Smart Solutions for Busy Moms!
Are you a creative blogger? Are you a DIY master, a super crafty mutha, or an amazing seamstress? Whatever type of creative blogging you do, this post has some really fun and helpful resources to help you write better posts – and promote them to a wider audience.
Ok, I don’t claim to be a fashion blogger – at all… But, I do love fashion. I worked for 10 years in fashion merchandising, management, and visual displays, and loved it. I’m much better at dressing others than I am at dressing myself most days, lol. But – this is another category that I want to get into more this year. Not high fashion craziness – but totally attainable, real-mom fashion. You know – how to still look hot after 4 hours sleep, while chasing a wild toddler. Those type of tips.
So, as I have been gathering some tips, ideas, and tools to help me be more successful in this new area of blogging, I thought I’d share some with you ladies too. These are my current Top 10 Resources to check out, for Fashion Bloggers. Stay tuned for more fashion posts – and let me know what kind of things you’d like to see featured in this category too!
What about you – Are you already a fashion blogger? If so, you probably have some great tips and resources to share. I’d love to hear them – leave me some comments! Are you interested in branching out into more fashion blogging in 2013? If so – what are the challenges in your way? I love hearing from you ladies…
Resources for food bloggers… I love to cook, but have a lot more enthusiasm and creativity than I do actual skill, so not everything I attempt is exactly successful. But – blogging, just like life, is a constant work in progress, right? If you’re working on your food blogging skills in 2013 too – I hope you find something in this resource list helpful!
New year, new you! – You’ve heard this a million times before, right? Well, this year I’m really committing to making some big health changes, and finally getting my pre-baby booty back again. When I followed the Nutrisystem diet for 3 months at the beginning of 2012, I lost a little over 20 pounds. One thing that kept me accountable was posting a weekly weigh-in photo on this site – It really helps you skip that second cookie when you know you’ll be showing the scale photo in a few days! I’m going to be starting those soon {stay tuned} – and to kick things off, I’ve got a rockin’ giveaway for you. Check it out…
This awesome event is hosted by Freckleberry Finds and Slap Dash Mom, and a great group of other fab bloggers to bring you a giveaway that’ll get you moving!
I’ve been using the FitBit for a few months now, and loooooove it. And I’m participating in the #MillionSteps challenge during January with my Best Buy Blogging Ambassador team -We’re going to see if the 9 of us can reach a million steps during the month, tracked on our FitBits. {Follow along on Twitter to see our progress.} This is totally separate from the giveaway, but if you love the FitBit, I’d love for you to follow along with and join in too!
One lucky winner will take home a Fitbit – Zip Wireless Activity Tracker– AND a bonus prize: a Beach Body DVD set consisting of Hip Hop Abs and Brazil Butt Lift. You’ll be ripped in no time!
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” – Lawrence J. Peter… This quote is so true, and is part of what is helping guide my blogging and business goals for the new year. Last year, I felt like I was often just “trying to keep up” – instead of really taking steps towards my goals. {Although as I reviewed my post, 10 Blogging Goals for 2012: Starting with Be More Awesome – I realized I was lucky to accomplish most of what I set out to. This year, I’m working on setting big goals, and really getting things organized and planned out. And since you really can’t know where you’re going, until you can see where you’re been, I decided to analyze last year’s traffic to get a better idea of what worked, and what didn’t.
Sharing blogging stats: I’ve joined a group of bloggers who are all taking some time today to take a look back at 2012, and share their own traffic stats too – you can find the linky down at the bottom of this post, if you’d like to take a look and get a big picture on what’s working for other bloggers too. And – first things first, here’s my total traffic for all of last year, January to Decemeber of 2012:
Traffic was lower than expected: Last year when my blog got hacked, I lost almost two weeks of access to my account, and then another full week of mess once I could get back in. That was a big set back. Then, over the last few months, my little one started having seizures. It started with what we hoped at the time was a febrile seizure, but was then followed my months of more of them. Since October I really lost a lot of my blogging focus, due to traveling to Seattle Children’s Hospital for her appointments, testing and procedures, and dealing with each new episode when it happened. So what should have been my busiest time of the year – wasn’t. But that’s ok. I did my best, I made my family my priority, and she’s doing much better now. So it’s time to ROCK in 2013! Very excited to start fresh.
This list shows you where my traffic came from – my top 10 blog traffic sources: StumbleUpon doesn’t bring me as much as it used to earlier in 2012 – no more BIG traffic explosions. But it does bring steady visitors, and hopefully they’ll like what they see once stumbling onto my site, and come back again. The Weekend.tend is one of Glam Media’s sites – they picked up a few posts of mine during the year, which is always really appreciated. Towards the end of the year, Facebook has moved down to my #8 or #9 referrer, and Google and Pinterest have both moved up quite a bit. I’m working on SEO in the new year, so hopefully that will continue to increase.
What I learned here – One, that linking up some great posts on some good linkys can be a really effective way to bring in traffic. That’s where most of this traffic came from – from linking up to photo challenges, recipe linkys, or my personal favorite to find fun new stuff – the Mommy Club linky on Crystal & Co, where everyone links up their best “mom solution” posts each week.
What I learned here – It’s very obvious here that while sponsored posts and reviews pay the bills, it’s the real content that I write that is what brings people to my site. Whether it’s just something funny I think will entertain people, a personal experience I think can help educate people, or a fun recipe or craft idea – those are the things that people like to read. Which is awesome, since that’s my goal in the new year, to write more real content again. Another thing I noticed is that many of these are posts that I link to within posts often, encouraging readers to discover more of my favorite older posts.
Check out the other bloggers who have put together their own stats posts – See how you compare, what you can learn, what best practices you can adopt. And if you’d like to share your post – leave me a comment below, so I can learn from you, too!
