Beginner Blogger

This is a guest post by Eric Heavilin from BluePop13.com.

When you want to start a blog your first thoughts are probably how you can share what you know with the world on line. A blog is very simple in the way that is provides value to its readers and teaches someone something new. But with so many resources out there and everyone talking about ways to improve your blog and what you can do to stand out in the crowd, how do you actually just get yourself up and out there and start doing this thing called blogging?

Keep It Simple

This is your blog and you want to share what you know with the rest of the world who finds what you have to say meaningful in their lives in some way.

I suggest starting with WordPress.com and pick a name either you like, your name, or a name that has something to do with the topic of choice you’ll be writing about. Blogspot.com is a great service to start with but using WordPress right now will make it easier on you to switch to a self-hosted WordPress blog later on if you want to get more serious with your blog.

Just visit WordPress.com and sign up. It’s free and is very easy to do. Once you have chosen a name that you are going to use and you have figured your way around the admin area simply start your first post. Just say hi to everyone and explain what you’ll be writing about, keep it short and to the point, go for making it person and show your readers that there’s a real person behind the words, tell everyone a bit of a story and ask them what they think. This all you really have to worry about for any blog post you write. Above all, as said above, keep it simple.

Where To Next?

My suggestion is to post around ten articles and get a feel for how you are going to write your content. This way you will have a better idea of when you like to write, what you want to write about and who might comment on what you have to say. Ten is a good number, though every blog is different and provides value to its readers in its own way, experiment here and see what works for you.

Now you might want to do something different with the look and feel of your blog. You want it to look nice and look according to your topic, after all. Wordpress.com has many themes to pick from and choosing which theme you want for your blog is as easy as browsing all the themes in the themes section and previewing what appeals to you. When you find one you like just activate it. You now have a brand new theme and a decent amount of articles you’re looking at.

Becoming Someone

This is where you will probably hear a lot of talk and confusion and at this point you might even give up trying to become better at this as it’s not easy to do.

I have some good news for you if you’re stuck here: Keep it simple.

Look at how far you’ve come already. You chose a place for your words and ideas to be viewed upon by the entire world, you now have an idea of what you’re going to write about and maybe some visitors already checking out your stuff and you have a design set up.

Now that you’ve come this far you want to spread the word. Tell your family and friends about your new blog and join social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace (just to  name a few) and become active in forums and blogs related to your own. This isn’t rocket science even though some blogs may explain it to be. Keep learning what works and keep going. Blogging is great fun and you can do so many things for so many people by just having one.

From Here

I hope you found this information helpful and I also know that doing any of this will get you started out in the right direction for your blog. Keep experimenting with what might work for your blog and learn from others as well. Find some other blogs related to yours and start talking to them. Get in there and see what happens. The possibilities are endless.

Now start blogging!

Eric Heavilin has been online for years now and love what the Internet has to offer. Eric learned a bit about building simple web sites in Jr. High and from there I loved the idea of sitting down and writing out HTML and CSS in Notepad. Since then he came up with the name BluePop13 and decided to make it his personal website now blog. Eric loves helping others succeed. These days Eric uses WordPress but still loves the feeling of writing something up from scratch using HTML and the like. Visit BluePop13.com to learn more about Eric.

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Most bloggers recognize the importance of sharing their content with as many social media outlets as they can get their hands on. It seems there’s no end to the number of sharing, microblogging, and bookmarking services to sign-up for. Social networking tools are a bloggers best friend and they can be used to provide a constant stream of traffic to your blog.

Karl Foxley of FMSSEO, highlighted the value of YouTube and podcasts in 30+ Ways To Generate Traffic To Your Website. By adding podcasting and video sharing sites to your portfolio of social networks, you’ll expand your reach to potential subscribers from new audiences in the quest to attain higher Alexa rank, and ultimate blog supremacy.

I suggest you create your own how-to or introductory podcasts to improve your brand recognition and boost your credibility. Post videos on your blog, but also increase your chances of going viral by adding it a plethora of sites including YouTube, iTunes, Vimeo, and a string of others. Another benefit is that some sites, like Blip.tv offer the possibility of additional revenue streams by adding sponsored clips to your content.

