notebooks can be even more satisfying and specifically very cathartic for me as I pour my mind out onto paper. Lately, I have been spending chunks of time working on a book that I hope to publish sometime later this year. Although I use my favorite piece of software, Scrivener, to organize most of my writing, it’s been my time with pen and paper that have really helped me organize my thoughts for this longer, more meaningful piece. That is why I love having beautiful notebooks and notepads around me for making lists, doing quick sketches and writing out my thoughts before I hash them out in Scrivener.
A lot of people are always asking me for stationery recommendations, so I thought it would be fun for me to curate a few of my favorite notebooks and notepads from around the web. Some of these I already own and some of these I am simply lusting after, but if you’re looking for a fresh new notebook to crack into for some writing or note taking of your own, I think these are a beautiful escape from the ordinary notebook or journal. Click through the carousel below for more information on this lovely collection!
Friday is Independence Day in the US, which means we have ourselves a short week and a 3 day weekend! YAY! I love three day weekends because they are like mini vacations spread throughout the year. They can be a great time to catch up on sleep, binge watch your favorite TV shows or finish a home project. So, here are my tips to making the most of your long weekend!
1. Plan Your To-Dos before the weekend begins: Before the weekend starts, I often find myself thinking how exciting it is to have a three day weekend ahead of me! THREE DAYS OFF! That seems like so much time to do WHATEVER I want! But inevitably by Sunday night I find myself wondering where the weekend has gone? It’s nearly over? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!! I think you know the feeling! So, if you want to fill your weekend with fun and awesome things to do, you should probably plan out your time before the weekend starts! You don’t have to make an hour by hour schedule, but have a general idea of what you want to do and who you want to do it with. Make sure plans with friends are hammered out before the weekend begins so you spend more time having fun and less time getting people to agree on dinner reservations!
2. Put your space in order:Whether you have your own place or share with roommates or family members, get your space in order and tidy up before the fun begins. Get your chores done, send off your bills, and get your life in order so that you can maximize your weekend time and not have to worry about the minutiae of daily life for approximately 72 hours!
3. Have at least one adventure: By this I mean, leave the house at least once! Yes, you can break from your Orange is the New Black marathon weekend to run out for pizza or something, but make sure to get some fresh air! Lord knows you don’t get enough of it in the normal work week!
4. Manage your expectations: I know I am totally guilty of over hyping my weekends before hand and then feeling a major crash when everything doesn’t work out perfectly or when I don’t feel like I have done enough! Give yourself reasonable expectations of how fun/exciting/productive/amazing your weekend will be so that you can focus on enjoying everything!
5. Take time to breath and relax: The weekend is about decompressing from a week of work, and long weekends give you even more time to decompress. Make sure to relax and just enjoy your weekend, whatever it may bring so that you are recharged for work and life in general once the work week rolls back around!
How do you like to spend your three day weekends? Share more of your tips for a great three day weekend by letting us know in the comments!
Since the response to my blogging advice has been so positive over the last few weeks and months, I decide it was about time for me to put together a full blown Blogging Resource Guide to keep everything organzied and the information easy to find!
If you are just starting out with a new blog or feel stuck in an old one, I suggest running through my Blogging 101 series to go over the basics, firm up your blog’s foundation and learn some new tips and tricks that will help you save time and money with your site and even bring in an income from it!
If you are reading this, I can only assume that you are either one of my regular readers or you have been searching online looking for information on blogging! If you identify with the latter, you most likely have been thinking about starting a blog or have done so, and hopefully I can help you find some sort of inspiration or direction if you want it! Blogs are a wonderful form of media that many people enjoy both writing and reading. What you may not know is that the history of blogs is actually rooted in a very simple notion. The word blog itself actually stands for web log, in other words, blogs were initially created to be places where people basically kept or shared information. That’s it! The earliest blogs were really more like online journals, where people would just write diary style entries about whatever they wanted. Today, blogs are usually a little more complex, with the most popular blogs actually diving into specific topics or niches and posts are often filled with pictures and videos to supplement the written content. But let’s go back to the concept of the web log as a place for people to simply chronicle their lives and/or interests. Blogs are a wonderful form of expression. For many they are a creative outlet or hobby that allows them to impart their knowledge, expertise or opinions on the internet. Although many blogs are ran as hobbies, others are ran as or to support businesses, helping people develop skills and network with customers, clients or colleagues.
