productivity tips & helpful blogging tools! | collab with flora

Hi there! Today I’m doing a collab with the lovely Flora from Flora’s Week Show Blog! I had a lot of fun doing this blogging q&a with her, and I thought it would be a great idea to do a collaboration with her again! 😄💕

If you’re not already following Flora’s blog, I really recommend you do! She writes fun and upbeat posts that totally brighten my Reader. 🌟💖 A post of hers I really enjoyed was when she shared what’s on her desk!

And now I’ll share my part of this collab! 😂 we are swapping productivity tips today and chatting about helpful tools we use for blogging!

Make sure you click here to check out her productivity tips and blogging tools!

👒 productivity tips 👒

• Keep setting goals that inspire you! There are a lot of things we have to do in life that are our responsibility, then there are things we get to have fun with! If you continually set goals and reach milestones that make you really happy, you’ll be on a roll with being productive. 😊 (click here to read my goal-setting tips!)
• Reach deadlines before you need to. This one totally depends on you – some people love accomplishing stuff way ahead of time (me, haha), then there are people who wait until the last minute and get it done in a huge burst of motivation. Whatever makes you the most comfortable and helps you feel accomplished, I would highly suggest staying on top of meeting important daily and weekly goals! That leads me to my next tip:
• Productivity inspires more productivity! As you check things off your to do list and meet goals, you’ll be able to believe in yourself more and more! When your confidence in your ability to get stuff done grows stronger, you’ll have the courage to set bigger goals, work harder, and accomplish things you might not have realized you could!

💻 helpful blogging tools 💻

GOOGLE // while working on posts, I almost always have a separate tab open where I can quickly retrieve information I need! 😂 this includes checking the spelling of words (i.e. affect vs. effect [which I still struggle with knowing when to use which one haha]) and verifying my grammar.

CALENDAR // whether you have a dry erase board, printable calendar, a planner, or a Google Doc, having a way to track your post ideas and what you’ve already published is really helpful! It’ll help you remember deadlines for contests, when you’re doing a collab with another blogger, which days you want to do certain posts, and so much more.

PHOTO EDITING APPS // I use a couple of these to make my featured images and other blog graphics! My favorites are RookieCam, Superimpose, PhotoGrid, Canva, and PicLab. They’re all free or inexpensive!

FREE STOCK PHOTO SITES // you can learn about how to use these websites here and here! Basically they make it where you can have fun customizing your blog without worrying about copyright or bad photo quality. 😂👌

GOOD MUSIC // there’s nothing like having some awesome motivating music on in the background while post-writing! 🤩 actually for me, music is great while I’m making featured images, tagging my post, maybe outlining the main ideas, and coming up with a title. But the lyrics are majorly distracting while trying to formulate a unique post haha, so I usually pause the nice tunes while I write the post itself. 😉 fun fact about me! haha

QUICK LINKS // need to quickly access a certain part of your dashboard? Looking for that award post you need to link back to for the post you’re writing? Look no further than your favorites bar! (wow I sound like an infomercial…) anyway, silliness aside I’ll save links I need later so that I can save time with writing posts. For example, I’ll get everything ready for a tag or award post except for the fun part: answering the cool questions! Actually I’m gonna include that as my last helpful tool:

PREP WORK // I like to get the work part of my blog posts out of the way so that when I’m ready to write all the fun bits, the rest has been taken care of! So for example an award post needs a title, featured image, intro and outro, the list of award rules, thanking the blogger who nominated me, linking to my nominees, giving them questions- woo!! By the time I’m done with that, I don’t have any creative energy left to answer the fun questions. So if I get the prep work out of the way one day, then all I have to do is answer the questions and schedule the post! That really helps me to feel more accomplished and less overwhelmed by the tediousness of some posts (which I want to do, but like I said, it takes from the energy I have to write the post in its entirety).

Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed checking out this collab I’ve done with Flora 😄💕 make sure you go visit her blog!

Which tip/s were your favorite? How do you stay productive, and which blogging tools do you use? Let’s chat in the comments!