You can create video, and also audio podcasts or you can do both. I prefer using video mostly in the form of “how-to” screencasts. Here’s what you need to get started with screencasting:

• Recording Software
• Mic
• RSS Feed for distribution

Here’s a short screencast I created to demonstrate the recording interface from the Screentoaster.com website:

When you are done creating your video, you are ready to share it with the world. Register with video sharing sites like some of the ones I joined:

Blip.tv
Daily Motion
How Cast
Metacafe
Vimeo
YouTube
Zoopy

Next, sign up for TubeMogul, where you can save lots of time by uploading your video once for simultaneous distribution to all of these sites for maximum access to a multitude of new subscribers. In my last post Promote Your Blog With a Podcast I talked specifically about how “creating an account and uploading videos to Blip.tv sends an RSS feed directly to iTunes”, and how the use of video is directly responsible for a significant increase in my traffic. Additional resources and tutorials are listed on my blog as well.

What are your podcasting experiences? What useful resources you’re aware of?

This is the first guest blog post for Ileane from Ms. Ileane Speaks. Ileane and I have been Twitter and blogging buddies for a while now and now she is branching out into podcasting. You can find Ileane at http://ileane.wordpress.com or subscribe to the podcast at http://msileanespeaks.blip.tv/ Her debut tutorial which includes the podcast Screencasting 101.

I’ve personally learnt a lot from Ileane, she’s a great blogger and person. So make sure you check out her blog and podcast!

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• What text would appear on my twitter feed if I clicked it?
• Would it automatically appear straight away in my feed without getting a chance to edit it when I click the button?
• Would I get an option to edit the text?

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I want you to answer these questions:

• What is it you want to DO with your blog in the next 7 days?
• Do you already have all the resources like ebooks, RSS feeds, reference material online or offline required with the information in them for what you want to DO?

OK, I may be stabbing myself in the foot here and the many hundreds and most likely thousands of bloggers/marketers out there but if you answered YES to my last question then it’s time to shut the door and stop subscribing to blogs, email lists, RSS feeds, ebooks etc that are no longer providing you with VALUE.

If you answered YES to the previous question then you do not need to be aimlessly browsing around the internet and continually reading new RSS feeds if you already have all the information you require at your disposal. Personally I have hundreds of Ebooks that I’m yet to read. As I’m sure many of you have done, you’ve signed up to email lists and continue to get email from them that may no longer add value and which are potentially wasting your time.

Spring Clean

I recommend you stay current with the email lists that you have either formed great relationships with the authors themselves or they are providing great value that isn’t causing a problem with your ‘information overload’. But it’s time to unsubscribe, stop reading pointless emails and take action on the information you have at your disposal.

Will you miss out on valuable information if you do this? Sure maybe, but the reason that unsubscribing and stopping reading all RSS feeds is because you may already have enough information at your disposal.

You may get to a stage where you don’t know what else to do with your blog. You may be stuck in a bit of a rut where you’re not gaining anymore traffic or sales and you seem ’stuck’. THIS is when we should be gathering more information to create new ideas with. Once we have the IDEAS from the INFORMATION we gather from various sources, then it’s time to stop gathering more information and start TAKING ACTION.

Take Action

When I get to a stage where I don’t know what to do with my blog or other online ventures I will go out and read other blogs, sign up to email lists etc to get some inspiration and get more ideas. But right now it’s time to TAKE ACTION on all the information I ALREADY have at my disposal. And you should do the same. Achieve your goals and stop wasting time with all this information overload.

Again – It’s time to take action on all the information you ALREADY have at your disposal.

I’ll leave you with these final questions:

How many hours this week did you put towards working on your blog this week?

Out of that time you put towards working on your blog, how many hours this week did you REALLY spend on tasks for your blog and actually getting stuff done?

Maybe it’s time to do a bit of a spring clean (perfect time of the year, right?) and remove some of that information overload.

How do you deal with the information overload that is the internet?

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Want better quality Google Analytics data? With analytics filters (or Advanced Segments they call them) you can add filters enhance the way you view data.

Personally – I view my site a lot to make sure it’s working, to check comments and generally just to make sure everything is running smoothly. When I view my analytics data – especially since I don’t get thousands of visits a day (yet )- the visits I personally make on my site can make a big difference on how I analyse the data.

Now some of you may say – well that’s easy – just create a filter to remove your IP address. Unfortunately a lot of computers these days have a dynamic IP address meaning every time you log onto the internet you will have a different IP address than you had before. So it’s not as simple as removing yourself based on IP address.