“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.” – Oprah Winfrey… Ok, it’s that time again. Time to say goodbye to the old year, and turn to look ahead to the new year. The world didn’t end, even though Snooki AND Kim Kardashian got pregnant, the Mayans predicted it, and Twinkie went bankrupt. Nope, we’re all still here, and if you’re anything like me, you’re probably excited for a fresh start, new possibilities, new adventures. So, I wanted to share a little bit of my plans for 2013 with you. Feel free to be wildly inspired…. Lol.
New Year’s Resolution #1 – Be more awesome than last year. Lofty goal? Indeed. And it’s funny, because my “Blogging Resolutions” for last year also started with being more awesome, lol. When I go back and look at that post – 10 Blogging Goals for 2012: Starting with Be More Awesome – I’m super proud to say that I pretty much nailed them. Sure – some are still a work in progress, and I’m still working on building better routines into my daily life, since the new work-from-home lifestyle has been a HUGE adjustment. But in 2012 I built my blogging and freelance business into a real career, that allows me to work from home and spend my days with Abby. {Well, spend my days typing away for hours while a 2 year-old prances plastic dinosaurs across my keyboard. Not glamorous, but it’s much better than being away at an office all day!} I hit almost all of my major goals. And I can’t wait to see what I can accomplish in this new year!!
New Year’s Resolution #2 is a little bit less ambitious – Just remember to get the stinkin’ year right!! Lol. Thank goodness it’s not too hard to add a little loopy tail onto the bottom of a 2, and make it look like a weird, drunken 3. So I should be ok. Thank goodness no one writes checks anymore – remember how you’d CONSTANTLY mess that up all month in January?? Writing all of your checks in the past? {And then secretly hoping no one would be able to cash them because they were so old…. } So, this year I resolve to realize what year it is, from day 1.
New Year’s Resolution #3: Sticky note swagger. Yes – In this new year, I’m going to work on getting my swag on, every day. I mean this in a few different ways – One, I need to bust out of “Frump-Mom” territory. I recently ran into a really good friend of mine, who’s mid-pregnancy, super tired, still working full time, you know how it goes. And she looked awesome – cute outfit, fully accesorized, great hair. Me? I had a mess of a bun, sweat pants in public, and I’m not even sure that my shoes matched. Abby was just as bad – wild, no-brush hair, and a messy face. Yes, it was a last-minute Walmart run while she was sick. But still. I used to do fashion merchandising in retail stores, and was somewhat stylish. I used to have really good hair – I swear. So it’s time to get back to that. AND – it’s time to feel this way when it comes to blogging and business too. I’m definitely one of those chicks that have a hard time being firm, asking for what I want, insisting on what I know I deserve. I’m turning that swag on EVERY morning from now on. Oh yeah.
New Year’s Resolution #4: Lose the rest of this damn toddler weight. Yes, I called it baby weight for a year. Everyone said, “It takes 9 months to put it on, it’ll take another 9 months to take it off. Don’t stress it.” Then it became, “It’s ok – it takes everyone about a year. That first birthday, you’ll be back in your old jeans again – no worries.” Now, they’ve probably given up, lol. I can’t call it “baby weight” when she’s 2 1/2. It’s now “toddler weight” which is not as socially acceptable. So, after I eat every single deliciously fattening after-Christmas morsel in my home, I’m starting fresh tomorrow morning and WILL lose this weight. {I’m doing a weight loss challenge too – and will be posting a photo of my weigh-in’s once a week. EEK! But watch for it. Tomorrow morning is post numero uno. Ghad.}
New Year’s Resolution #5: Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate. Oh maaaahn. I could go on about this for quite awhile. Whether it comes to religion, to politics, to society, to guns, to motherhood, to what people wear, to whatever – In life, this is the resolution I’d love to share with everyone, and hope more people pick up on. When you talk about your God, whoever He or She may be, do you think people listen when you’re supporting people, doing good works, spreading positivity? Or when you’re telling gays they’re going to hell, that kids are shot in school because we don’t teach your specific religious beliefs there, or whatever else it is that you want to be negative about? Your beliefs are yours. But remember that if you want support for them – In ANY part of life, on ANY topic – the way to go is by being positive and giving people a reason to feel good. Not telling a portion of people why they suck. No fun.
In closing – here’s a thank you for listening to my goals, and not laughing at them. Most New Year’s Resolutions are easily forgotten in those first sober moments of the new year… Or at best, work as a “To-Do list for the first week of January” – lol. But, I’m a list maker. A goal checker. A get it done-er. I’m super excited to have had my business goals posted on this site, for last year, which help keep me accountable – and that I accomplished almost all of it. So, watch soon for more specific goals coming from me soon – to again, keep me accountable.
Share your New Year’s Resolutions with me in our Facebook community – Funny, sarcastic, serious, emotional, all of ’em. I want to hear your realistic plans, and overly ambitious dreams. I don’t have mine all written down yet, so I’d love to be inspired by you guys too!!
Happy New Year’s! Be safe, drive safe, don’t say “I love you man” too many times tonight, and may the person you kiss at midnight – spouse, significant other, or random stranger – have nice breath and be non-regret-inducing tomorrow morning!
“When you’re in my house you shall do as I do and believe who I believe in. So Bart, butter your bacon.” – Homer Simpson…. Ok ladies. If you’ve read this site often, you know that I have far more enthusiasm in the kitchen than I do skills. Which means that all of my awesome cooking and baking ideas don’t always work out as planned. {Doesn’t keep me from trying though, lol.}
"The phrase "working mother" is redundant." I'm Meagan - a Momma, a Blogger, a Freelance Writer, and a total Social Media Junkie. I love sparkles and … [Read More...]
