Hi everyone!

I’ve been blogging for a few years and the more time I spend blogging, the more I learn 🧚🏻‍♀️ I am always learning new things for my blog so I’d thought I’d share some of the apps, sites and tools I use to help me with my blog from pictures to inspiration to social media to growing my blog etc…

This is a short way of explaining what I use, if you want more details on how to start and grow a blog and my blogging story, subscribe because I am now going to start sharing my tips, hacks and story one blog post at a time 😉 also, I am currently creating a blog course so subscribe to know exactly when it comes out!

Now let’s get into it 😉

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Creating My Blog

I used WordPress.com to create my blog. It was so simply and easy to do. I love WordPress, it’s so easy to use and I love the community it has. I love reading other people’s blogs and I love that it’s so easy for others to find my blog through the Reader 🎀

For the first few years of blogging I had a free account but I had bought my domain. I think it’s really important to buy your domain so you own it and you get rid of the WordPress.com branding in your site name ✨

I got the Business Plan this year so I can install plugins, have access to different themes, be able to create a WooCommerce shop and be able to choose to have ads or not

The Plugins I Use: Yoast SEO, Mailchimp, Featured Images In RSS Feeds (to make my featured image from every blog post show up in my automatic emails) ✨

Now, using wordpress.com instead of using a hosting company and then using wordpress.org is pretty controversial but if you have no technical knowledge and you really want to have your own website easily, this is the way.

I also spoke to a WordPress professional and they clearly told me that when you purchase a domain, you own your own website not them. Another reason wordpress.com is amazing is because you have the 24/7 support ✨

Creating Visuals

To create pictures for my blog, featured images and social media I use Canva.com . It’s free to use and so easy. There are so many options to create what you need ☺️

I recently started using Playbuzz.com which I use to make polls like this:

I now just saw that it’s not free anymore but look into it if it’s something you really need 🙂

Inspiration and Finding Pictures

To find inspiration to get my creativity and writing flowing I look at pictures and articles on We Heart It and pins on Pinterest I also find my pictures for my Instagram on those since my Insta is a blog mood board so I repost pictures and take my own ✨

I also find inspiration through other blogs like hudabeauty.com I’m really inspired by Huda and all that she’s created ☺️

Growing My Blog

I mainly use Pinterest to grow my blog. Most of my traffic comes from Pinterest. I love pinning my own pictures and pinning other people’s pins. I find Pinterest so positive because it’s all about creating and repining other people’s pins 🎀 It’s not about followers, likes or superficiality which I really like. It’s so much more inspiring and feels like a breathe of fresh air compared to other social media 🎀

I use Tailwind to schedule my pins and this is the main reason why Pinterest is my #1 source of traffic. I get over 1 million views a month on my Pinterest and that is because I schedule my pins with Tailwind so I constantly have content being pinned 🧚🏻‍♀️ Pinning so many times a day is key ✨ and so is pinning to the “Tribes” in Tailwind which are basically online communities on Tailwind where everyone shares there pins ☺️ There is a lot of tips I can give about Tailwind so if you want an entire post explaining my Pinterest and Tailwind strategy leave me a comment below☺️

I also share my blog posts on We Heart It. You can write articles on We Heart It so I also post my blog posts on there 🧚🏻‍♀️

I also always make sure to use tags in my blog post so WordPress Readers can find my blog posts when they search something ✨

My Instagram and FB is mostly like a blog mood board, it’s not my main source of traffic but it helps 🧚🏻‍♀️

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This is a quick way of explaining what I use to create, grow and help my blog. Of course there is so much more that goes into blogging and I will continue to create posts like this giving tips to help anyone out there that wants to start a blog but doesn’t know where to start. I’ve also been working on a course which will be coming out soon so stay tuned for that ☺️

Love always,

Annabel xoxo