My solution is to create an analytics filter to get rid of my CITY. The only problem with this solution is that I will be removing potential real visits from my home town that I won’t be able to track if I use this filter. (Also keep in mind you can change between a filter that you’ve created and go back to the default with a click of a button, so you don’t lose anything by applying these filters)

Another problem may be that you’re getting a lot of visitors coming to your site that don’t even visit your site for 1 whole second! I’ve created an analytics filter for that as well.

Below are the two filters I use – Removing my home town/city of Brisbane, Australia and only showing visits when they’re at the site for more than 0 seconds. I’ve also added in how to combine the two.

Analytics Filter – Remove Home Town/City

1. Log into Google Analytics

2. Click to Advanced Segments and click on + Create new custom segment
3. Under Dimensions (in green) click visitors to show a drop down menu

4. Drag City into the dotted box where it says ‘dimension or metric’
5. On the Conditions drop down box select ‘Does not match exactly’ This is a very important step and can sometimes be missed. You want to see the results where people DO NOT come from your home town (i.e. yourself).

6. Type in the name of your city. In my case it is ‘Brisbane’.
7. Name your segment. I’ve named mine ‘Visits not from Brisbane’
8. Click the Create Segment button. That’s it you’re done!

You can now go back to your dashboard and in the top right position there is a drop down menu All Visits. Under the drop down you should find your newly created advanced segment. Click on this, then apply to see how many visitors you get excluding the ones from your city.

Simple, right!

Now I’ll show you how to only display quality visits when users are on your site for longer than 0 seconds.

Analytics Filter – User On Site More Than 0 Seconds

1. Log into Google Analytics
2. Click to Advanced Segments and click on + Create new custom segment
3. Under Metrics (in blue) click Site Usage to show a drop down menu

4. Drag Time on Page into the dotted box where it says ‘dimension or metric’
5. On the Conditions drop down box select ‘Greater than’ This should already be the default option.
6. Type in 0 as the Value

7. Name your segment. I’ve named mine ‘Time on site greater than 0′
8. Click the Create Segment button. That’s it you’re done!

To see if it worked properly – go back to your dashboard once again and in the top right position there is a drop down menu All Visits. Under the drop down you should find your newly created advanced segment. Click on this, then apply to see how many visitors you get excluding which are staying on your site for longer than 0 seconds.

Analytics Filter – Combine the two filters into one

1. Follow the steps above, when you get to adding the second condition click the Add “and” statement link and repeat the steps for Analytics Filter – User On Site More Than 0 Seconds in the new slot (or the Analytics Filter – Remove Home Town/City depending on which one you already have up)
2. Name your segment and click Create Segment. That’s it – you’ve just combined 2 basic filters into one more complex filter!

By placing this analytics filter I feel there is a much more accurate measure of what your users are doing on your site. You can guarantee all your own visits won’t be counted and you’ll actually get tracking data based on users that are actually using your site.

There could be many reasons why Google Analytics shows visits at 0 seconds. I’m not 100% sure but they could be search engine spiders crawling your site or bots of some other sort. Perhaps people are visiting your site when they didn’t mean to and close it before the Google Analytics code could load properly. What do you think?

I hope you’ve found this helpful and I hope you apply these analytic filters to your site to get a better measure of what your users are up to.

Edit:
Turns out you can actually share filters! Let me know if these work for you (you will have to change your city to wherever you live)

No visits from x city

Time on site greater than 0 seconds

No visits from x city and time on site greater than 0 seconds

I would urge you to try out your own filters so you’re at least getting your hands dirty a little bit. Don’t under estimate having experience! I would love to see what handy filters you have come up with. If you do – let us know in the comments below!

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I resigned from full-time employment last week. The desire to work on some personal projects (this site is one of them) create a better lifestyle for myself and to continue my studies and practice in blogging, online marketing and social media outweighed being employed full-time any longer.

Blogs are a solo venture most of the time and with all this time and freedom now within my hands it can sometimes be hard to keep myself under pressure and get things done 100% of the time like most jobs where you work under someone barking instructions at you.

So the question begs – How do you keep yourself under pressure and perform with your blog?

In the corporate 9-5 world there was always pressure applied. It wasn’t intense, but it was there. You have to show up on time and you couldn’t just not do any work. If you did poorly or under-performed based on your expectations you would run the risk of being warned or potentially being fired.

This doesn’t happen when you run a blog. You rule, you’re the boss. So how do you keep yourself under pressure and motivated so you get that feeling of ‘this must get done’?

