This is How We (Co)Blog {2016 Edition}

It’s been just about exactly a year since Tanya emailed me and asked me to be the other half of Girlxoxo (and then I cried and jumped up and down and freaked her out with a giant YES!). We have had a fun and crazy ride this year figuring out how to make this co-blogging thing work. Here are some things that help us work cohesively…

1. We Keep It Simple – Our system involves Using Evernote As A Blogging Calendar . We both have access to the calendar and we add, change, move anything we need to.

App Love for Evernote

2. We Agree On Our Vision – From day one we decided what we wanted from this space and how we were each going to contribute to that goal. We also agreed that things would shift and evolve naturally and we would go with the flow. We each have creative freedom in this space but it helps that our style of blogging is so similar. If we need to work out a kink or run something by each other we use the Evernote chat feature.

Here’s some thoughts on how we got started and where we went from there.

CoBlogging

3. We Don’t Sweat It – We love this blog and have so much fun with it but at the end of the day real life comes first. We are both busy, busy, busy so if a blog post doesn’t get scheduled, we either let it go or move it down on the editorial calendar. We try not to let that happen, but we don’t sweat it when it does.

4. We Fill In Each Other’s Blanks – A lot of the posts we write here are collaboration posts where we write the post together. How does this work? Once it’s on the editorial calendar either of us is free to draft the post. We make a note in Evernote that a draft has been started. Then the other person goes in and adds their two cents. Whoever has time creates the graphic and schedules the post. We don’t talk about who’s doing what. If one of sees that something still needs to be done on a post, then we just do it.

5. Other Tools – We use our own photos, Unsplash and a few freebie graphic downloads to create blog graphics.

Tanya has Adobe Photoshop Essentials 14 and I have Adobe Photo Elements 11 for editing and creating graphics.

We’re both running Mozilla Firefox (Free) for internet and WordPress is our blogging platform. We use Filezilla FTP (free) to transfer files back and forth from the blog and Dropbox to transfer files from our phones to our computers.


We absolutely love co-blogging here at Girlxoxo together. We find we make a great team and can’t wait to see what 2017 has in store for this little space of ours.  Would you consider co-blogging – either having one or doing it with someone else on their blog? Why or why not?

(Image Credit)

Save

Save

Twitter
Email
Pocket
Facebook

// Comments //

  1. Nish

    Dec 07

    Love how you have been co-blogging so effectively. A lot of times, in multi-author blogs, there is a clear voice/style demarcation, but in your blog everything is very smoothly put together. And yeah, Unsplash is such a great resource. Love it!

  2. I love that you took this post in a co-blogging direction! I’ve always wondered how it works in practice. Question – Are the photo graphic programs you use free?

    • Tanya Patrice

      Dec 06

      @Sarah – Unsplash is a free to use website. The Image Editors we use (Adobe) are not free – Adobe Essentials is $99 and Photo Elements is $9.99 / mth (I think). There are free options out there though.

  3. I LOVE that co-blogging is working out so great for ya’ll! I run a feature called Futuristic Friday with Katie at Doing Dewey and it’s probably the closest thing to co-blogging for me. We both contribute it to it every quarter and alternate hosting on our blogs. It’s fun!

    But as for actually co-hosting on my own blog, well, I’ve thought about it once or twice, but to me it’s always felt like when you were assigned a group project at school- you just know that someone is not going to pull their weight. However, If I ever found someone who I had such a great connection with (and vision for blogging!) well, I would reconsider!

    • Tanya Patrice

      Dec 06

      @Tamara I think we lucked out with each other because we both have a similar outlook on blogging and are very communicative with each other.

      • That’s wonderful that you were able to find someone that shares your vision! I think ya’ll are AMAZING!!!!!

  4. You both do a fantastic job.

    I wouldn’t co-blog because I have no one that is interested, and I am good on my own. 🙂 Not sure anyone’s schedule would work with mine, and I am VERY organized and would be nuts if my co-blogger wasn’t.

    I haven’t heard of Unsplash….going to check that out.

    Great post, and thanks for the information and great post.

    Elizabeth
    Silver’s Reviews
    My A Month of Faves

    • Tanya Patrice

      Dec 06

      @Elizabeth – I feel ya! You gotta find the right person to coblog with – if you do it at all.

      • Most likely will not look for a co-blogger. 🙂

        It is wonderful you were able to find each other and are able to easily work together.

        Keep up the great job!!

        Hope you are having a good week.

        Elizabeth

// Trackbacks & Pingbacks //

  1. […] ✤ This is How We (Co)Blog {2016 Edition} […]