Today marks the first day in a new series that Sinead has put together, the 'Girls Guide to Beautiful Blogging', which she, Brittany and I will be writing about for the next couple of weeks. When she first contacted me about it I was really excited to take part because I'm hoping that it will be a really great tool in helping some of you newer bloggers find your feet in the blogging world and maybe even older bloggers who just want a couple of helpful tips. When I first started blogging I was at a total loss as to how to make anything work, what to do and how to get people to find my blog. I've learnt everything the hard way but hopefully by sharing my knowledge (not that I think I'm amazing at it by any means) I can endeavour to help you and make your blogging journey a little easier. The first topic up is Social Media, one of the most important things in making your blog successful. It's a great way to help with your blogs growth (not the most important thing, but it's always nice when someone actually reads what you write!) but it also a really great way to interact with other like-minded people and make bloggy-friends at the same time who understand you and the things that you love. The world of social media can be a confusing one as there are so many different sites and ways to use them. I think that the biggest one for blogs has to be Twitter; it's a great way to get your blog name out and be able to talk in a more personal way than is typical for a blog. I particularly enjoy the #bbloggers chats on a Sunday (there's also one on a Wednesday but I often don't have enough time to join midweek!) as it's a great way to get to know people when everyone is online. Twitter is also a great way of reminding people that you have new posts up if people don't check their bloglovin's but I recommend against promoting any thing more than a couple of times as it can have a tendency to slightly annoy people! Other social media sites that I use regularly are tumblr and Pinterest, mainly for inspiration. I love looking at other people's photos to get ideas for future content and it's great way to ensure that you never run out of ideas. I'm actually in the process of pinning all my photos to a new pinterest board as well, in the hopes that people can repin them and get the word out, so I'd really recommend you all to do this if you want an easy way of promoting your blog.
As far as other forms of social media go, I'm afraid I'm not much help. You may want to think about setting up a Facebook page or Instagram to further get the word out, both of which I am definitely thinking about doing in the future. It's also definitely worth trying to make sure your handles (usernames) are the same on all of them though so that people can find you easily!
So that's all my tips on that topic, do you have anymore that you think I should know about? And please remember that if you have any questions you can leave a comment or tweet us using the hashtag #askbbgirls.
