What to do when you run out of blog post ideas

I think we all go through periods where thinking up new content gets trickier than normal. Whether you're not happy with your current content, and don't know what direction to take new posts in, or if you've just got a case of blogger's block, it happens to us all. 

Key Google Analytics terms explained

Google analytics is a pretty scary place. I avoided it for my first year and a bit of blogging because hell no was I trying to work that out. Anyway, a few very helps pins later (seriously, where would we be without Pinterest?!) and I'd pretty much worked out how to use the damn thing. It can be really hard to understand what people are talking about, or what you're seeing on the screen when it comes to GA, so here's a handy little guide of all the important terms you'll need to know. 

What is a 'DA' and how can I improve mine?

There are so many aspects of blogging that are useful to keep up to date with now. It feels like so long ago that it was sufficient to write something, throw in a quick snap and be done. There's Google Analytics to think about (vom), tweet scheduling, media kits, and what we're here to talk about today: DAs. I personally love this side of blogging, but I know most people hate it, so let's get down to business.

What does 'DA' mean?

How to host a Twitter giveaway

I feel like the days of doing a cheeky ol' Rafflecopter on the blog and asking people to follow you on every single platform and put in all of their details are dying a little bit. Now, Twitter and Insta giveaways are taking over. You just have to click a couple of buttons and BOOM, no fuss, no fiddling, you've entered. I for one find them so much simpler and more tempting to get involved in.

How to revolutionise your blog using spreadsheets

I've read more 'how to improve your blog' posts than I care to admit. Most are full of the same old tripe: 'good photos', 'make interesting content'. These make me so angry; why am I wasting my time on this bull again? Having said that, I do tend to get lazy or forget them half the time, but let's gloss over that. Every so often, I come across a tip that completely changes the way I blog for the better. The advice to use spreadsheets to help with blog planning? That's probably the best example I have.

10 Crucial Blogging Tips I learnt in 2016

The world of blogging has changed so much since I started my lil' blog two years ago. Microblogging has started to be a thing that people adopt over 'traditional' blogging; the photography most bloggers put out there is insane and there's a few more expectations placed on the average blogger.
This time last year was the start of six months out of work for me for my mental health. Fighting my anxiety, trying not to relapse with self harm and still continue a normal daily life just got a whole lot too much. Thankfully I had a strong support system to help me out mentally and financially; without them I don't know what I would have done. 
I used some of the time I had to work on doing a buttload of research into how to improve my blog. At that time I was churning out random spur of the moment posts that I usually had to force myself to think of. My blogging was irregular, my photography was pretty awful, despite having a nice camera, and I wasn't interacting with other bloggers at all. Pinterest, 'how to blog' style posts and inspirational flatlays became my new best friends, and eventually I learnt some things which now I just wish I had spent the time looking into a year earlier. 
1.) Don't force content. If you're not interested in a post you're writing, then why the hell would your audience be? If you're stuck for inspo then take a week off, or a month off, or however long you need. Wait for your mojo to come back to you.
2.) Spreadsheets are your best friend. I'm thinking of doing a whole post on this one because it absolutely revolutionized the way I organise my blog. I have each month laid out, I fill in blog post ideas when they come to me, I can colour code things according to theme. It makes me feel pretty darn professional.
3.) Get your butt onto Pinterest, and make your blog post images pinnable! Pinterest is something that I've only got into this past year, but it's been so helpful. I've got a whole board on blog post ideas posts people have written, one for general blog aids and a whole load of pretty ones for general photography inspo. I always try to pin posts I've enjoyed reading, and it's so frustrating when you want to share that post via Pinterest and the blogger hasn't made their blog pin friendly! It's an extra platform to drive traffic to your blog from, and if you're lucky it can be really easy for a post to go viral on there. Check out my beginner's guide to using Pinterest if you're stuck. 
4.) A media kit is always useful to have on the back burner. Earlier this year a brand asked me for my media kit ... I didn't have one. Cue hours of panicked searches on 'how to make a good media kit' and 'what is a media kit?'. Even if you don't want to have it made public on your blog, it's just handy to have in case anyone asks for it. I've actually written a post on how to make one here. 
5.) Make your social media platforms recognisably linked to your blog. This was a hard one to word, and I'm sorry. What I mean in essence is to have a coherent 'branding' across them all, though I hate using that word. Having a similar handle or username on the different platforms that resonates with the name of your blog makes it much easier for other bloggers to remember who you are and connect with you on various types of social media. You could even extend this to do things like sharing your Instagram posts on Twitter and Facebook. That way you direct traffic between your social media accounts and you may gain a larger following/more views.
6.) Twitter chats are fab. My personal favourites are the #fblchat and #thegirlgang chat. These are usually filled with lots of positivity and inspiration. You can get to know a whole load of other bloggers through this, and it makes the whole process of sitting behind your laptop and writing feel a lot less lonely. There are a whole tonne of these chats out there, and you could probably sit in them all evening every evening, so it's best to give them all a whirl and see which ones you want to stick to.
7.) Get your own domain name. In case you don't know how to do this one (I didn't), then I've got a step by step guide on how to do it in this post. You know all of those Moz updates that people tweet about every month or so? You basically need a domain name to get involved in that. The Moz update shows how good your domain authority is. A lot of brands will only use bloggers in collaborations once they have their own domain, and some even insist on using bloggers with a certain domain or higher. I'm not saying you should just do this for the collabs, as it can also be a chance for a rebrand. I was a bit sick of my old blog address (http://nourishmeclean.blogspot.co.uk) because it just didn't fit with my brand anymore. Originally Nourish ME was all about clean eating and having a healthy diet, but as I moved away from that, the 'clean' part just seemed a bit odd. So, when I got my own domain it became www.nourishmeblog.co.uk.
8.) Update your old posts. Posts from a year or two or even longer ago can be pretty cringe. Rubbish photos, a tendency not to proofread and an incoherent format are all things that can be solved fairly easily. A little photo re-edit, some new wording, and maybe even a new title can make old content feel brand new. This is especially useful if you've run out of inspiration and don't want to make new content. 
9.) Try new things with photography. There's a massive line between being inspired by someone and simply stealing their style. If I'm stuck for Instagram or blog photo ideas, I tend to have a look at a few of my favourite bloggers' accounts to see what kind of props people are using at the moment, the kind of backgrounds that are popular, and to investigate how people are using diffferent types of lighting. If you've never tried a flatlay before, then why not give that a go? Or go out and take some landscape style photos. At the moment I'm working on building up flatlays to make them bigger and more detailed.
10.) Blog for yourself, not other people. This is an odd one I'll admit, but oh-so true. Your readers are important, obvs, but it'll become noticeable if the content you're making is something you're not interested in. Be passionate, be bold, and remember that you're the content creator here.
What blogging tips did you learn over the last year?
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Beginner's Guide: Using Pinterest

