1. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER
Stationery is your friend, don't be afraid to use it (and abuse it!). Apart from the extremely photogenic stationery from HEMA (see here), I strongly recommend you get yourself an actual blog planner - this one here is the one I've been using for a while now and it's hand down the best one I've tried (and I've tried more than I'm willing to admit!). Blog planners are usually free to print out so all you need is a decent printer and some toner to go with it, maybe a binder so you're not drowning in piles of paper and there ya go - a blog planner which will get your butt in gear, starting with neatly brainstormed blog ideas and finishing with stats and passwords for those affiliate websites. BOOM!
2. THOSE PIKS THO
It's 2016 - pictures taken with your iPhone just won't cut it, mate. Sorry. The least you can do is to get a decent compact camera. I have my compact from Argos for about £30 and with a little bit of Photoshop Lightroom (or even just Photofiltre - that one's for free!), you will have pictures worth a thousand words in every single one of your blog posts.
3. ZZZ LOADING
Put 1 & 2 together and you're literally drowning in a sea of papers and images. The one thing that I've actually never mentioned but that I value the most in terms of blog organisation is a portable hard drive. I've recently been able to swap my chunky WD My Book (it was an actual book - the Oxford Dictionary would be in hard competition here!) for the ever so sleek WD My Passport Ultra. It's actually smaller than my passport (the irony!), fits a massive 1T of data and syncs via the super speedy USB 3.0 (also works with 2.0 for those of us who are using vintage laptops, erm). The best decision ever, let me tell ya! Not only that my laptop is virtually empty so is running much more smoothly - all my photos are now safe! So the usual 'Tereza accidentally deleted her hard drive - again' (true story!) won't happen, hurray!
4. PLUG IN
Blogging is sharing. Sharing is caring. That means that blogging is caring, right? Care about your fellow bloggers - leave them a comment or two on their latest post. Even if it's just a brief - 'Hi, good pic, bye'. Plug into the ecosystem, show that you care.
5. YDY
This is so cheesy but you know it's true. You do you. And that's the only answer. Be organised, be sociable, use the right tools and save yourself the stress of accidentally deleting your hard drive (I don't actually suspect that many people do that...). That's all well & dandy - but don't forget that you're not a robot, you're not a magazine, you're not a chief editor. You're a blogger and you blog because it's your passion and it makes ya happy, right?
☛ GIVEAWAY ☚
To tick a few of the above boxes, the team from WD (thank you!) has been kind enough to provide one of the beautiful wild berry coloured WD My Passport Ultra 1T portable hard drives (read more here). This giveaway is opened internationally and the winner will be selected at random and contacted via e-mail by me. Please enter via the widget below!a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good luck chuck!
