7 awesome resources to improve your blogging now

­

I love blogging, really I do.  Putting fingers to keyboard, what started as therapy for my post natal depression in China four years ago, is now part of my everyday life and my business too working with amazing brands like Noom and James Villas Holidays – yes I do realise how lucky I am! I’ll never forget how I came to start this blog and I love sharing my family life, my Journey to Joy and our various adventures around the globe.

But I also want to pay it forward.

I’ve had a lot of help along the way, from designing my little corner of the web to the best ways to create and publish content and how to optimise sharing across different social media channels.

My lovely friend Vicki from Honest Mum who is always so generous with her advice and guidance, the amazing Jo aka Geek Fairy from Two Stars and a Swirl who helped me to move to my first self-hosted site, the wonderful Zaz from Mama and More whose support has helped me grow my Share the Joy link up, Michelle from Mummy from the Heart who supported me when I first started putting my life online and many more have all helped me to become a better blogger. Thank you ladies!

And the wonderful thing about this constantly evolving industry – and it IS an industry, brands and PR companies know it, so be proud! – is that I’m still constantly learning. So today in the spirit of paying it forward I want to share with you some of the websites that I use for inspiration, tips and tricks to keep improving my own blogging. I hope you find them useful.

#1 RAZOR SOCIAL – literally every week I get an email from Ian Cleary who runs Razor Social and I will click on at least one of the links in it. There is usually a takeaway that I can implement straight away to improve my blogging like this post on How to use IFFFT for social media automation.

 

#2  – Probably one of the best resources for intermediate to advanced bloggers there’s a wealth of information here from tools and techniques to how to go about monetizing your blog.

 

#3 CO-SCHEDULE – If you’ve read my post about how to win at blog planning then you already know I’m a huge fan of this planning, posting and sharing tool, but the team at Co-Schedule also have a great blog with useful info that’s often very visually presented, easy to read and share.

 

#4 MOZ – Search Engine Optimisation, three words that spark fear of confusion in many bloggers – including me before I learned more about it! You absolutely don’t need to be an expert in SEO to make use of it for your blog and SEOMoz has created a fab Beginners Guide to SEO which shows how search engines work and how to make websites SEO friendly.

 

#5  – If you’re looking for tips and tricks to help improve the design of your blog then this is a great place to start including (my image editor of choice actually!) It’s written by Julie, who runs a wed design business so you know you’re getting professional advice.

 

 

#6  – Although CopyBlogger is targeted at corporate content managers there is a lot of useful information here for bloggers who want to take their content to the next level including this post on content auditing. The trick is to take the essence of the posts and apply it to your own blog.

 

#7 BlOG MARKETING ACADEMY – If you ever get stuck writing headlines for your posts or suffer from ‘blogger’s block’ then bookmark this post 32+ Headling Formulas – The Non-Copywriter’s Guide To Writing Headlines That Get The Clicks. It even has a list of fill-in-the-blank headlines to spark off your imagination.

What are your go-to websites for blogging hints and tips? Do you have any favourites? Let me know in the comments below!

---

Linking up with Brilliant Blog Posts at Honest Mum, The List at Mums Days, Post  Comment Love at Verily Victoria Vocalises, Sunday Stars at Beau Twins

­