I was a teensy bit late to the Pinterest game, I'm not going to lie, But once I got here about a month and a half ago, I found it really damn hard to find any blogger advice on how to use Pinterest. After a shaky first week or so I eventually found some interesting pieces of advice, ironically, on Pinterest, about how to use it, and how to optimise my use of it for the blog. So, I've gathered my top tips for those of you who have never used Pinterest, or still don't *really* know how to get to grips with it. In the first few weeks I did consider giving up on it - it seemed like wayyyy too much effort to keep up with whilst I had no clue what was going on. But now that I know more, I've totally fallen in love with it and I'm pretty much 100% obsessed. I've learnt masses about blogging, found new countries and cities to fall in love with, and created tonnes of recipes from it!
Getting Started
The first thing you need to do is (obviously) set up an account. You need to choose a name, and, like choosing one on any kind of social media, this is pretty important. I've gone with Stephanie | Nourish ME as I wanted it to represent my blog and include a little bit of my own self too. I would definitely recommend considering using your blog name somewhere in your Pinterest name as it ensures that you carry your brand across to that social media platform. Alongside a name, you'll also need a short bio. This should contain some of your interests so that people will know what kind of things they can expect to see you pinning as well as a little bit of information about your blog. Mine looks like this: "UK based health, lifestyle, fashion and beauty blogger. All round foodie and lover of developing new recipes". I'm still tweaking it, but this basically summarises most of my blog post topics and my main hobby (FOOD haha). A final part of your setup is to connect your Pinterest with your blog domain or blog address. You simply add this in, and once you've verified that it's yours, it will appear as a link on your Pinterest. This way you can drive traffic straight from your Pinterest account to your blog every time someone finds your account.
Following Accounts
At first Pinterest will do the standard social media thing of getting you to pick areas of interest (yayyyy, can we not just skip this already). So once you've sorted out your five or so things that you would like to hear about, you can get down to the real nitty gritty of finding what you want to see on Pinterest. I did a little call out on Twitter to discover some blogger friends who were on here to start, but my main sourcing of followers came from finding Dork Face Blog's Pinterest. I absolutely LOVE Jemma's style and enthusiasm for all things colourful and pretty, so I decided to follow a fair few people she followed - if they were good enough for her then I was sure to fall in love with their pins, right?! After following a few of those lovely bloggers, I then basically searched key terms like 'baking', 'lifestyle', 'blogger', lifestyle blogger', 'food', 'recipes', 'travel blogger' and so on. For the first few weeks I followed 20 people a day and this seems to have really helped in terms of securing a decent following so far!
Dealing with your feed
Okay, this one had me really stumped at the beginning. I was mindlessly staring at the screen with 'what is a pin?' and 'how do I even pin things?' and 'good lord, what is this dashboard thing and how do I control it?!'. Basically, if you've ever used Tumblr (hello my 17-year-old obsession), then getting to grips with Pinterest is going to be a LOT easier for you! Basically your dashboard is where everything that people you follow have pinned or repinned will appear. You can click on any picture on your dashboard and it will enlarge. If you click again you will be taken to the website that the post originally appeared on (hopefully - occasionally you get taken to a different page than what the image suggests, argh). Once you click back onto Pinterest you then have the option to either 'x' out of the enlarged image, or pin it to one of your boards. 
Pinterest Boards
So, you've decided to pin something and now you're faced with 'choosing a board', say whaaaat?! This had me a teensy bit baffled, to say the least, at first. A board is basically a category to put your pins into. Mine range from baking, to yoga, to blogging inspiration, to cocktail recipes, with about 20 more in between. Having a whole range of Pinterest boards makes it easy for me to find an article or recipe quickly without having to trawl through hundreds of irrelevant pins. When you save a pin you get to choose to put it in an already existing board, or create a new one. This is one of my favourite aspects of Pinterest, as it makes creating new boards really easy and convenient. 
The way you organise your boards is also pretty important. Pinterest simply places them in the order in which you created them, but it's really easy to move them around. To get the greatest number of hits on your blog, it's best to have it in your top row as you can see that I've done in the pictures above. In that row should also be the boards you're most proud of, and ones that you think will draw people to your Pinterest. I've got my Happiness, Travel Bucket List and Home Inspo boards up there alongside the Nourish ME one. 
Making your Blog Pinterest-able
So, once you've got everything set up you really need to make sure that you can actually use your blog posts on Pinterest, and that other people can too. The first thing you really need to do is install a hover pin button to put over your photos. That way people can simply click and add the post via the photo to their board. Then, you need to create an 'alt tag' for each picture that sums up the post. On blogger you do this by clicking on your image, then clicking on 'properties' and adding text in to both boxes. For example, my ones for this post are 'Beginner's Guide to using Pinterest for bloggers - by Nourish ME www.nourishmeblog.co.uk'. This is the summary people will see underneath your image on Pinterest. Finally, when you publish a post pin it yourself so that hopefully people will see it and repin!

