30 March 2012

Blogging Sites and What They Can Do For You

Hello lovelies :)
After enjoying a lie in this morning, I can feel a productive day coming along! I've already done all the reading for my next assignment and written the plan in the last hour so I'm feeling optimistic today!

As a blogger, we all want to get our blog seen by other people. We write down our thoughts, opinions and experiences not only to keep a record for ourselves but also to share these things with other like minded people who might be interested or inspired by what we are writing.
In this day and age, the internet is a big, vast ocean full of little fish like us who are all wanting to be heard so it isn't always easy to lead people to your little corner of the internet to discover your blog but luckily there are plenty of websites for bloggers to come together and meet one another. So here are a couple of my favourites and a bit of information about how I use them and how they can help you.


First up we have blogger (or blogspot) of course, which is the platform my blog is set up on. Blogger is run by google and is a great platform for setting up your original blog. It is also now the only platform which allows you to use Google Friend Connect, which is perhaps the most widely used tool to gain followers (or it was until google stopped allowing all blogs to use it!)
I don't find blogger useful for finding other blogs, but the dashboard is nicely laid out making it easy to see when blogs that you follow using GFC have added a new post. There is also a handy list of all the blogs you follow displayed down the left hand side of the page so you can find posts by a particular blog quickly. The cheeky print screen shows how everything is laid out.



Next we have Bloglovin' which I have to say is my total favourite blogging site. I use it solely to follow my favourite blogs because I love how it is laid out. When you start following a blog, all of the new posts from that blog are added to your feed from then onwards as with all blogging sites, but bloglovin' splits them down  for you and sends a daily email to you letting you know how many new posts have been added over all from the blogs you follow in the last 24 hours. When you log in to your homepage, down the left hand side of the page it also shows you how many new posts there are from each individual blog. My favourite feature bloglovin' provides, however, it the toolbar that opens along the bottom of the screen when you open up the first blog post. Unlike other platforms, this toolbar means that you do not have to open up a new window for each post you want to read, you simply click "next" and you  are able to move on to the next unread post you have. I love this feature, it makes reading blogs so much easier. You can also "like" any post you read which is saved into a separate section on your account so you can always find the post again in the future.
Although I only use bloglovin' to follow blogs, it is also a great site for finding them, although I do find that it likes to promote the big fish in blogging rather than up and coming talent which annoys me a little. Heres a print of the homepage once you have an account, it is essentially just one, big, easy to navigate feed. I'm really surprised that now more people use bloglovin'!

Finally, we have Bloggers, a site that I am relatively new to, but really impressed with so far. This is the site that I use to find new blogs because the way that the site is designed makes this so easy. You can search for blogs by popularity, genre/content and also country. I usually use the country option because, whilst I enjoy reading blogs from all over the world, I like reading beauty and fashion posts most and these are most useful to me if written by someone who is writing about products from my own country where I can pick them up myself if I like the look or sound of them. I have found some seriously great blogs on this site that I would never have otherwise. When you sign up you can write up a profile page where you talk about you and your blog so that other people can get a good idea about what you write. You also link up your blog to your page so people can easily access it. You have the option to add friends from other blogs and you can also "vote" for a blog if you like it. I'm not 100% sure what voting does, but I think that it increases the level of exposure the site gives you so you can work your way up to being a big fish. People can also vote for each individual post you write, drawing more people into the posts you write. It seems to be a good system, even if I don't fuly understand it because I have had a lot more exposure and page views since joining bloggers. Heres a screen print of the dashboard, I'm not as keen on the bloggers dashboard, but I don't use it much for reading blogs anyway, just finding great blogs so I'm not bothered :)
And those are my top three blogging sites and why. I hope this post was useful and that I didn't ramble on too much. You can find links to follow me on all three of these sites in the sidebar of my blog, but if you're interested in having a look at the sites yourself here are some links.

Do you use any of these sites? What is your favourite blogging site?
Catch you later,
Annie x

2 comments:

  1. I'm over on Blogger at http://seetalktochrissy.blogspot.com (Ramblings of a Rusty Mind) and have blogged now for almost 2 years and love it. Always popping over to read your blogs. xx

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  2. Yep, blogger is a great site to use. I'm a follower of your blog Chrissy, I really enjoy reading your posts :) xx

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