Here are 3 blogging tools I use every day!

I'm all about making things easier for myself.

When I first started blogging, I did many things the hard way.

For example, I used to use 3 different apps to edit my photos.  It would take me hours to edit pictures for a single blog post!

I didn't want to spend the money on more premium tools because I didn't see the worth in it.

Then I realized my time was worth something too.  If I have to pay a price to get back literal hours of my time, I'm willing to do it.

Over the years, I have perfected my blogging strategy & with that came the blogging tools I utilize daily.

Before I begin, I pay monthly for all 3 of these blogging tools, but there are also free versions available of the same tools.  I started with the free versions & when I outgrew them, I went to the premium options. 

So let me tell you about the blogging tools I love!

Here’s what was on the blog in September!

Link Love 30 // 31 // 32

‘Link Love’ posts are always so fun to write!  I get so many ideas from other bloggers!

Labor Day Links

I thought that post was one last summer hurrah, but summer has been lingering on where I live!  It’s been summer every weekend!  I love it, but I also can’t wait until it’s truly fall!

Netflix Picks

I don’t think I watched any of these picks!  I have been watching a ton of Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix though!  I’m probably the last person on the planet to start watching Grey’s!  I’m only in season 2 right now, but it’s sooo good!

Finding My Blogging Groove

Aaand as soon as I wrote that, I disappeared from blogging!  Haha!  But seriously, letting go of the blogging “norms” feels so good!

2017 Garden Recap

Our garden this year was so successful!  We even have some plants still hanging on!  I’ll take tomatoes in October any time!

Planning For The 2018 Garden

Garden planning is no joke!

My Parents’ Garden

I’m always envious of my parents’ huge garden!  Maybe next year, I’ll go all out with gardening!

Semi-Homemade Pasta Sauce

This was just some pasta sauce I threw together from items I already had in my pantry!  It turned out fantastic!

Sergio | 5 Months

Sergio is growing up!  He’s such a cute horse!  He has completely lost all of his fluffy hair now so I’ll have to take more pictures to show how pretty he really is!

Sunflowers

I’ve been taking some pictures just for fun lately & those sunflower pics were some of them.  I have a legit photography gig this weekend, so I need all the practice I can get!  This will be my first actual photoshoot so I’m nervous & excited!

I usually write my blog posts first & photograph based on that, so writing a post around photos is a new concept that I’ve been loving!

So that was the month of September on the blog!

PS:  On a more serious note, here’s an awesome read that I resonated with regarding blogging after the Las Vegas tragedy:  Here’s Why You Should Have a Good Weekend

Last week, I was knee deep in Pinterest “research” for my blog…

Alright, so maybe I wasn’t quite that desperate (I am!), but I’m always looking for ways to improve my blog and internet presence (whatever that means!).  In my “research”, I came across roughly a million helpful tips that I tried to do immediately. But, that’s a story for another day.  This post is about one tip that I will absolutely NOT follow:

Linking Facebook & Twitter together.

For those of you out there who have no idea what I’m talking about, let me fill you in. Linking Facebook & Twitter together is a thing you can do to streamline your social media.  For me & my blog, that means every time I post something to my Facebook page, my Twitter will automatically post the same thing.  For a while, I had it set up that way and didn’t have to run all over social media syncing up my stuff.  That was cool…for a while.

The problem with linking up Facebook & Twitter is that some things get lost in translation & it looks ridiculous.

Here’s what I’m talking about…

Notice the annoying “data:blog.metaDescription” thing underneath my link?  That was because my old layout (& my new one to an extent) didn’t provide the description of my post when it made the link.  I just fixed it when I posted it to Facebook to say whatever I wanted, but when it automatically posted to Twitter, it looked like that.  Ridiculous.

Also, the picture?  On Facebook, it looked fantastic.  On Twitter, it was cropped into a tiny square and you couldn’t even see it, let alone read any text that was on there.  Totally unprofessional looking.

Now let’s look at the bottom tweet about the iced coffee?  On Facebook, it actually had a picture of an iced coffee.  On Twitter, not so much.  And who’s got time to click on that link?  Nobody, that’s who.  I wanted a picture, not a link.

Because of those annoyances, I decided to unlink Facebook & Twitter.  Oh, the horror!  Not really.  Even though I now have to actually go over to Twitter to post my links, at least I have control over what you see.  I can post a link to my blog with pictures that you can actually see.  I can also choose a few different pictures to include instead of just having one.  Sure, it’s an extra step, but it allows me more control of my social media.  Sometimes automating everything isn’t the best option.  In this case, it totally wasn’t for me.

Now, I’ve only linked my blog Facebook page with Twitter, but the same could be said for personal Facebook pages.  Every time you post a photo or a status that’s above 140 characters (Twitter’s limit)?  You get the little fb.me link.  It’s not cool at all.  You want your people to see what’s going on instead of clicking a link. 

Honestly, it doesn’t take that long to post things individually. If it’s such a time suck, you could always use a scheduler.  There’s about a million of those out there.  Right now, my favorite is Hootsuite.  I also love scheduling posts on Facebook. ‘'

What are your thoughts on linking profiles together?  I had terrible luck with putting mine together, but I’m sure there are a ton of success stories out there.  I would love to hear them!

It’s no secret that my blog hasn’t been its best lately.

I was showing my mom my blog today & she asked if I kept up with it regularly.

“Sure.” I said.

“Well, the last thing was written was August 2nd.”

Now, my mom doesn’t know anything about blogs & if she noticed that I haven’t blogged in 15 days, then it’s kind of a big deal.

Between mild writer’s block & simple laziness, my blog had not been the way I wanted it.  It was time to get it back on track.

I spent $2.50 & bought myself a planner and a pack of pencils.  Then I got to work mapping out all the things I wanted to write about and penciled in the days that I hoped to post these writings.  I wrote in pencil because I actually tried this planner idea before & got discouraged when I wrote in pen & was unable to follow through with the post schedule.  This way, I can move things around if I want.

Speaking of moving around…I also moved my computer to my dining room table in an attempt to get out of my element and cure my writer’s block.  It looks ridiculous but so far, it’s working out!

I’m a big believer in having the right tools to get a job done so now that I have the right blogging tools, I should be back to blogging regularly…

Especially now that I know my mom is reading!