Our resident tech expert, Janis from Really Kid Friendly is sharing her Wordpress knowledge again.
Watch this video tutorial which demonstrates how to install and configure a premium Wordpress Theme and create an elegant, professional website or blog on a budget.
You rock, Janis, thanks!
BritMums have joined up with Erica and Antonia from BAM: Become a Mumpreneur to bring you a fabulous video series on How To Become A Mum Blogger. Here's the second video in the series, it's all about how to create posts and pages.
You can check out the first video here, which is all about how to start a blog.
Enjoy!
June is here, summer is creeping into our thoughts, school fetes and the final weeks of the school year are filling our calendars. The daunting prospect of 6-7 weeks of NO SCHOOL is starting to sink in as well. Whatever will we do with this time? Go on holiday? Enroll our kids in camps and activities? Take time to smell the roses?
Well, before the manic days of summer kick in, let's have another BritMums Blog Hop to remind ourselves of the wonderful bloggers in our community. You can find some new reads, remind yourselves of some "old" favourites and prepare your reading rota for the endless weeks ahead.
Have you ever wondered if you need to tell the tax man about that massage the lovely PR person gave you as a thank you for participating in their campaign. Or if he should be privy to that vacuum cleaner you reviewed (and kept). Liz Jarvis from The Mum Blog shows us that tax doesn't have to be taxing.
As many of us have discovered, apart from making friends and the chance to be part of a brilliant community, blogging can provide you with the opportunity to write product reviews, go on days out and holidays, receive vouchers and even payment for posts.
And more and more bloggers are making money from their blogs, and even running them as at home businesses.
Which can make things a little complicated, from the tax point of view.
Continue reading "Guest post: What every blogger needs to know about tax " »
Can you believe that May is nearly gone? Spring is sprung and Summer is sitting on our doorstep! We're all looking forward to our last Spring Bank Holiday, starting to countdown to the end of school and planning our summer holidays. But wait! Before you get carried away with the boys of summer, let's take this opportunity to have a final Spring BritMums Blog Hop!
Back again to educate the Mum Blogging community, Erica Douglas offers us some outstanding insight into the world of monetising your blog. If you're looking for some tips as to how to make a bit of income with your blog, look no further!
So you've been blogging for a while and you're loving it! Your blog is looking exactly how you want it (after many a midnight hour spent tinkering!) and your traffic is on the up and up. So what next? Successful bloggers have gone on to do everything from publishing a book to building a business, turned freelance and built niche websites.
The opportunities are endless, do you have goals beyond blogging for fun? I could have written about any of the topics above but Karin suggested monetising your blog as the hot topic of the moment. If you're happily blogging for fun then look away now, we're going to talk about that dirty thing called money.
Continue reading "Guest post from Littlemummy: Monetising your blog" »
Erica Douglas, aka Littlemummy, has gone from startup blogger to a mover and shaker in the blogging world, helping scores of newbies with her blogging e-workshops. Here, she guest posts at BMB with her best tips for those starting out. Here’s her best advice:
So you’ve set up your blog and now you’re wondering what next?
Blogging can be pretty daunting when you first start, as a newbie it’s easy to feel on the outside of what seems like a very exclusive club. I’m here to tell you that there isn’t anything exclusive about this club. Of course there are groups of bloggers that seem close as they’ve shared experiences such as attending Cybermummy 2010, going on a review trip or doing charity work in places like Bangladesh but this doesn’t mean that you can’t approach these bloggers if you’re interested in what they have to say.
Here's part 2 of Emily Carlisle's post about how blogging can change your life. Also know as More than Just a Mother, Emily entered the blogging world with a bang in 2008 and has picked up all kinds of tips since. Over to Emily:
If you’re starting to think what it might do for you, here are some of my top blogging tips;
1. Start. That’s my first tip. Every single one of you could go home tonight, log onto a free blogging site such as Blogger or Wordpress, and write your first blog post.
