After you are sure you are up and running, you should go ahead and make three views: the master, sandbox, and unfiltered. The master is what you will look at every day and has all of the customization built in. The sandbox is where you will test the customization before you implement in the master. The unfiltered view is your fail-safe. This is your back up that you have not messed with at all. There is no going back once you have made changes in Google Analytics, so it is best to make these three views so you never ruin your data sets.
From the admin panel, click the drop down menu under “view.” Then, click “Create new view.”
Name your new view and then click “Create View.” Repeat this process until you have established all of the views you want.
From the drop down menu, choose the view in which you wish to view your data.
Now that you have Google Analytics working on your blog and have set up the different views of data, lets move forward with implementing some goals that will help you measure you business objectives.
Google Goals track user actions and answer questions like “how often do they start the action?” and “do they complete the action?” You will want to set up your goal in the sandbox view first to test and make sure it is working properly. Once you know it is good to go, then implement in your master. Leave the unfiltered version untouched.
To set up a goal, first click on the “Admin” tab and then click on “Goals.”
Google Analytics is a powerful and easy-to-use tool that tracks your website traffic. Google Analytics presents aggregated sets of data that can help you make business decisions.
Bloggers can use Google Analytics and Goals to help measure successful content, important traffic patterns, flaws in the user’s experience, and much more.
Google Analytics is extremely to use; however, there are a few strategic decisions you must make before jumping right in.
The Cycle of Success outlines a process that acts as a roadmap to your success as a blogger. The inner circle represents the process that Google recommends that you follow when setting up their analytics tracking on your site. You start with defining and setting your business goals. Your goals should be straightforward and realistic. What do you wish to accomplish with your website? Generate revenue? Page views? Information downloads? Defining your business goals will set the foundation for your measurement plan, the second step in the Cycle of Success.
Above is an example measurement plan. The steps to make a measurement plan do not change. You can see an example a blogger may write on the right. Here is a blank plan for you to try:
The third step is more technical in nature and nine times out of 10 you will have everything you need to implement Google Analytics and Google Goals. Your technical infrastructure is your computer, software, etc. Basically, it is all of the physical tools you will need to implement your plan.
Creating your implementation plan will guide you through the implementation process, prioritizing what needs to get implemented first, and so on. For a simple blog, you will not have any complicated customization to implement.
How-to implement Google Analytics:
First, you will need to set up your account. Then, you will need to get your code. Finally, you pick and install a plug-in for you blog. Yoast seems to be very popular, but there are lots of options out there.
Once you are logged in to your Google Analytics account, click “Admin” and then “Create New Account.”
Click “Website” if you are tracking traffic on a website, or “Mobile App” if you are tracking an app.
Click “Get Tracking ID.” This gives you the code you will enter into your plug-in. Now, make sure your plug-in is correctly installed on your blog. Go to the plug-in settings and copy and paste your tracking ID into the appropriate field. Depending on which plug-in you choose, the steps may change; however, they should be simple enough to follow along and get your tracking installed correctly. To test and make sure that you are up and running, access your website from another device. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and on the left hand side, click “Real-time.” You will see all of the users currently on your website.
#AWBU 2014 Google Analytics Part 2 – Scheduled for Oct. 29, 2014
#AWBU 2014 Google Analytics Part 3 – Scheduled for Nov. 1, 2014
Last weekend I slept in field full of tents with lots of other bloggers at an event called BlogStock, the world’s first blogging festival. Bloggers from all different genres gathered in Aldenham Country Park, which is north of London, England. Travel bloggers, mommy and daddy-bloggers, fashion bloggers and lifestyle bloggers were all in attendance. In fact, you would be amazed at how well a group of fashion bloggers can dress for camping and still be functional in rain! There is always plenty of rain in the UK, and we had our share of showers at the festival, but the sun came out on Saturday for us, so most of the sessions were in open air tents.
My family stopped at the festival on our way home from a road trip around Europe because I had agreed to do a morning session on Saturday in a tipi. Full disclosure: Only three people attended my session and two of them were my children. Still, it was a wonderful learning opportunity for me and a chance to run my material on a few guinea pigs who were happy to give me feedback for the next go around, which will be at AWBU in just a few short weeks!
I always come away from events like these with an overwhelming amount of new knowledge, so I thought it might be helpful + fun to share a few of my biggest takeaways from the festival! That way you can benefit from my willingness to camp out in the rain!
BlogStock Takeaways!
1. “Be funny and honest, but never mean.” Niamh Shields from Eat Like A Girl
I went to Niamh’s session on Food Blogging, but this little gem of advice applies to everything we write about on our blogs. She reminded us that it takes more time and creativity to craft an honest, but playful review (be it of a restaurant, a product or an experience) than it does to just be mean. And since I really agree that there is no place for meanness in blogging, I loved her advice.
She also ended her talk with the reminder that envy is destructive but joy is infectious. Both. So. True.
2. Aperture Priority is My Friend Jeanne Horak-Druiff from Cook Sister
I have had a new camera for over six months now that I have trouble working. For the first time, someone explained Aperture, ISO and White Balance in a way that did not make me want to run screaming from the room. Jeanne used pictures to explain taking pictures and I was so relieved to come away with a basic understanding of how to use my camera. This is probably old news for those of you with nice cameras but it is a new takeaway for me that setting my camera to aperture priority is a step between shooting in automatic mode and the overwhelming + daunting RAW option.
