Blog giveaways are all the rage these days, especially among the mommy bloggers. One big mommy blogger that does giveaways on a daily basis is Angela of MommyPR.com. And don’t let the mommy blogger status fool you — not all of the giveaways are just for baby gear and toddler stuff. Many of the giveaways offer products that moms and even most women would be happy to have and use.
I have done giveaways on a variety of my blogs. I don’t offer products, however, unless they’re products that have been sponsored by a particular advertiser. Instead, I’ll offer up a $10, $25 or $50 iTunes gift card. Or, in time for the holidays, a $50 Target gift card (last Christmas) or a $50 Lowe’s gift card (last June, just in time for Father’s Day).
If you don’t get into giveaways, I highly recommend that you do so! They’re a great way to increase traffic and establish a nice readership base. And no matter what your blog is about, you can always find ways to tie a giveaway into it. If your blog relates to the medical field, for example, you could offer a giveaway of a gift certificate good for the custom embroidering of lab coats. A technology-oriented blog could offer a Buy.com gift card, etc, etc.
Man, nothing makes it harder to want to blog than being sick! We’ve been dealing with some crazy weather over the past few weeks, so I guess it’s no surprise that I have the sniffles and am tempted to make an appointment with the guys in men’s lab coats. But I probably won’t act on that urge, because I’m cheap and would rather not pay the $25 co-pay!
So, what’s up in the blogging world? Did I miss anything exciting over the weekend?
You can blog your little heart out, but if you don’t hook your blog up with at least one or two social networks, people will never be able to find you! Just as importantly, the search engines will have a much harder time finding you, and in turn it could be quite some time until you’re indexed and available in search engine results. This is very bad if you sell women’s lab coats or another product, and it just plain sucks if you’re a blogger who would love feedback from the online community! So without further ado, here is a brief list of some great social networking sites to use to promote your blog:
Happy promoting! 
Yeah, that’s what I told myself last night, when I suddenly realized it was after midnight. But at the time I was all, “Pfft, this is just Daylight Saving Time kicking my ass. I’m fine!” and kept going, pushing through my bleary-eyedness until I got a second wind. And I did — and that damn second wind kept me up until THREE THIRTY IN THE MORNING. Ughhhhhhhhhhhh. This time last year or even last summer it wouldn’t have mattered much, and certainly wouldn’t have been a big deal, since I would normally stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning. But these days I’m in bed between 11:30pm – 12:30am, so staying up 3-4 HOURS later than usual is a big deal.
And of course, my internal clock — and my 9:00am vitamin alarm on my cell phone — woke me up right at 9:00am. I just kind of laid there in a daze for several minutes, but I was definitely up. Right now it’s going on 11:30am, and I actually don’t feel as bad as I thought I would!
Earlier today I took a break from posting on the WordPress forums and doing some blogging (on Blogging Girl no less! How apt, right?) in order to clear off our dresser. I saw our because it’s for my husband and I, but realistically it’s more like mine, since all of the clothes in it are mine, and everything on top of it belongs to me. But he does have a very large dresser for himself and a night stand (I got rid of mine in order to have room in our bedroom for my computer desk, lol), so it’s all good!
Anyway, I cannot BELIEVE how much stuff I have. A huge jewelry box full of womens jewelry (but not the white gold & diamond four leaf clover necklace, which I desperately want!), a round container overflowing with dozens (literally) of nail polishes, and a huge bright pink desk organizer stuffed to the gills with makeup. Then there’s the round container of hair accessories, the dozens of bottles of perfumes and lotions, etc., etc. I think you get the idea…
How the heck did my dresser get so cluttered?! I’m so anally organized with all of my blogs, emails, computer files, etc… yet that organization doesn’t spill over to managing my personal stuff. Oops. I guess I’ll have to work on that!
Blogs are often my best resource when it comes to finding coupons. Right now I subscribe to Thrifty Jinxy and a few other frugal-minded blogs. I love them because they post coupons, great sales, special deals, and they often spice things up with giveaways for massages in Huntington Beach, contests that offer custom embroidered women’s lab coats and the like. And nine times out of ten, I’m able to use these blogs and other money-saving blogs to find the specific coupon(s) that I’m after.
But this time I haven’t been so lucky. I need to buy cat food in a few days, as the food bowl is getting low and the cats are already sending panicked looks my way, but since I drop $35 on a bag that lasts just four weeks, I try to use coupons whenever possible. And go figure, I can find tons of expired coupons for Wellness cat food, but none that are current. Dear coupon blogs: update your stash, please!
Man, work has been kicking my butt lately. What sucks about my job is that I do what I love, which means when I’m done working my tail off for the moolah, I often don’t have the energy or desire to blog or write just for fun! But on the bright side, my mind is kept busy all of the time, so I can almost always think of something to blog about.
Do you have any fun weekend plans? As for me, I plan on taking a break from blogging and writing articles about Huntington Beach facials in order to focus on me. I have a bad habit of working my butt off seven days a week and getting burnt out, so I’m going to try something a little different, and actually relax and enjoy my weekends. I’ll let you know how it goes! 
I have a category called “Frugal” in my feed reader. Within it are blogs that are ALL about living frugally — there are general money-saving tips and alerts to sales and specials, but there are also plenty of coupons listed! Coupons make my world go around, seriously. I’m not as savvy as some of these women are, meaning I’m not lucky enough to walk away from the register with $200 worth of stuff for $27, but I do manage to save at least 10% on most of my shopping expeditions. My most recent trip to Target came to $198, but coupons lowered that amount to $178, and gave me a free bottle of Biore facial cleanser. Whoo!
Speaking of coupons, I was reading In My Bag tonight, and came across coupon code paty10. I believe it takes 10 or 15 percent off your order at laurenklein.com, so go check it out and try it out. Let me know how it goes, and what the actual savings is!
It used to be that if you needed a blog design, you’d be on the lookout for an orange county web designer, unless, of course, you knew how to do blog designs on your own. But these days you’ll find that it’s incredibly easy to create your very own blog design! And thanks to WordPress, designs for your blog — known as themes — are just a download and a click away.
Do you design your own blog layouts? I take pride in creating layouts for jenn.nu, but for my other blogs I’ll sometimes use pre-mades — very, very basic pre-mades that I can then edit the crap out of to make them a little more personal. How about you?
If you manage multiple blogs, you may find it hard to keep up with updating all of them on a regular basis. Here are a few tips that I have used, and I thought I’d share them with you, since they (mostly, heh) work for me!
- If you use WordPress or another advanced CMS, schedule out posts for several weeks or even months. You’ll spend quite a bit of time writing them all up initially, but at least you’ll have them out of the way for a while!
- If you use an organizer (I use and love the MomAgenda!), write little notes to remind yourself to blog!
- Use Outlook calendar reminders or tasks to remind you that it’s time to blog! You’ll see the note pop up along with the reminder to buy baby shower games, and you’ll be good to go!
- Have a friend email or text you a reminder
- Hell, use a future-email program to remind yourself via email!