Here are my top ways of keeping myself under pressure and performing:

1. Setting myself goals

Every month I set myself end of month goals. This lays out a clear plan of exactly what needs to get done for the month. No second guessing, it’s there black and white – I just have to DO it!

2. The fear of being a sloth

I can remember when I was studying at university a few years ago – as soon as holidays came around I would pretty much hibernate till uni started again. Maybe it was a lack of interests or I was partying too much but I never really did anything constructive during the breaks.

I can’t afford to do that now – I’ve given myself a year to make something happen since leaving my job and give myself the lifestyle I desire. If I don’t do ANYTHING during this time I will have just wasted a whole year and have a massive gap in my resume with nothing to prove when, and if, I need to go back in search for another corporate 9-5 job ‘working for the man’.

My body is still in 9-5 mode so I’m still getting up at 6.30am automatically, even without my alarm. I’ve decided I’m going to keep getting up early and not sleep in just because I don’t HAVE to be anywhere. That’s not entirely true though – I have many things I want to get done and sleeping in and wasting the day away isn’t going to help. As soon as I get 7-8 hours sleep I get up and start my working day!

3. Proving to others I can do this

Maybe it’s a bad trait of mine, but I like proving others wrong when they doubt me. It’s improving but I don’t think many people, especially the older folk (my parents for example) really understand blogging, its potential and power it currently has and will have in the future. It’s already proven that blogs make the best websites in terms of SEO and rank higher in google than say a company website.

Not only that, blogs are being referred to as ‘new media’ where TV, newspapers etc are being referred to as ‘old media’ and blogs will be the main place where everyone will get their news (linking from social media resources like facebook and twitter).

In my situation it’s also hard to let others know what I’m doing. I usually just say ‘online marketing’ just to simplify things but even that gets funny looks. Maybe I should say ‘I’m becoming a teacher and writer’ might sound more impressive.

It doesn’t bother me what others THINK of me, but I look forward to be able to show others what I have done with my time when they have been thinking I’m doing nothing and have been ‘chilling out’. Which isn’t the case at all

4. Not letting readers down

I’ve got a following now, people actually visit my blog and some wonder what’s going on when I haven’t posted for a while. I don’t want to let these people down by not posting for a long period of time. I want to help others, not let them down so this is a big driving force for me.

5. I need to eat

I’ve left work in search for a better lifestyle and to pursue a career online. If I don’t work at it, and work HARD in order to make a bit of money to get by – I won’t be able eat and I will have to go back in search for another full time job which right now I really don’t want to do. I left work to pursue a lifestyle change and an online career and that’s what I’m going to do. No-one is going to stop me!

——————————

I realise a lot of my motivation factors have to do with my current situation of being unemployed now – however, blogging is still a solo mission where you work for yourself. You need to motivate and sometimes get yourself under pressure in order to perform.

So how do you keep yourself under pressure in the blogging world to make sure you get things done?

Are you currently working ‘for the man’?

How much time do you get to spend on your blog?

Write them in the comments below – I would love to know and I’m sure others would too

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Tracking what your visitors do on your blog is important in understanding your readers. Knowing where your visitors come from, what they click on, how long they stay on your site, what sites they go to next are all very valuable pieces of information to know.

One way in which you can track all this data (and for free) is with Google Analytics. Today I wanted to show you how I set  up Google Analytics to track the statistics of beginner blogger.

How to set up Google Analytics on your blog

Step 1 – Sign up to a Google Analytics account

Head over to http://www.google.com/analytics/ and click on ‘Sign Up Now’. If you don’t already have a Google account you will have to set one up. Just follow the simple process that Google provides to set up a Google Analytics account.

Step 2 – Complete the Google Analytics sign up process

Here you will add your website address, the account name you with to give your site (doesn’t have to be the actual website address, I could have callled it ‘Beginner Blogger’ or ‘What’s New Pussy Cat’ – the choice is yours ).

You will also set your country and timezone – this is so (I believe) the stats shown in your time so you can see where you get the most visitors during a day based on your timezone.

You will then enter in some basic contact information and need to accept the User Agreement which you should give a quick read over.

After all that we get to the nitty gritty – getting the tracking to place into your blog/website!

Step 3 – Place Google Analytics tracking code into your blog/website

When you get to the final step of the sign up process you will get to a page that looks like the above picture. It displays the tracking code that needs to be placed just before the closing body tag in your website.

