dandelionblog.com

That is the question.

As more and more people enter the blogforce (yes, I’m coining a new word!  — blogforce, noun, group of people engaged in blogging activity, similar to workforce), guest blogging invitations abound.  Should you take up those invitations?  How do you decide what is worth your time, and what isn’t?  Should you invite guest bloggers to write posts for your own blog?  And what unspoken (till now!) guest blogging etiquette points play into the process?

Here are my guest blogging pro’s, cons, and tips: [Read more →]

Tags: How to Blog, Marketing by Suzanne McMinn
4 Comments »

Blogging can take a lot of time. Time that’s hard to carve out of from all your responsibilities. Day job, family, writing–well, life. Here I’ll give you some tips on how to be a more productive blogger. More blog posts in less time.

1. Keep an idea file on your desktop so it’s one click away from adding an idea. Jot down ideas and titles for blog posts.
2. When you’re reading other blog posts, or your RSS feed reader, skim the posts for ideas for your blog. Use the above mentioned file to quickly jot down an idea.
3. Disconnect. Turn off the phone, email, twitter, IM. Sit down and write.
4. This goes against our writer personality, but don’t obsess over every comma, typo and word choice in your posts. If you are spending tons of time polishing up every word, you’re spending too much time on your blog posts, and not enough on your life.
5. Write extra posts when you’re feeling creative, these will come in handy when you’re too busy to blog, go out of town, or just need a bit of time off to refill the well. Store them up in your drafts in Wordpress or a folder on your computer.

[Read more →]

Tags: How to Blog by Kacey
9 Comments »

Who are you blogging to?

If you’re a writer and you’re blogging about writing and/or your books, who is your audience? Other writers and readers. And probably, they already knew who you were. That’s how they found your blog. You may influence some of them to buy your books more often, but they were likely to buy your books anyway. You’re preaching to the choir. Blogging inside the box.

How do you expand your audience and increase your traffic outside the box? Here’s how: [Read more →]

Tags: How to Blog, Marketing by Suzanne McMinn
7 Comments »

Looking for another way to get more traffic to your website? Optimize your blog for GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH. Many people use Google Image search to locate pictures and images for a wide range of topics. From what’s in the news, to cat pictures, to how to knit a purl stitch. Here are some tips to help optimize your site and your images to tap into this traffic.

My personal website, a Baby Boomer Blog, Wine on the Keyboard, gets quite a bit of traffic to my images that are listed on Google Images. I get traffic to posts that are years old from Google Image Search. A post about my old couch. A post about the last flower of fall. You never know what pictures, if done correctly, might bring in traffic–traffic that wouldn’t have come to your site otherwise. How can you set your blog up to attract this kind of traffic?

Google Image Search Optimization:

1) First off, use a descriptive name for the picture. HerMantoRemember.jpg is better than img000-0776.jpg or whatever your camera generates. Cover.jpg isn’t going to bring in anyone looking for your book by title.

2) Make sure you are using the Alt text with your images. For instance your image code would look something like this:
<img scr=”http://yoursite.com/NameofYourFile.jpg” alt=”good description of picture”/>

3) The text surrounding the picture should give clues as to what the picture is about. Make sure to include the keyword that you think people will search on directly before or after the image. If you do a search on Google Images for a term, you’ll see the term you searched for highlighted in bold beneath the images listed.

4) Make sure your images folder on your website is accessible to search engines. If you’ve limited access to some files with your robots.txt file, make sure you allow Google Image Search. Google suggests adding the following to you robots.txt file to allow the Google-Image bot permission to find your images.

# Google Image
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow:

5) Make your images standards compliant. Images need:

title
width
height
alt text

<img src=”http://yoursite.com/folderwithimages/reallygreatimage.jpg” width=”400″ height=”200″ alt=”Image to attract Google Image bot” title=”Really Great Image” />

6) To see if your images are being listed in Google Images go to Google Images. Enter this in the search bar:

site:www.yoursite.com
(or site:www.yoursite.com/blog if your blog is in a separate folder on your website)

See what images come up. If your site is fairly new, it may take awhile for your images to show up in Google Images. You can go back to older images on your site and edit the posts and add the alt text, width, and height, for your images. At the very least, add the alt text.

It takes a bit more time to make sure you add all these things when you add images to your posts, but the benefit is increased blog traffic by way of Google Image Search.

Tags: How to Blog, Website Tips by Kacey
3 Comments »

Steps to Add A YouTube Video to Your Wordpress Blog

Have you ever wanted to include a YouTube Video on your Wordpress Blog? I’ll explain how easy it is to do. Have you seen some of the great book trailers that have been uploaded to YouTube? We’re going to use one by author Sydney Croft in our explanation of how to add a YouTube Video to your Wordpress post.

Go to YouTube and find the video you want to include in your post.

Highlight the text in the box to the right of the video, where it says embed. Copy the highlighted code.

Go back to the post you are writing in the Wordpress admin panel.

Make sure your tab on the write post page is set to Code

Paste in the code where you want it to appear in your post. Save the post. You’re finished.

If you have any problems with a specific browser & operating system:
1)Go to your admin panel on Wordpress.
2)Click on Users
3)Click on edit by by your user name
4)On the page it brings up, uncheck Use Visual Editor in the upper left corner
5)Click on Update User

Now try adding the video to your blog.

To see another embedded video on a Wordpress blog, I have the trailer to the new Sex in the City movie in my post on WineontheKeyboard.

Here are some links to other book trailers on YouTube to give you an idea of what authors are doing with their book trailers:
Merline Lovelace — Stranded with a Spy (she said she made it with iMovie on her Mac)

Marianne Arkins — Don’t Fence Me In (she has it embedded on her blog)

Deborah Smith’s — A Gentle Rain (some great photos in this one)

Diana Duncan — Lethal Attraction (she has it on the front page of her website)

Warning on Embedding YouTube Videos on Your Wordpress Blog

Heads up…if your content section of your Wordpress theme is too narrow, adding a YouTube video to your Wordpress blog post will break the theme and mess up your page layout.

Tags: How to Blog, Marketing, Wordpress by Kacey
No Comments »