When you start blogging one of the biggest challenges can be getting the "party started" with regards to comments. It can be difficult to get people to comment until you've established more of a following which can be very discouraging to newbies.
At BMB, we like to encourage the community spirit as much as possible. For those that want a little kickstart with comments on their blogs, we're organising comments groups for April.
This is how it works: Fill out the form below before 29 March and we'll put you in a group of 10 bloggers. Then all you have to do is make sure you visit the blogs in your group at least once a week, and leave comments if you feel you have something to add.
It's a bit like being placed in an NCT Group after you've had your first baby. Hopefully some real "blog" friendships will blossom.
**Thank you to the 77 bloggers who have signed up for the FIRST BMB Comment Group. Registration is now closed however, there will be another oppportunity next month to register for the next comment group. Until then, happy Blogging!
Blog design has come on by leaps and bounds lately, but it's left one blogger wondering if we should be focussing quite so much on our blogs' beauty versus their personality. Emily, who blogs at Baby Rambles (@babyrambles), writes:
Blogs are improving their looks. When I started blogging a few yeas ago, most of the blogs I read had an amateurish layout like mine. My blog still has that amateur look, but many out there have smartened up. And with the huge amount of themes and looks available to download into your blogging software now, it can be a full-time job just keeping up with the latest templates and widgets and making your blog look perfect.
Ah, Spring...the birds are chirping, the days are lasting longer, the flowers are starting to bloom...a time for renewal...a time for all things bright and beautiful!
What a great time to find a few new blogs to read! We love having a growing lists of brilliant blogs to peruse. It helps us all to be better bloggers! Finding inspiration, being spurred on to write, interact and learn. And it's fun!
We give you the March BMB Blog Hop. It's as simple as a simple thing. Add your blog url to the Linky below. If you're feeling overly ambitious, you can add the Linky code below to your most recent blog post and the Linky will appear on your site as well. Failing that, just add your url and we'll find you!
Be sure to trawl the list and see if you can find 5 new blogs to follow in April. Do your best to comment on them as much as possible as we all LOVE to know that SOMEONE is reading our work. After you're done reading, go outside and enjoy the glorious English Spring that is finally settling in!
The BMB Blogger of the Week describes herself with these heartfelt words...
In the years B.C. (before children) I was involved with music which I loved. I also did a postgraduate degree and then threw myself into academia which I loved too. Now I do freelance work when people ring me up and ask me to although I have to resist my first urge to turn them down on the basis that if they saw my house and my organisational skills they wouldn’t ask me to write a shopping list for them, let alone do some work.
I worry about poverty, the environment, animal welfare and war. I hate the way motherhood renders me invisible in society. I hate that some people think it’s OK not to vaccinate their child. I’m working to change all of these things in very small ways.
I write stuff all the time, mostly in my head because I’m busy with children, but sometimes I get to put it down on paper or on the internet. I also love music, especially pop, Britpop and, rather geekily, film scores. Mostly I live to read (even though I can’t remember the last time I had a moment to read more than a sentence or two in peace).
In the spotlight for the first of our "Why Do You Blog" series is Pippa from A Mother's Ramblings...
What is your Blog Name/Url? (Twitter ID & Facebook Fan Page URL) My Blog is called A Mother's Ramblings. You can also find me on Twitter and my Facebook Fan page and on YouTube.
What is your name/alias? I am known mostly as Mummy on the blog, but I go by PippaD which is my real name!
How did you come up with your Blog Name? A Mother's Ramblings wasn't my first blog, and I wanted a place for my ramblings on parenting as it didn't fit in with the other blog areas as well as the other areas would fit in with blogging about parenting! I didn't know about a lot of parenting blogs back then so I thought I should combine my love of walking/rambling and my love of parenting and my habit of never shutting up...
Continue reading "Why do you blog? Pippa @ A Mother's Ramblings" »
Ever been confused about all the carnivals and memes out there? Scribbling Mum (pictured) is on hand with this primer about them.
