As you might know, a few months ago, Jess and I launched Blogging for Keeps – it’s a website dedicated to helping fashion and lifestyle bloggers grow their blog and audience. We share new content each week and dive deep on your biggest pain points and we’re so excited to announce something new this week!

So, drumroll please….

We’re SO EXCITED to announce that BFK will be offering it’s first set of webinars! We heard you guys loud and clear—and it was obvious that WordPress was a pain point for you–regardless of your experience level. We’re offering two different webinars, so select the one that’s best for you and sign up today — they’re totally FREE!

WordPress 101 starts TOMORROW, so hurry up and sign up now!

JUNE 21 AT 12PM & 8PM CST

Stop waiting, start doing! (If you haven’t started your blog because you keep making excuses–this is for you!)

We’ll walk you through the basics step-by-step: hosting and WordPress set-up, theme installation, and more — no techy or graphic design skills required! You’ll have a blog you’re proud of in less than an hour! (Seriously, it doesn’t get any easier.)

JUNE 23 AT 12PM & 8PM CST

Got the basics down, but still fumbling through WordPress none-the-less? Not after this webinar!

In one hour we’ll walk you through setting up plugins (and which ones will make your life INFINITELY easier), creating custom menus, widgets & we’ll explain how to use the ever elusive Yoast SEO so google will give you ALL THE JUICE! 

If you weren’t already aware, Pinterest is an incredible tool for bloggers. Since Pinterest is basically a visual search engine, it can drive hundreds, even thousands of new visits to your site each month — especially when a pin goes viral!

If you think you don’t have enough followers on Pinterest to make a difference, you’re wrong.

Getting traffic to your blog from Pinterest doesn’t solely rely on how many followers you have, but instead on how many repins your pins that link back to your blog are getting. Sounds good in theory, but how exactly do we get more repins so that our pins go viral?

The best way? Make Pinterest graphics.

You’ve probably heard this before, but if you haven’t done it yet, I urge you to try it today! Graphic pins are far more likely to get repinned and go viral than a single image alone. These pins are longer and take up more visual space, so Pinners are less likely to overlook them. The text provides short and straight-forward descriptions which let Pinners know exactly what they’re getting!

I know, I know, they do require a little bit more time to create, but they’re totally worth it!

Remember — the more repins you get, the more traffic you could potentially be bringing to your site each month and who doesn’t want that?!

Here’s a perfect example….

This pin is just a single image from a blog post on yoga poses for strong abs and it did well — 28 repins is great!

I also made a graphic for this post that included the title and multiple images and this pin was repinned 19.4K times. So much better than the single image pin! The best part is that this pin still brings me a new traffic every month, even though the post is almost a year old!

Convinced you should make Pinterest graphics? I sure hope so!

If don’t have any design experience, this can seem like a daunting task that you quickly give up on, but, don’t give up just yet! I promise, there’s a much easier way to create graphics — even if you’re not a designer or don’t have design software — the answer?

BeFunky.

This online platform allows you to easily make gorgeous Pinterest graphics for your own blog that can give your traffic a major boost! Follow along below to find out just how easy it is!

1. PICK A TEMPLATE

Hit ‘Collage Maker’ at the top of BeFunky’s website. On the next page click on the icon that looks like 4 small squares to select a template. There’s a whole bunch of them to pick from!

You can easily remove cells and pull the bottom to make it longer or shorter to fit your needs. I deleted a few cells and then made it a bit taller to accommodate my vertical images.

2. ADD PHOTOS & TEXT

To add images, click on a cell and then select the ‘Add Image’ button. You can drag and drop images to move them around the template too. Add text by hitting the ‘A’ icon and then click the ‘Add Text’ button.

You can change the styling of the text too. Change the font size, font family, color, border and alignment from the text panel. The background will look light blue, but on export it will appear white!

3. SAVE YOUR WORK

Once you’re all finished, go to the top of the page and click the ‘Save’ button. From the dropdown, select ‘Computer’ and select your settings.

PNG files are typically better for text, but I actually found that the file was too big for Pinterest, so I exported it as a JPEG and the size was perfect! Play around with it and see what works for you.

4. UPLOAD TO PINTEREST

There’s two ways to add your Pin to Pinterest. You can add the image to the blog post and pin it directly from that post page. It will automatically be linked back to the page, so if you do this, then you won’t have to do any of the other steps below.

But, sometimes I like to make a graphic and not include it in the actual post, so if you want to do that, head over to Pinterest and in the top right hand corner, you’ll notice a circle icon with a ‘+’ in the middle of it.

Click it and then select the option, ‘Upload from Computer’ to upload your pin. If you get an error message that your pin is too big, try making it a JPEG file, that worked for me!

Once it uploads, add a description and then select the board that you want to pin it to and hit ‘Pin it’!

A box with an upload confirmation will pop up. Select the option to ‘See it now’. This will take you to the pin so that you can manually edit the details.

5. EDIT PIN DETAILS

Since we manually uploaded this image, it doesn’t have a link yet, so hit ‘Edit’ to change that.

Copy the link to the post page (including the ‘http://’ part) and drop it into the box titled ‘Website’ and then hit ‘Save’.

You can then navigate to that board and see your final pin, pretty cool, right?!

What’s great about this technique is that you can go back to some of your most popular posts and make new graphics for them that will encourage more repins and send you more traffic! Hop over to Blogging For Keeps to see today’s post on how to create an eye-catching Facebook cover photo!

What other Pinterest tips do you have?

BTW, how to launch a blog in 5 minutes, and is blogging dead?

*This post was sponsored by BeFunky, as always, all opinions are my own! Thanks for supporting the brands that keep The Fox & She up & running!

