Tools for Bloggers Who suck at Grammar

Growing up, I was more of a creator than a meticulous person. I'm a butterfly chaser and it took me a while to embrace that. Several people made me feel terrible about it and I felt pretty ashamed.

I mean sure, it's 'just a mistake' but when you work in social media that can cost you your pride and sometimes your job. It's ok to be a bad speller, it doesn't mean you're not as smart as everyone else, it means you're smart about other things.

Here are the tools I use to trick people into thinking I'm good at spelling and grammar.

Hemmingway App

I love the Hemmingway App. Insert an entire blog post into this tool and watch it pick it apart faster than America's Next Top Model judges. It helped me shirk my use of passive voice and overuse of adverbs. And run-on sentences...I'm using to write this post it right now!

Grammarly

LIFE SAVER! I love using Grammarly in my day-to-day. Emails, blog posts, tweets...it all gets corrected. The only issue is the Google Chrome plug-in doesn't work in Google Docs. Instead, I've started writing my posts in the Hemmingway App or Squarespace. My friends text me less about little mistakes in my posts and it's a breath of fresh air.

Capitalize My Title

I totally forgot how to capitalize titles. Which nouns to capitalize and words to drop to lower case eluded me after I graduated middle school. I used to use Titlecapitalization.com but it disappeared so now I use this one. If I ever have a title in the middle of a blog post or even for titling full posts I always double check.

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UpWork

If you have the budget, hire a copyeditor! You can hire a copy editor to help you take your posts to the next level. Several of your favourite bloggers don't even write their posts anymore. Instead, they have copywriters and editors who piece them together. For a fraction of a cost you can too. I've used UpWork in the past to help me develop my own team for photos and graphics. Next up for me will be copyediting.

Did I miss anything? Comment down below with your favourite tricks and tools to show off your spelling skills. 

5 Ways to Step-Up Your Instagram Game

A while back my girl Dominique Bennett-Bouchard messaged me on Facebook that she admired my Instagram. My response was pure glee! My hard work had been noticed by a fellow creator who I admired. She then asked me for some tips.

Find Inspiration (not imitation) There are so many Instagram accounts that are artistically curated to perfection. I'm working achieve at least a fraction of what some of them have someday! For now, I'll admire from a distance. One of my favourite accounts is Amy's aka @BrattyB. Her aesthetic is bomb and so is her style. She may not be your cup of tea (pft not possible), but take notes. She'll be going places.

Pick Your Colours I only use one filter, and one filter only. Sometimes I brighten my photos or add some heat to them, but generally, they all have the same kind of feel. I also realized what main colours I should have in each shot so that my grid flowed easily on the eyes.

Surround Yourself with the Right People For those of you not privileged enough to not have an Instagram husband you've got to surround yourself with the right people. I begged my friends and relatives and got the pictures I wanted. However, when I surrounded myself with bloggers and photographers who wanted to work and collaborate with me on my vision and see it through.

Draft a Plan After detailed research and how I saw my favourite Instgrammers reach success, I decided I would post almost every day on my Instagram.  Twice a day for special occasions and at select times. I don't always stick to it, however, I know what will help me succeed and I'm working towards it.

Get the Right Apps I was never a fan of Later.me and Schedugram. I used them on the corporate level and then personally and we just didn't really match up. Desiree from A Desired Journey introduced me to Planoly and I was in love the user interface was way prettier than any other Instagram scheduler I had worked with in the past.

What are you doing to step your Instagram game up? Did I miss anything? Share with me in the comments.

(Photo by BrattyB)