There are many platforms available on the internet for bloggers to choose from when setting up a blog. To be completely honest though, most blogging professionals would tell you that there is really only one solid choice to go with for setting up your site and that is self-hosted WordPress. Self-hosted means that you buy your domain name (for example, my domain ishttp://www.StrangeCharmed.com) and you purchase a hosting package from a hosting service (Blue Host, Host Gator, etc) and you set your site up via the WordPress.org framework, giving you nearly unlimited control over your site and the way it looks and works. Now, going the self-hosted route is going to cost you money, perhaps about $50-$100 a year depending on the services you choose but it is the only way to have total control over your website. Obviously, for someone starting out, making a decision to spend this sort of money on a site that isn’t making you any money yet may seem a little frivolous but it is the most highly recommended route if you are serious about your blog, growing your audience and earning any sort of income based from your website.
Although I will be giving you tips and tricks throughout this blogging series, there is one single factor that will determine the success of your blog and that is your content. No matter what your blog looks like, or what the name of your blog is, or what camera you use to take your photos, its your posts that will attract your readers and keep them coming back for more. Now, I know that many of you reading this may not be looking to create the next million dollar blog, but whatever your goals are for blogging, your content is the key to fulfilling them!
Being a blogger is like having another job. Since I already work one full-time, I need to be very organized when it comes to my focus for my blog, my posting schedule and the time I allot to managing and responding to emails, comments and social media outlets. Now, I don’t work off a strict schedule for every hour of my day. Generally, I do what I can when I can, but I have a few organizational tools that help me stay on track, and make it easy for me to maximize my time.
Since I began this Blogging 101 series, I have covered a lot of fun motivational topics to help you get started blogging, and now its time for some utilitarian type posts. This week I am geeking out to talk to you about the software and hardware you are going to need to get started. Good thing is, if you are reading this, you most likely have much of what I am going to suggest. Then next week, I will be going in-depth with a list of some more advanced items you may want to pick up if you are hoping to bump up your blog and produce some major content. But for now, as promised, the basics!
Last week I discussed the basic hardware and software elements you would need to start a blog sufficiently. Now, its time for me to dig a little deeper and talk about some items you may want to think about if you plan to be a dedicated blogger! Of course, owning or using any of these items may not make you the worlds best blogger, but to me, these things are extras that can either help you save additional time and energy or help you stand out from other blogs out there in cyber space! Let’s begin!
Social media is one of those things that when it comes to blogging, is really just like real life. In real life as you probably already know, everyone is all about the Facebook and the Instagramming, and even your grandmother has a Twitter handle, so if you’re not signed up and actively using it, you’re missing out! It’s the same for bloggers! Of course, bloggers have the extra pressure of having to make sure their Tweets, Facebook Posts and Instagram pics are well thought out and put together, but luckily, I am here to give you some pointers so that posting and engaging in social media is a breeze!
If you are thinking that blogging has more to do with writing than pictures, you are dead wrong. There was a reason I listed a camera as a piece of necessary hardware in my basics guide, and that’s because pictures are a major component of blogs and blog posts in 2014! Think about it, do you read any amazing blogs that use images in their posts? Are those images relevant and interesting aids to the content itself? I’m pretty sure that would be a yes and a yes! Why is that? Because people love pictures. Images tell stories just as much as your blog posts do, and in this era of the 5 second attention span (thanks Twitter & Instagram) leading with a great image is the best way to capture someones attention so that they want to stick around to read your posts. Now, if you haven’t been very interested in photography before and are totally worried now that you don’t have the right equipment or skills to add great photos to your blog, worry not! With a few simple tips, I am going to instruct you on how to take great photos for your blog no matter what your current skill level with a camera!
If you have been following this series since the beginning, you now know how to start a blog, how to create great content and how to use social media to get your message out to your audience! Now, its time to discuss networking! Networking with your peers as well as networking with possible sponsors, customers or clients. You may have started a blog as a means to promote a business, or just to express yourself and have fun. You may have some specific financial goals you are looking to hit or perhaps just want the validation of knowing your content is reaching a certain of number of people. The best tool you have to make these things happen, is networking!
I have chosen the subject of monetization as the final installment of my series for a very specific purpose. First of all, I believe that blogging as we know it today was rooted in a true passion for writing and sharing as a means of creative outlet and that the monetization of blogs was something that came after. Because of this, I believe that you should first and foremost wish to run a blog for the love of it! If you don’t love what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it, and people will be able to tell if your heart isn’t in it. That leads me to my second reason for publishing this topic last, because it is hard work to make money from blogging and if your heart isn’t in it, you won’t ever make it long enough to earn a decent income. So, start your blog for you, as a hobby and/or creative outlet. Put your heart into your content and feel a true passion for what you post, and then monetize strategically!
