MLI Pseudo Wannabe Blogher Conference Convention 2008 (edited to add)

Tips For Your Blog

A few things you need to decide:

-How anonymous do you want your blog to be? Will your family and friends appreciate being named in your blog or will you hide their identity? Are you going to make your blog available to said family and friends or do you want to write about what weirdos they are? I advise the latter as it will be difficult to vent about what's on your mind and you'll need to filter the information you share instead of being open and honest and getting it all off your chest.

-We all bitch and complain everyday and most of us live with people who bitch and complain. The last thing I want to do is jump into a blog who’s author spends ALL of their time bitching and complaining. Try to mix it up. It’s ok to have “those days”, we all do. Feel free to blog about them…but if you want people coming back to see you be careful not to get stuck in that rutt.

-Set goals for yourself. How many new blogs do you want to read each day? How many people do you want coming to YOUR blog each day. My personal goal is that each week I want to see a higher number of visitors than I did the week before. It gives me something to look forward too and gives me something to work for.

-Post often. How can people smother you with comment love if you never post? I once had a reader call me out on not leaving her any comment love. When I went to her blog to respond she had the same post up that was up the LAST time I visited her blog. How many times can someone comment on raspberry biscuits? Not many. One in fact. Just one. You don’t have to post every single day, but if you’re like Alecia, who is absolutely hysterical, but only posts once in awhile…you might be compromising your number of readers.

-Think about the appearance of your blog. Is it pleasing to the eye? Dark backgrounds with light letters can be difficult to read. I used to have that cute black background with white letters because I thought my pictures looked nice with that background. And they did. But the more I read what I wrote the bigger my headache got. Reading white on black, paragraph after paragraph is harsh.

Linky Love

-A link is when you highlight a word and attach a web page to it. The word changes colors and is underlined and when you click on it you get move to the aforementioned website. This is super easy to do and fun too…but I only know how to do it using Blogger. Find the page you want to link to, highlight the URL at the top of that page, right click and choose “copy”. When you are writing your post, click on the “compose” tab in the upper right hand side of the post box. Highlight the word you want to link to the page. There is a box in your toolbar between the “left align” box and the “text color” box. It looks like some kind of outer space satellite. Click on that. Paste in the URL address you copied earlier and wa la. Easy as that. You can change the color of the link to stand out on your page if you like.

The Facts On Stats

-Stats are SOOOO fun to watch. I use statcounter.com. It’s free and it will give you easy step by step directions on how to set up an account. You’ll be asked to set up an account (we do that for everything now right??) and then you’ll need to copy and paste the code they give you onto your blog. You do that by going to your layout page and clicking on “add page element”. Click on the “html/javascript” button and paste the code into that box. Your statcounter will then start keeping track of who visits you, where they are from, and how much time they spend on your site. It’s very exciting, and you can see that although you may not getting very many comments there are plenty of people reading. Not everyone likes to leave comments and that’s ok.

The Truth About Comments

-If you WANT comments you must LEAVE comments. I was a comment leaving junky for the first half of my blogging "career". I considered it a personal challenge to find something to say on each and every blog I surfed, and I met some very lovely people who are still with me to this day.

-75% of the people you leave comments for will come back to see you. Your blog must be worth sticking around for if you want them to keep coming back. Find your niche! When they return the love you must go back and continue to reciprocate. You want them to know you’re not going away and they most of them will return the favor. As you establish relationships with bloggers continue to seek out new blogs and leave comments for them as well.

-My own rule is that I will not visit a blog without commenting…unless I’m eating. I want people to know I love them. But if you're reading for pleasure and do not care if people visit you then disregard. You don't have to leave comments. They are appreciated, but you don't have to bust your balls.

Copyright Corral

-I don’t know anything about copyrighting, only that I don’t currently have one and I’d be pretty pissed off if someone stole my stuff and got rich off of it. I need to look into protecting my things…I’ll let you know when I figure that out. NEXT.

Technorati Technical Support

-I’m just starting to get a grasp on Technorati. Just like Statcounter you’re going to need to register yourself. Then you’ll tell them which blog is yours by “claiming your blog” and “releasing the spiders” (gross I know but that’s what they call them) to go find your blog. You receive a rank number and authorut number. The rank tells you how popular your blog is and if you’re just starting up on that site than your number will be like 4,253,945 or something ridiculous like that. As you continue to blog that number will lower. It’s fun to watch. You will also receive an authority. This is cool because you get a point added any time someone links to your page. That’s why we love linky love so much and ask you guys to link from your page when we have contests. Not only does our authority figure go up, but you’re getting YOU’RE readers to come check out our blog too. We like that. So yeah…basically my contest is just a way to buy myself a higher authority figure and hopefully snag in a couple more readers. Shameless I know. I’m totally outing myself right now.

Feedburner

-My knowledge on feed burners is limited. I believe you can set one up on your page and if people subscribe to it then they get your posts via email as soon as they are published. Is this right? Anyone? Anyone? Afro actually has some things to tell you about a feed burner…I still have some homework to do on that one…I think I might actually have one on my page…does it work?? I don’t know. I don’t have a cute little number in the corner like Afro does so I’m thinking not…

Blogging is extremely addictive. I believe there is a five step on line program to help people like us, but I’m not ready yet. I’ll forward the information when I find it. Right now I’m just hoping that my blog will find it’s order in my life and I’ll be able to balance it with other important things. Like my drug addiction.

Kimmers: I'm definitely dying to know how to get a less generic looking layout. I blog with typepad and all the premade layouts they had to choose from were pretty plain. I'm also wondering, why is it that when you leave comments, there's a little picture of you that shows up with your comment, but when I leave comments its just the little grayed out person where your "B" would be, and no picture?

Mama Kat: Good question. And I don’t know. Typepad is a mystery to me. I don’t know why people use it and I don’t know how it works. To be honest I have a hard time even commenting back to people in typepad because the comments go directly to my email and if someone using typepad commented on my blog I can’t link to them from my email account. I have to go BACK into my blog, find the post, click on the comments, sccrrroooooollll down the list, find the person and THEN click on their page. I’m sorry if you don’t see me around too often over there!!
All of you should be receiving your comments in your email account by the way. To do that just go to the “customize” section of your Blogger account. Click on “comments” and scroll ALL the way to the bottom where it says “Comment Notification Email”. Type in the address you want the comments sent to and you’re all set.

As far as your page goes, plain is NOT bad. Sometimes simpler is better. You don’t want to overwhelm your readers. BUT…if you want a fancier page you might consider paying for a custom one. You’ll feel so pretty and professional looking if you get a makeover. I think there is a way to do it yourself, but I never took the time to figure that out. I’m sure there are a lot of codes involved and cutting and pasting, but they’re FREE and that might be worth looking into. If you want to consider paying for a fancy page visit Stephanie and Staci at Blogalicious Designs or Shannon at 8Crazy Designs . For a free alternative try LeeLou Blogs.

Nichole: I would love to know why I can't get the SITS and other buttons to work into my page. I've done exactly what the instructions say but with no success.

Mama Kat: To put the SITS button and other buttons onto your sidebar you’ll need to follow the exact same instructions you followed for the statcounter I mentioned above. Just copy and paste the code into an html/java element in your layout section.

(for more tips on bloggy etiquette go see Angie with Seven Clown Circus for a great review!!)