My Blogging Tools Of The Trade

I've been getting into this blogging game for almost two years now (wow, time flies!) and I have picked up a few technological tools which makes blogging a bit easier and smoother to do.  So I thought I would share them with you. 


Planning 

When I'm planning posts my posts my favourite tool is a bit old fashioned- a notebook and pen!

Writing

I tend to just write my posts on Blogger's own template.  

For editing the photos before they go up I am told by Matty (my long suffering photographer, if you're feeling sorry for him give him a like here) that he uses just uses Lightroom for blog posts. 

Scheduling

I use blogger's own tools to schedule posts. 

I also have some social media scheduled automatically - when I upload to Lookbook a tweet is sent out, same with Bloglovin! 

I have a Google calender where I can keep an eye on what's going on.  I have my reoccurring features already scheduled - like Silent Sunday and Fourth Favourites.  I then write in posts which are written and scheduled.  If I have ideas but I haven't written them up yet then I note that too. 

Posting and Sharing 

Once a post goes live - which a *top tip* is best to be right at the start of the day, and preferably on a regular basis - it's always worth giving it a little share.  I don't like to go over board with it, although I could probably do a little better with my promoting of it. 

As I said there is an automatic tweet that goes out when it goes live.  But I like to follow it up with an instagram post because photos are pretty!  For some reason instagram photos you tell to post to Twitter annoyingly show up as a link, not a photo on Twitter.  So to get around that I use an IFTTT  recipe to make it show up on Twitter as a picture.  This is super handy!  

I also have Instagram linked up to my Facebook page, which I use the Pages app to manage on my phone as well.  

Do you have any vital tools in your blogging tool box?