Today’s the day! If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen me hinting to a project that I’ve been working on with one of my good friends Jess Keys. If you don’t know Jess, you can pop over to her site here to see what she’s all about. Jess, like me, loves helping out other bloggers by sharing insight, tips and information in her weekly video column, Ask Jess.

A while back we were having a work day together and realized that our similar goals needed a special place to live, so Blogging For Keeps was born! I’ve loved sharing blogging tips with you guys here, and I still plan to share some bits and income reports here, but more of the blogging content will live here. Why? We wanted to create a place that was 100% dedicated to helping you grow your blog and hopefully turn your hobby into a career.

One of the things that makes this site unique is that it’s not just a blog, it’s a community! We’ve got a Facebook page that we’d love for you to join so you can ask questions and get feedback from other like-minded individuals! Make sure to subscribe too so that you can gain access to our FREE library of resources and worksheets to help you better plan for the future and grow strategically.

We’re both incredibly excited about this new site and the opportunity to reach more bloggers and help you grow your own sites! We hope you join us for the ride and also share with your blogging friends, because sharing is caring.

Also, if there are any topics you want covered or tutorials you’d like to see, let us know — you can leave them in the comments here or on BFK!! As I said, we want this place to be as beneficial to you as possible, so please share what you’re struggling with and what you’d like to see!

Thank you all again for stopping by here every week — it’s only going to get better from here!

image via

Last week I talked about a few of the main takeaways that I got from the RewardStyle conference. One of the biggest and the one that stuck with me the most was that social media will come and go, but at the end of the day, you have 100% control over your site. It’s the only thing you truly own and it’s the place where you should be investing your time and money. So today I thought I’d share a few ways you can invest in your business to take your site to the next level!

1. Self-Host: I just said that your site is the only thing you own, but that’s not always true. If your blog is on Blogger, you don’t own that, Google does. I highly recommend self-hosted WordPress. If you haven’t switched, it’s not as scary as it sounds and I’ve got a tutorial for setting up your hosting and installing WordPress here. It only takes about 5 minutes and is totally affordable! If you have any plans for turning your blog into a business, this step is an absolute MUST.
2. Reliable Hosting: When you decide to self-host, make sure you buy reliable hosting. It doesn’t have to be the most expensive, but it probably shouldn’t be the cheapest either. I use Bluehost and have had a really great experience. There are plenty of other hosts out there, just make sure you do your research!
3. Blog Design: First impressions are important and your site should be clean, user-friendly and also mobile friendly. If a full custom design isn’t in your budget, there are tons of premium themes out there with great features and beautiful designs. I have my own pre-fab themes here and I also recommend checking out ThemeForest — there are sooo many themes on there!
4. Protect Your Site: One of the most terrifying thoughts can be having your site hacked and losing all of the content you’ve made over the years. Make sure to take regular backups of your site and install a security plugin to help prevent this. Also make sure that always keep your WordPress installation and all plugins up to date! If you don’t do that, you leave your site vulnerable to attacks.
5. Invest in a Good Camera: If photography is a big part of your site, investing in a good camera and learning how to use it can be a game-changer. Once I learned how to properly shoot on my camera and edit in Lightroom, my photos became so much better. I’m always learning new things, so hopefully they’ll only get better. Here’s what they looked like when I first started!

Have you invested in your business? What investments did you think were worth it? Any you wouldn’t do again?

This past weekend I was in Dallas for the RewardStyle conference. Since RS is truly a leader in the fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogging industry, I always look forward to the opening panels — I love hearing about what’s happening, what direction it’s going, what’s changing and what should we expect moving forward. This year, I was looking forward to it more than usual because lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about how blogs are dying. So, is it true?

The short answer, no. The long answer is still no, but yes, it definitely changing, but is it going away? Don’t count on it.

I think we can agree that the landscape of blogging has already changed a lot. What started as an online journal of sorts, has turned into editorial sites with gorgeous photography, products, affiliate links and inspired writing. It’s a saturated market and it’s tough to make a name for yourself out there, but I still like to think that there’s enough to go around. Let’s not forget that the world has about 7.2 billion people living on it, so yea, there’s plenty of room for everyone.

Anyway, back to the state of the blog. Whether you like it or not, things are changing and will continue to change. If you want to be relevant in this space, I suggest welcoming change with open arms and look at change with a positive perspective instead of just hoping it will go away.

I wanted to share a few takeaways from last weekend’s conference, several were repeated numerous times, that should remind or convince you that blogging isn’t going anywhere and that if you’re still trying to make it in this world, it’s totally possible!

1. Influencers accounted for 12% of total traffic to major retail sites which means that retailers see the importance and power of publishers and are willing to set aside ad dollars for those types of promotions and collaborations.

2. Your blog should be your hub. While social media can be a great way for you to generate extra income and drive traffic to your site, they’re known to change and that’s not something you have any control over. And you should expect them to change! If you’re investing in your business, it should be on your blog because that is the only thing you own 100%. If Facebook and Instagram die tomorrow, your blog will still be there. FYI! If you’re on Blogger, you do NOT own that site. Blogger could also be shut down and with all that goes your content. If you’re still on Blogger, I highly recommend moving to self-hosted WordPress to guarantee that you have total control and ownership over your website.

3. Know your value and don’t overcharge. I’ll admit for a long time, I was undercharging, which is annoying now that I look back on it, but it’s equally as important to truly know your value. What can you realistically provide a brand? More and more campaigns are focusing on ROI (return on investment) and if there’s a low ROI, a retailer probably won’t be interested in paying a high fee for a sponsored post. If you already have a relationship with a brand and decide to raise your prices, make sure you can justify that price increase with real numbers!