Blogging Must-Haves
My head might be in the clouds of fine fabrics and whimsical outfits, but my feet have to stay firmly planted on the ground of technology.
After all, how can a girl share all of those fab ideas & looks without the help of her techie friends?
My besties, my blogging must-haves are below. They are all thoroughly tested and come highly recommended!
If you do decide to purchase a subscription to any of them from my links below, I will also be getting a small commission (at no extra cost to you, ofc). This way, I can keep sharing my style ideas with you here- so thanks! 🙂
Website hosting- SiteGround
The decision to become self-hosted was a slow and painful one for me. I was so terrified of not being able to manage my website, crashing it and losing all of my work!
But I was no longer willing to compromise on the speed of my website. So after careful research, I bit the bullet and opted for SiteGround. Not the biggest out there, not the most famous, not the oldest- but the best bang for my buck!
I can’t recommend this platform enough for safety, ease of use, website speed and customer support! The team took care of all the scary “back-end business” while migrating my site, and fixed any hiccups promptly.
The speed can’t even be compared to what I used to have! And I can now tweak my website to my heart’s content, turning my vision for it into reality.
Blog Theme- Ashe Pro
And once I had the back-end up to speed, I wanted to also refresh the façade a bit! So I looked for a WordPress theme that would suit my vision for this blog.
The one that really caught my eye and offered all the functionalities I was looking for is Ashe Pro. Not only did it give my blog the look I wanted, but it was also extremely easy to use, and highly customizable.
From a multitude of fonts to a world of colours to individually customizable sections, social media buttons, widgets and promo boxes, Ashe Pro gave me all the tools I needed to breathe new life into my blog.
Plus, it’s responsive across devices, SEO optimized and Translation & RTL ready- all hugely important features I was not willing to compromise on.
Photography sharing- ShutterStock
As a blogger, ShutterStock is a godsend for two reasons! It allows you to find amazing quality stock photography and vectors if you don’t/can’t produce your own blog visuals. And second, it allows you to also sell your photography!
That’s right, you can make money with ShutterStock, by becoming one of their contributing members. So if you’re already producing stunning visuals for your blog (or as a hobby), you try your hand at monetizing them. Just make sure to read the rules before submitting, and happy uploading!
Mailing list- MailerLite
If you’re part of The Style Club, then you guys know I e-mail you style-related printables periodically. And if you’re not in The Style Club, what are you waiting for?
You could be enjoying some pretty great freebies right now!
And the mailing service I chose to create and manage my e-mail list is MailerLite. They are extremely secure, and they customer service is beyond quick and helpful. Plus, they allow you to create multiple types of sign up forms & landing pages- which is extremely useful if you’re trying to grow your mailing list. All for very competitive prices, and in a very user friendly environment.
Graphics & Prints- Canva (no affiliation here)
And speaking of those beautiful printables, my program of choice for creating them is Canva.
While I’ll always be a Photoshop fan(atic) for picture editing and more complex graphic design, Canva is a great, fast and easy option! You can churn out beautiful blog pictures, Pinterest-ready pins, Instagram stories, Youtube thumbnails, A4 documents, invites & more. All without graphic designer experience or expensive programs!
Post scheduling- Tailwind
As much as I looove creating content for you guys, it would not be humanly possible to be up at all hours of the night sharing it. Or during working hours, to be fair.
So a social media toolkit that has really come in handy for me is Tailwind! You may know it as the “Pinterest scheduler”, but Tailwind comes with a bunch of other nifty features.
Among which are: Pinterest Analytics, content recommendations and optimization, Smart Loop (which is a huuge time-saver), Instagram Analytics (yes, it does Instagram too!) Instagram Hashtag Monitoring…
Basically, compared with other equivalent tools, it gives you the best value for money. Which for me was paramount when I first got started and had no idea what blogging was all about.
Another amazing feature of Tailwind are its tribes, great for absolutely exploding your Pinterest traffic, and for finding like-minded bloggers. Many a blogger has written about Tailwind & Pinterest and their benefits for your website but my favorite post on them comes from Laura Iancu. Check her out, she knows her stuff! 🙂