So, after you have made it through the Blogging 101 series, I also have a few topic specific posts that should help you make your way to blogging success!
Since this week’s installment of my Blogging 101 series was all about Choosing a Platform and Identity for your blog, I decided that I should probably talk to you today about my blog color scheme and what it means and conveys for my blog and its “brand.” Look, I am by no means a branding expert, but one thing I do know about branding is that you can do all you can to produce a certain image to your audience, but ultimately your brand is decided by them! It’s sort of a funny thing, trying to control other people’s opinions, but that is where consistency comes into play. Having a consistent look and feel to your blog and social media posts really helps to establish the vision of your brand that you want to convey to your audience. As you can tell by looking around, I have a pretty specific color scheme for my blog and the colors I have chosen are significant for a reason.
As you may know, yesterday was my final installment of the Blogging 101 series and I covered the topic of monetizing your blog in a variety of ways. So, today I thought I should spend some time talking about the importance of tracking your analytics to help you understand your blog’s audience and reach! There are two points that I would like to make on the subject, the first is that you should be tracking analytics on your site, and the second is that the tracking system you should be using is Google Analytics!
One of the most frequent questions I get from readers looking for advice on their own blogs has something to do with growing their blog. Whether you’re looking for more comments, more page views, or more subscribers, you are looking to draw more attention to your blog by engaging your current audience and expanding your audience. Now, let me be completely honest with you and say that this is a process that does not happen overnight. It normally takes a long time to do this and in my personal experience, you as the blog author need to be very hands on in this process or it will take even more time. I believe the consensus is from the blogging community and professionals that it should take you a year of solid attention to grow your blog to a decent following if you do a few key things regularly. So, I am going to give you some tips of some things you need to do in order to grow your blog, some you may do, some you may not do, but all of them are very important and require your sincere attention in order to work.
In my opinion, one of the most difficult parts of starting a blog is the whole starting part. It can feel overwhelming clicking on “new post” and then being faced with a blank screen just sitting there waiting to be filled with awesome and unique content. So, if you are suffering from a little bloggers block, I have put together a list of 25 interesting and unique blog posts that any blogger can do. Hopefully these ideas can help you get started with your own blog or inspire you to breathe new life into an existing one!
One of the hardest parts of being a blogger is coming up with great new content every week. As a blogger, I need a constant stream of inspiration in order to come up with ideas for my posts, images and my blog’s design. Although as they say, inspiration is everywhere, being a constant learner is an important part of locating inspiration in your life. If you are having trouble finding inspiration, here are a few things I like to do to find inspiration when I need it most!
Let me tell you a little story to kick off this post! Back in early 2009, I had just started a new blog with a tech focus that some of you may remember if you have been following me for a while. It was called “The Pink Mac” and it was all about my love for technology and Apple products; a total fan girl homage to my computer! One day, I was contacted by a company to review some of their gadget cases and I accepted. At that time, I had only been a traditional blogger, and didn’t even have a YouTube channel, but I loved watching tech reviews and unboxings so much that I decided that I would make the unboxing and review of these cases into a video. I’ll be honest, when I filmed that first video on the kitchen table at my dad’s house, I wasn’t even sure if I would post it. I remember feeling like a total weirdo for talking to myself about some iPod cases while my dad and step mom were watching TV on mute in the room next to me until I finished. Once I got home and reviewed the footage, I decided that although it wasn’t the best tech video, it certainly wasn’t the worst (although if you go back now and watch it, it was such poor quality, but for the time that was the norm). So, I bit the bullet, signed up for a YouTube channel and uploaded the video! Although I wasn’t as serious about my YouTube channel in those early days, it’s one of those, if I had known then what I know now, who knows how different things could have been for me, my brand and my blog! So, hopefully you learn a thing or two about video in this post and avoid my mistake!
Need Personalized Guidance?
I know this was a lot of information and I hope this Blogging Resource Guide proves to be a comprehensive one to help you establish a blog you love! Of course, I understand that even great information like this may be helpful but you may still have more questions and unique situations that warrant more specific assistance. That is why I also offer my Empire Building coaching program!Empire Building is designed to help get you off on a productive and strong start with your blog, or help you develop new and interesting content for an existing one! If you are truly interested in creating a blog that will be a creative outlet for your talents, while also making money for you or your business, than check out my Empire Building Paths and Workbooks today!