Copy the code required and go into your blogging software to place the code before the closing body tag. In my case I use the WordPress blogging software and this is how I placed the tracking code into my website.

After logging into my WordPress account I go to Appearance > Editor. This is where I can edit the code of my blog directly.

I then selected Footer (footer.php) from the Templates list and pasted the Google Analytics tracking code directly before the closing body tag. Most sites these days have their own footer file which is seen on every page across the entire site.

The reason you place the Google Analytics tracking code in the footer and behind closing body tag is because you want the page to load for the visitor before the tracking code is signalled back to Google Analytics. You don’t want to track visits where someone may accidently open your site then close it right away before the page loads. You would rather track more meaningful traffic data based on real people that visit and use your website.

Step 4 – Check your analytics stats to see if your site is active yet

Once you have entered the Google tracking data and saved the footer file (or whatever file you have entered the tracking code to) you unfortunatley won’t be able to track stats right away. You need to wait until the status has shown up a green tick signalling that the tracking code has been successfully entered and is tracking accurately. This can take up to 24 hours.

You can see in the above pictures that when you first install Google Analytics it will display an explanation mark indicating that analytics is not tracking data yet. Once analytics is ready to track data a green tick will appear indicating your Google Analytics code has been installed correctly and is ready to track your visitors stats!

Well done you can now track what your visitors are up to when they visit your site. This is a great way to analyse the way visitors use your site and a great tool in improving your blog to adjust to your readers needs.

I hope this little tutorial has helped you install Google Analytics. If you have any problems please let me know by either contacting me or writing in the comments section below.

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One of the first things I ever wanted to do when starting my own blog/site was to see my site ranked in google. I mean, how exciting would it be to see your site ranked high in google then start seeing traffic coming through?

To get your site ranked in google you first need to submit your URL to google. It’s so simple – here’s how to do it:

1. Go to http://www.google.com.au/addurl/
2. Enter in your URL and click ‘add URL’

It’s that easy!

Make sure you enter your full URL. For example for me to enter in this site I entered the URL of http://www.beginnerblogger.com/. This is your index page, which means you don’t need to add any other URLs as long as your site links to all other links in someway from your index page.

Google will also ask you to enter in any comments about your site. You doesn’t matter what you type in the comments section or leave it blank. The comment section is used only by google and your site won’t be indexed according to what you enter in the comments field.

Although this site is still at the very beginning I am now being ranked in google thanks to submitting my site. This is really exciting for me. If you search ‘beginner blogger’ in google I will be ranked in page 1 or 2. It changes often. I have searched ‘beginner blogger’ at times before and have been no1! So go ahead, see where I rank in google and drop me a comment below and let me know where I rank!

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Your WordPress title is the text that displays on the header of your WordPress Blog.

Here is the simple way to change it:

1. Log into your wordpress admin account, generally http://www.your-blog-name.com/wp-admin/
2. Click on Settings on the sidebar which will automatically take you to the ‘General’ subsection.
3. Edit the Blog Title.

how to edit your WordPress title

How this helped me?

I was trying to figure out how to change the title of my blog from ‘BeginnerBlogger.com’ to just ‘Beginner Blogger’. It didn’t seem so clear to me and I actually coudln’t find a quick enough response in google so I figured it had to be in the settings somewhere.

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So you want to start your own blog? Great! This blog is created using wordpress and I want to show you how you can set up your very blog using wordpress.

Just follow these VERY simple steps and you’ll be blogging within minutes

1. Go to www.wordpress.com
2. Click ‘Sign up now’
3. Fill out the simple form covered over two pages (they have a very readable terms and conditions page which I recommend having a quick read over)
4. Check your email you entered in the signup form and click the activation link they have sent.
5. That’s it! Your account is now activated and you can view your site. You can now log in and start blogging away!

Step by step process of how to set up a WordPress Blog

With wordpress you can create as many blogs as you like. So if you want to talk about a variety of different topics but want to keep each topic seperate then just create a blog for each topic. Easy!

Now there is another way of setting up a wordpress blog if you have your own domain by actually downloading the software and installing it on your own host. This has its advantages in that you don’t have to abide by wordpress.com terms and conditions, you can put whatever you like on the blog. I’ve also found that you get more features by installing your own wordpress blog.

This blog was created by installing it on my own hosting and domain name that I bought. I will cover how to install your own wordpress blog if you have your own domain name and hosting in due course.

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