Meet Our Members: Charlene from Charlene Chronicles

Let’s meet Charlene from Charlene Chronicles.

What do you write about?
Fashion and Fitness, Technology and Travel, Home and Parenting with a focus on Moms.

Where do you live?
Metrowest, Massachusetts

How long have you been blogging?
Since the spring of 2008, but only since 2010 as Charlene Chronicles.

Do you have a favorite blog post of your own?
Hmm, I guess it depends on your interests. But a lot of people like these:

How to Start a Running Program
Monthly Page Views are So 80s
Conference Swag
Making Your Blog Functional

What are two or three of your favorite blogs to read?
Honestly, I don’t have any favorite blogs as I love to pop in and out of many of them. I also have such varied interests that I read blogs in many niches. Generally, my favorite topics are the social media blogs. They often provide great tips for better blogging, neat new plugins, and amazing apps. I find most blogs posts I want to read on Twitter and thus find other people to follow and engage with at the same time. I use hashtags like #socialmedia or #technology to find interesting blogs. Or even if I am not going to a conference, I may follow the conference hashtag to find other like minded bloggers to follow their posts. However, I think everyone in Boston Parent Bloggers are fun to follow and read, so as these Member Spotlights get posted, it will be great way to ensure that I’m following them.

What inspired you to start a blog?
My wedding. I created a website with wedding details for our guests but I started adding funny stories about our wedding preparations. Then it grew into stories about our marriage and my pregnancy with my first son. I switched to a semi-serious stage when I started my Metrowestmama blog just 12 days after my son was born. A few months later, that became more of a Facebook group when I started my blog CharleneChronicles. My inspiration now is being a Mom and keeping a business focus in my life (which sometimes seems like an oxymoron.)

How many children do you have?
Two. An almost 2.5 year old and a newborn.

Why did you join Boston Parent Bloggers?
I joined because I was already friends with a lot of these great women and men, and it was wonderful to see it morph into a more formal group with opportunities and information to be shared in a timely, friendly, supportive way.

What are some of your favorite blogging platforms, plugins and/or tools?
This is constantly changing in the evolving world of social media, but as of this particular hour as I write, I love the Zemanta, And the Winner Is, WordPress plugins. A great tool is Click to Tweet, and I am currently obsessed with Pinterest. Not so much with Google+ but I am on there anyway.