time management

It is so important to be pinning your things! Last week I posted a lot of great Pinterest stats (check them out if you haven’t yet!)

There are two options in Pinterest:
1- Pin them organically – whenever you have time.
2- Schedule them with an app.

If you go for the first one (I go back and forth between #1 and #2), just be sure to pin your stuff when your audience is on. I pin the most in the evening, because that is when mothers of young kids have the time to get online. I can also pin early in the morning, before her kids are up. (my articles are mostly parenting).

If you go for scheduling, you have a lot of tools to choose from: (almost all of them have free & paid options, or at least a “try it for free before you buy” option).

1- Board Booster. I use this one and it is pretty easy to use. You can also loop your material (meaning that it will re-pin for you over & over). There is a free and paid option, depending on how often you are pinning.

2- ViralTag – The Pinterest scheduling tool, ViralTag, is one that a lot of people love. You can pin to a board and set the time/interval that it goes out.

3- Ahalolgy– I loved this one, but my plugin kept breaking. It made it really easy to have my pins looped.

4- Tailwind – a lot of my friends love this option, too! The app seems to be really helpful & people swear by it!

5- ViralWoot – people love this one for the stats that it provides, really giving you insight into what is working.

There are so many more, but those are the ones that I hear about the most often. I want to encourage you to try these out and find the best option for you. Remember that you can’t mess things up, so just try it. Play around with these apps and websites and really give it a good shot (if you are confused, find a video on youtube to help!)

Want more help? Check out our books or our personal conference, where we look at your blog and tell you how you can improve it to reach your goals.

Sometimes, as a blogger, new or old… there comes a time when you feel overwhelmed. It might be that you feel disorganized, or that you are trying to sign-up for so many money-making opportunities that you feel like you don’t know where to begin. It may be that you are finding that balancing your blog with family life is proving to be harder than you thought.

Here are a few ideas to help you when you feel overwhelmed:

1- Start with the “MUST-DO” things.
You must play with your kids.
You must hang out with your husband.
You must-do your post for tomorrow.
You must share some FB & Pinterest things.

2- Now set aside some time.
Set your timer for 20 minutes. Take your kids into a room and do not bring your phone or computer. Play with them for 20 minutes- uninterrupted. Nothing matters BUT THEM. Schedule this playtime if you have to! (Here are tips on how to play with them) Studies show that 20 minutes a day is enough to create that close-knit bond, if you start at a VERY young age. (ps- 20 is the minimum, so aim for more. Try 20 min. every hour or two. This is completely uninteruppted- no chores, no grown-up talk…just you & your kiddos!)

3- Now spend 5 minutes doing some things to ‘get by’. Maybe its a quick share on FB. Maybe its editing a picture.

4- Give yourself an hour tonight and just start on your list.

5- Remember that all of this will BE HERE TOMORROW. Don’t worry about it- you can only DO what you can DO. Go easy on yourself!

This could be a post by itself, but here is what I do… WHEN THE KIDS GO TO BED.

1- I make sure that my post is done. Everything. I make sure that the image is ready, the post is scheduled for midnight. I make sure that it is scheduled to go live on my FB page at 6:00 am (my most active FB time for my readers).

2- I check my e-mails. My husband and I do this together, because he takes care of my blog finances, so he helps me by organizing it into a spreadsheet of when drafts are due, when final posts are due and when I was paid. He needs to see the e-mails to help me and I just like doing this together.
He and I have been together forever, so he knows how I like to do everything together (which is why I want him to work with me one day!)
Here we were at 14…

3- I schedule my FB shares. I should schedule them a month in advance, but I don’t. I schedule them daily for now. My blogging friend, Jamie, keeps telling me to schedule them out further because it is so much easier, so this is a new goal of mine! My blogging friend, Dayna, told me: If you don’t do them in advance, it will make you feel like you are a slave to Facebook- getting on all day long to post things. So true!

4- I talk to Paula about BOTS stuff & about our regular blog stuff… we make plans about our book, our posts for the week ahead, our boosts that we offer (we do them at night… we each take time to look at each one, so we need to communicate about them).

5- I watch Revenge, the Blacklist & Modern Family (among many other favorites) with my husband while we fold laundry. That’s the fun part, right? 😉

Honestly, blogging can take up a LOT of time, so you have to keep it on the side, even if it is earning a full-time income. Keep God, your marriage and your kids as your top priority and the rest will fall into place… I tell my husband all the time “God knows what we need when we need it.” Trust that!