Guest post: How to make blog badges

Blog badges are a vital element for promotion. Cas Sheppard of Mummy Never Sleeps shares her easy-to-follow tips on how to make basic badges quickly and easily.

Well, hello you, nice to see ya. Where would we be without the humble blog badge, eh? They’re used everywhere from Linkies and sponsored post notices to simple blog promotions. But how on earth do you make one?

I have been given the task to show you lovely lot how. Now, I’d like to quickly say that html code and I are most definitely not friends. There are quicker ways of doing this, but hell if I can master them! Plus I find this step-by-step method pretty satisfying as I can sort of follow what’s happening, rather than sobbing into my jumper when faced with a screen full of coding at 3am.

Let’s do this.

Firstly, if you’re starting from scratch, save an empty white background on Paint, however if you’d like to edit an existing photo you already have, you can skip this bit – go have a biscuit instead! [Editor’s note: You can also create a plain white background in Picmonkey by creating a new collage with only one blank image in it.]

Next, hop on over to your preferred photo-editing site or program. I like to use PicMonkey, but other sites are available.

Have a little play around, using a little method such as this:

Once you’re happy with your design, head over to a photo sharing site such as PhotoBucket and upload your picture. Go to your photo “Library” and select your picture, you’ll need a URL from the right-hand side…

Right, this step is where we actually make your picture into a badge! Don’t ask me how it works, for all I know it’s done with witchcraft… But we’ll pretend we know exactly what we’re doing, and look a bit smug at this point… That’s it! Perfect.

I use a generator called Grab My Button, and it goes something like this…

1. Your website / blog title – so in English, type in the title of where you would like your badge to link to…
2. Your website / blog URL – the URL of where your badge will link to…
3. Your image URL – this is the URL you saved from Photo Bucket in the previous step.

Next you can tweak size and colours etc, but if you’re already happy with your picture you can skip this bit, have another biscuit. Click on “Preview” and as if by magic, your little button will appear! Now, don’t use the code on this bit, click “Get Code” and the clever little computer monkey will generate your badge code.

Now, before you run off to your blog and excitedly plaster your badge on every available inch of space, SAVE THIS CODE.

Last thing, I promise, I’m going now – the code will show up on your blog something like this:

This is perfect if you’re starting a new linky – you can display it at the bottom of a post and others can copy it and link back to you from their blog. Likewise you can display this in your sidebar for others to use.

However, if you’d like the button only, without the code box underneath, to use for instance in sponsored posts to link to your disclosure page, simply use the code that is IN the box, NOT the code you copied from the generator. AND SAVE THIS CODE somewhere safe too, just in case.

Finally, reward yourself with another biscuit, you button building badass, well done!

Cass is mum of the infamous Bean and blogs at Mummy Never Sleeps. She writes about depression, M.E, leggings and other such twaddle. Awesome poet, prone to sarcasm.

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BritMums is the UK’s original collective of lifestyle bloggers and digital influencers, fueling the country’s most influential social content. We lead the online conversation with members who are parent social influencers creating content on topics ranging from food, parenting, travel, politics, style and more.

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