When I first started blogging over a year ago I wondered what the heck people were talking about, inviting me to join in with their 'carnival'. Did I have to dress up? Would there be cake?
I can remember getting my first 'meme', being thrilled, but spending way too long thinking about how you'd pronounce it if you had to say it out loud. Was it mee-mee or memé? When I asked this of the seasoned blogger who'd tagged me she was like 'Em. Not sure. Weirdo.' and ran away.
And who was this McLinky they spoke of? As a Scot, should I be offended at this apparent stereotyping?
Continue reading "15 of the best parent blogging carnivals and memes " »
Do you have a Facebook fan page? You should! Facebook fan pages are among the most effective ways of connecting with your audience, and of gaining new readers for your blog. Janis Curry, founder of Really Kid Friendly has put together these practical tips on how to use Facebook fan page tools for bloggers, brands and businesses.
1. Automatically post blog updates to your Fan Page wall
RSS Graffitiis a popular and easy to use application which allows you to automatically post your latest blog updates on your Facebook Fan Page wall. This is an excellent way of gaining new readers from outside the blogosphere and outside of Twitter. One of the best aspects of RSS Graffiti that you don’t see with similar applications is that you can update your wall with content from multiplesources for free. That means you can promote content from your partners or sponsors, your favourite blogs, or other RSS feeds that you feel will strike a chord with your audience.
Continue reading "5 essential Facebook tools for bloggers" »
Helen writes reviews about everything from bathroom toy holders to coffee makers on her blog www.petitmom.co.uk and she also blogs at petiteladies.blogspot.com. Here, she shares her tips for getting in to the reviewing game.
Do you think you have a unique viewpoint and knowledge to write reviews, whether for products, services or entertainment? Have you seen other blogs and wondered how to start reviewing? Here are some tips and advice to help you begin.
Twitter
This was invaluable to me when I started out. You can find many companies on Twitter who are very friendly and some will even be more than happy to send you some of their products to review. If you want to ask over Twitter you should ask in a polite manner. Don’t just say “Got any stuff for me to review?” That makes you sound like a blagger, not a blogger. An example would be this tweet to Tommee Tippee, where I merely ask them if they were looking for reviews from mummy blogger (our kitchen is full of their products) and I got a response fairly quickly asking if we can speak over email.
Continue reading "Guest post: How to write reviews on your blog: a beginners guide" »
Ever wonder how to make a blog look good enough to eat? Photography is a great way to inject some much needed energy into a site. Jay aka Mocha Beanie Mummy is a professional photographer in "real life". Here she gives us 7 suggestions for improving photography on your blog.
There are so many ways to do it, and how much effort you make dictates how fast you will improve. But if you’re not sure where to start, then hopefully this will give you a shove in the right direction!
1. Take part in blog memes for fun - it’s good practice whether it’s working on photos that have meaning to you, specific themes, areas you want to improve - it all helps. Put yourself out there! There’s a world of support at your fingertips. Why not come and try out Silent Sunday? One photo which you took in the last week and NO WORDS in the post - easy! Use the linky and the badge to be connected to plenty more blogs doing the same thing, peruse lots of photos at your pleasure.
Continue reading "Seven easy ways to improve your blog photography " »
We have loads of new BMB members, and they are all asking for tips for promoting their blogs. There are no secrets! Just ask. Below are some tricks you can try.
1. Put your self on Wikio's top parent blogging index. A blog's position on the ranking is based on an evaluation of incoming links and other measures. Head on over, and make sure you enter your blog to be evaluated for next month.
2. Create a Twitter account. Twitter's micro blogging platform has become very popular - watch out it can be addictive! Here are some tips on how to get the most out of Twitter.
3. Get yourself a Facebook Fan Page. It may sound self-indulgent, but do it! This social networking site alllows you to "friend" like-minded people. You can add links to your articles, and "like" them.
Continue reading "Eight things you can do right now to promote your blog and get new readers" »
