tips

Beginners Pinterest Guide

I'm a bit of a Pinterest obsessive, it's fair to say. I have 57 boards and almost 6000 pins over on my Pinterest, and I'm sure it'll just continue to grow to be honest. I always liked collecting, even as a kid. Whether it was stickers, Mr Men books, or Pogs. These days I'm still in the habit of collecting, except now it's a digital version, in the form of pinning.

I love the organisational side of Pinterest, it really satisfies me. I love putting everything into categories, and then saving things for later. Even if sometimes 'later' never comes (who can really say they're ever gonna do ALL the cool DIY pins they save?). I like knowing I have this huge source of information, ideas, inspiration and visuals sitting there ready for whenever I want.

Today I thought I'd share with you a little of my favourite things from my Pinterest, and some little tips; in the hopes that you'll find this as fun as I do. If you're new to Pinterest, this might even help spark your interest or give you some idea of the possibilities with it.

Firstly, let me begin by sharing my five rules for my own Pinterest, and how I organise it all. (Remember, this is just my opinion!)

Putting together a single blog post can be quite time consuming, especially with all the extra work that has to go into it to really make it work. Obviously the words and images are the backbone here and the only things that should matter, but taking the extra time to fix up a few other details can make a huge difference to your audience and stats.
Today I've put together a free checklist for you guys to use when producing blog posts. This is my own personal list I use, which means it's simply what I find works best for me. You are welcome to just refer to the list below, or there's a handy download for a free printable at the end of this post. I hope it helps!

Okay, picture this scenario; your mum/dad/brother//nan/friend/coworker discovers your blog and is reading through your posts. This thought might fill you with dread, it might be a little uncomfortable but not necessarily the worst, or it might be the norm for you! For me, I'm not particularly bothered, but neither am I totally pushing my family to go read my blog. That being said, I know they have (or possibly still do! Who knows. Hi mum. Love you. Go away). But I'm not totally horrified by the idea, even if it's not my preference, and I think that's because I'm confident in my blog. Sure I'm not saying it's the best, but it makes me happy, I feel like I'm constantly improving, and I'm learning more about myself as I go. Plus, I don't write about anything I truly would absolutely not want my family reading, which I guess helps. There are things I'd prefer they didn't see, or know - sure. But nothing that keeps me up at night. Plus they never tell me they've read it, and I'm not there to see the reaction. So this helps a bunch too.

As you guys will probably be aware, this weekend the clocks go back for us in the UK; which means there's a whole extra hour there to make the most of. I'm not gonna lie to you, my first thought was SLEEP, all of the sleep! But that's probably due to me being totally exhausted right now. Still... it's not wasted time. Sleep deprivation can lead to major health problems in the long term, so it's a fab excuse to tuck yourself into bed for an extra hour or two.

5 Ways To Make Your Post Stand Out

Sometimes we all get a little lost in the sea of bloggers, and the huge array of posts available in our Twitter feeds can be overwhelming. So when we press publish, and send out our own little blog posts into the world, it's not uncommon to feel a little worried it might not be getting the attention it deserves. I've had this feeling plenty of times as I'm sure a lot of bloggers have, so I thought today I'd share the five things that make blog posts stand out to me, in the hopes that it'll help us all show off our own talents a little more. It's also a nice way of reminding myself of the things I should probably be doing!...

1. Layout. There are no specific rules about how you should have your blog layout, and I myself am a fan of a whole load of various types; from colourful and busy, to white and exceptionally neat. But the one thing that ensures I stick around on a page is that I can clearly locate each post, the font isn't too big or small (or a colour other than black!) and page flows naturally. If you make it distracting or annoying to read a blog post, nobody is going to bother; no matter how awesome it is!

2. Make it different. This can be a hard one, but it's thoroughly worth putting that extra effort in to give your blog post the little twist it needs to make it stand out from the crowd. So you're doing a beauty review of a product everyone is talking about? That's fine. Try to take photographs in a different way from everyone else, give the review a little humour and really try to express why this post is still unique to you. Sometimes I read posts on products I've already read about, or even products I don't like; purely because the blogger who has wrote it always makes me laugh and I enjoy it anyway.

3. Promotion. Yeah I know. Duhh Jemma, obviously we know to promote it. There's a difference though between simply pasting a link onto Twitter and really putting some effort into how you promote. It's good to try come up with witty/weird/unique/attention grabbing tweets rather than just 'Here's my new post'. I'm not saying I've mastered this yet myself, but I do know my random 'Got yourself a little Dorkface fix today yet?! ;)' with a heckload of cute emojis gets way more clicks than my 'Visit me' ones when I'm in a rush. It's also not a bad idea to think about the best hashtags to use, or if you could mention a Twitter account that will retweet you. There are a bunch of accouns out there created solely for retweeting bloggers. My faves to use are @UKBlog_RT and @femalebloggerRT. Also, read my post on scheduling Tweets.

4. Use photos that stand out, In this post, you'll see I've added the title onto the image to really grab attention when you're scrolling through my posts. It also helps it stand out in the bloglovin feed, and when I share it on Pinterest/Twitter. I always post an image with every single promotional tweet, as it really helps catch people's eyes. Seriously, go look at my Twitter feed right now; I guarantee you'll see promotional tweets with images to go along with them. I would never dream of posting my link now without an image.

5. Timing. Finally, you don't wanna put in all this extra effort to not even think about your timing. Is there a particular day this post would get more attention? You can use Google Analytics to figure out when most people visit your blog and use this to your advantage. I do also consider the hour in which I publish posts too. Sidenote here in case some of you don't know; I schedule everything. I write posts whenever I feel like, but I'll always schedule when they go out. That's because I know I want to do each post justice. Just because I write it at 1am, doesn't mean I want to publish it at 1am; when I get zero visitors and it'll be hidden in the sea of new morning posts from people. It also means I can plan ahead and always have at least 3 posts a week, which I love. So for me, I post on weekdays around 7/8am, when a lot of people are checking their feed after they wake up, or they're on their way to work. At weekends, I usually post an hour or two later; anywhere between 9am-12pm. It just works for my audience. Lastly in regards to timing, make the most of the season/time of year! I love when bloggers keep things current and create their posts based around a Summer theme, or post about current events.

These tips are not the work of an expert, and neither are they rules you have to abide by. Everyone does things a little differently. They are simply notes I've made for myself over this past year, which seem to work for me and a lot of bloggers I follow. Be sure to let me know if you consider these things for your own blog, or if you have any tips for me I'd love to hear them!
Have a great week guys!

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