July 2015 - Page 2 of 2 - Strange & Charmed

There is no doubt that having a uniform brand and visual experience online is crucial for every blogger and online business owner, however, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on professional software to create great images and design elements for your brand especially if you are just starting out. Here are a few free design tools that I love to use and would recommend to any blogger or business owner just getting started!

1. Color Hex: Using uniform colors throughout your website and graphics is a critical part of achieving brand uniformity for your blog or online business. When working with color online, I always rely on a hex code, which is a digital formula for web based colors. Websites and various online design resources use hex codes to determine color, and so having a site like Color Hex bookmarked will help you pinpoint your specific brand colors and ensure you are always using the same colors over and over again!

2. Colour Lovers: Need to find a specific color palette to use for a project or post online? Colour Lovers is an awesome free website that helps you determine color palettes. Browse the site for one of their pre-designed palettes, design your own using the suite of tools available on the site or create a color palette from your favorite photo with their Photocopa tool that analyses images for their color palettes!

3. Death to the Stock Photo: If you are in need of some awesome stock photography for your website, don’t waste your time with standard stock photography sites with their obviously staged images. Death to the Stock Photo is a modern approach to stock photography that offers an awesome and affordable monthly premium service, or a free monthly pack of images for you to use in accordance with their image licensing terms. These are some awesome pictures that can be used in a variety of ways to liven up your site, so check them out for an awesome alternative to bland stock photography.

4. Canva: Need some powerful software for creating awesome graphics and images, but don’t have Photoshop? A free account with Canva will give you access to all the tools you need to design your own eye-catching graphics, promotional images or any other images or design elements you may need for your website.

5. Flat Icon: Looking for some custom icons for your website or design elements? Flaticon.com gives you access to a large library of vector icon images that you can use for your blog or business. With both free and paid icon options, you are sure to find the right icon set to fit the needs of any project.

I hope these 5 Free Design Tools help you make the most of your blog or business online! Let me know how you like them or if you use any other awesome free tools that I need to know about!

xoxo,

Promoting your blog online does not require a significant amount of time or effort. If you only have a few minutes to spare, there are plenty of effective ways to spend 10 minutes that will help spread the word about your site and hopefully gain you some new followers. With anything online, it’s not how much time you spend, but how you spend that time that counts, so the next time you have a few spare minutes in your day, whether you are waiting in line at the store, or have a short break in your work, consider one or more of these options to get some quick wins for your brand!

1. Pin your blog posts to Pinterest: Pinterest happens to be the major source of traffic for my blog. Get into the habit of spending an extra moment once you have published a new post to share it on Pinterest. Open the blog post as an individual link in a new window, copy the link into Pinterest and pick your best image from your post (a vertical image works best) to represent the article. To save extra time in the future, download the Pinterest Browser Button so that you can easily pin and save posts or articles from around the web quickly and easily without having to go directly to Pinterest.

2. Schedule tweets for your most popular posts: Although Twitter itself doesn’t have an option for scheduling Tweets, I use the desktop application called TweetDeck or the iPhone app Hootsuite to create some automated tweets when promoting a blog post. For maximum impact, choose a few of your most popular blog posts, grab their short links (or shorten the standard link in Hootsuite) and write a few quick tweets to promote them! Schedule them out a few times during the next week so you can maximize their exposure and send more traffic to your site.

3. Take an IG photo to promote your latest post: As one of the fastest growing social media platforms online currently, Instagram is a great way to promote a blog post! Take a styled shot or one of your best images from your blog post and share it on Instagram, letting your audience know that you have a new blog post they wont’ want to miss. Make sure your blog URL is in your profile description OR use a free site like bit.ly to create a custom short link to add to your description!

4. Send an email to a fellow blogger pitching a collaboration: One of the best ways to get the word out and promote your site is to collaborate with other bloggers. Think about some bloggers you admire that have similar sized followings as your own and send them a short email inviting them to collaborate. Make sure you provide a few examples of the types of collaborations you have in mind so that they know you have put some time and thought into your offer! Of course, make sure you are following the blogger on all their social media platforms and interact with them regularly so they know your name and perhaps are equally as excited to work with you!

5. Respond to comments on your blog or other social media: Replying to your blog comments is a great way to foster community around your site. Make sure you are replying to most if not all of your blog comments in a timely manner. This will encourage your readers to comment and engage with you, and ensures that they will be back to your site regularly!

Now, isn’t that quick and easy? I told you that promoting your blog doesn’t have to take up much time, and it’s definitely something you could do even if you find a few extra moments when you are out and about, thanks to the aid of a smartphone! I hope these tips help you promote your blog and gain some new traffic to your site. If this post was helpful to you, please do me a favor and go ahead and share it on social media. Share it on Facebook, tweet a link out to your followers, or even take an Instagram picture and share it with your community! Thanks dolls!

Strange & Charmed

Month: July 2015

5 Free Design Tools for Bloggers & Business Owners

xoxo,