I know that was a massively long post, so kudos to you if you're still here! If you've got any more questions, comment below or tweet me @stephhartley4.
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How to create your own blogger media kit

About a month ago a brand that I was considering collaborating with asked me for my media kit. My immediate reaction was 'well fuck, I don't have one'. Obviously I could hardly email them back to tell them that, so all of a sudden I was thrust into an emergency mission to create my own media kit. I had no time to ask anyone to create one for me, or to do masses of research into how to sort one out. Naturally I headed to twitter and Pinterest (my new love) to discover how other bloggers had made them.
In case you're wondering what the heck a media kit is, it's basically a document in which you showcase your blog brand to PRs, potential advertisement clients and potential blog collaborators. You effectively need one if you want to get serious about blogging, or want to start monetizing your blog. 
Foolishly when I printed my media kit out for this post I used the web version of the image rather than the printable version *pats self on back sarcastically*, so I promise you that it does actually look a lot better than this when viewed online, or printed with the correct version. You can find the online version in my Contact section. 
I didn't want to spend a lot of money making my media kit. In fact I didn't want to spend a penny. So, I headed to Canva to create my media kit. Canva has a whole variety of free to use templates, backgrounds and images to help you create almost anything. Since making my media kit I've actually used the site to create a Youtube thumbnail and a couple of pinterest-worthy images for blog posts. All in all, using this site it probably took me about an hour and a half to two hours to create my finished piece.
Now we come to the really tricky part: what to include. Here's a list of things I think you need if you want to make an effective and memorable media kit that PR brands can use to quickly assess whether your sponsored posts fees are acceptable and whether they want to get on board with collaborating with you. 
1.) A design that resonates with your blog brand. Use a similar (if not the same) colour scheme, and try to include your blog header if you can. Immediately the person reading it will then be able to recognise precisely who you are and what you are representing.
2.) A picture either of yourself or that sums up your blog. Potential sponsors want to know that there's a 'real' person behind the brand, someone they can connect with. A picture of yourself is a good way to ensure this.
3.) Information about your blog: when it started, why it started, and the ethos/business idea behind it. It's useful for people to know how long the blog has been about, how you've developed it over the time it has been in existence and what your hopes for the future are. This shows that you've thought seriously about your blog brand and have tracked its course of progress over its lifespan.
4.) Your sponsorship policies. State exactly what someone can expect from sponsoring you. Set disclaimers as to what types of sponsorship you accept, what determines whether a sponsorship application will be accepted and what the sponsor can expect for your flat fee. You can also include your sponsorship fee. I simply chose not to because I would like to discuss the possibility for a sponsorship personally with a brand before them demanding a sponsorship slot on my blog for the fee I have stated in my media kit.
5.) Recent blog statistics. I would definitely make sure to keep these updated on a monthly basis - Canva is a good site to use to create your media kit because it is simple to edit text on it. You don't want a potential sponsor to come along and get disillusioned with the notion of sponsoring you because your five month old blog statistics are too low for them. I've included my monthly average pageviews and users for the past three months, how my statistics have improved during this period and my social media statistics. It's important to use Google Analytics for these, as other trackers, especially the one on blogger can be incredibly inaccurate. 
6.) Previous brands you have worked with. This is simply a chance to showcase your previous work, and let PRs know that you have experience in collaborating with brands.
I hope this was useful! I'm currently offering you the chance to have your media kit created by me for £15 if you feel it is too much of a challenge! If you want to do so simply email me at the email address in my contact section
Is there anything you would add?