3. Motivate the Elephant not the Rider Karen Sargent from Global Help Swap
Karen used this simple, yet wonderful analogy of an elephant and its rider to describe why we get stuck in our writing (and in life). The rider represents our brain and all our knowledge about blogging. Things like learning methods or how to do SEO, new techniques, and even reading blog posts like this one fill our minds with all kinds of knowledge about things we could/should do to make our blogs better. But the elephant is our emotional energy. And it doesn’t matter how much knowledge we have, if our heart isn’t motivated, we are not going anywhere. I loved this analogy, because I often think I need to learn to do something new in order to make my blog better, but actually, I just need to be motivated to put into practice the things I’ve already learned. Karen’s suggestion was to dig for the reason we wanted to write a blog in the first place. To connect with why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s the why not the what that makes the elephant move forward.
Whatever the service is that you’re offering, set your rates at what you think your time is worth and not at what you think “they will give you.” I’ve heard it a million times before, but for some reason, I can’t get it into my head that it’s better to have a few high paying clients and less work than tons of small, low paying jobs. As a freelancer, I have a long way to go to get to a “sustainable living” but if I would be brave enough to heed this advice, I think I would get there sooner.
5. Be a Part of a Blog Collective from The Future of Blogging Panel
This one made me smile A LOT because I am already a part of an AMAZING Blog Collective! Arkansas Women Bloggers!!
I listened to a panel of different industry experts talk and answer questions on the future of blogging, and this came up a lot. Companies don’t want to have to hunt down individual bloggers themselves, but they want to find the right bloggers for the jobs. Enter blog collectives, which do the work of finding the right blogger among them for the task. Also, they can combine to have a larger voice among multiple communities. Being an active member of a blog community is a great way to be on the forefront of whatever innovations are coming in blogging.
That is just one more reason I’m super excited about Arkansas Women Bloggers University! I can’t wait to see my Arkansas friends and meet new ones, and to get new ideas from each other! I hope to see you there!
Are you coming? What are you hoping to learn? Tell me in the comments or on Twitter!
Ok y’all! This might officially be the nerdiest blog post I have ever written, but how much do you LOVE it when you are trying to make a change to your blog and you find the EXACT right plugin to make the magic happen?
When I find the right plugin for the job, for just a second, I feel like a computer GENIUS!
Until the next time.
Conversely, it can be super frustrating to search for hours and hours for a plugin for your blog and come up empty.
So I thought it would be fun to share my favorite plugins and why I love them, and hopefully, this is just a start to a conversation. I want you to share your own favorites in the comments and maybe together we will create a great resource of go to plugins for Arkansas Women Bloggers!
I am a WordPress user, so all my plugins will be for WordPress (self-hosted) but often they are available on multiple platforms, but if you use Blogger or another platform, be sure to mention that in the comments as well.
Jetpack gives your self-hosted blog the features from WordPress.com. The analytics, the comments, the social sharing and many other things you don’t even see. My personal favorite feature is that if your theme is not mobile friendly, Jetpack can make it so, which is so important since almost everyone reads from their mobiles these days.
I know lots of people use other plugins for comments and for social sharing besides Jetpack, but I find that most of those options (specifically Disqus) are not mobile friendly.
This plugin makes it SUPER easy to optimize your blog posts for SEO, by pointing out what you still need. And there is a little light by the plugin that changes color as you optimize your post. When the light turns green, you’re golden! It’s like a little game for me to get it to turn green.
If you know me, you know that I LOVE Instagram. So of course I want to share that love on my blog. This plugin drags your latest IG images (you choose how many) into your sidebar. If Instagram is not your thing, there is a similar one available for Pinterest, so you can show off your latest Pins!
I’ve already talked at length about how much I love using Google+ photo albums and this plugin makes it so easy to pull the images to my blog. And because they are hosted on Google, the page load time is faster.
I always hope that when someone finishes reading a post on my blog, they will want to read more. This plugin makes suggestions based on the last post someone finished. There are lots of plugins out there that do this, but I like this one because it specifically suggests posts that are similar to the one just read instead of just pulling four random posts off my blog. There is also a feature available to add content from other sites, which means content from your site can be listed elsewhere as well.
A Few Fun Photos From Mauritius: TL- Sally and Flea, TR- Beach Sunrise, BL- Sally and Flea Para-Sailing, BR-Our kiddos jumping in the pool
by Alison Chino
Y’all! Remember how I said that every once in a while you get to do something amazing as a result of being a blogger. Well, last month I got to travel all the way to Mauritius, a place I did not even know existed a year ago. I got to share this experience with another blogger in England name Sally Whittle. Sally runs the largest network of bloggers in the United Kingdom, with at least 10000 bloggers registered and she speaks regularly to bloggers at conferences.
So while we were lounging around by the pool and watching our kids play on the beach, I asked Sally if she would be willing to share her story and expertise with Arkansas Women Bloggers and she kindly obliged.
Interview with Sally of Tots 100
Hi Sally, Can you tell us in a few words about yourself and the business for bloggers that you run in the UK?
I am a journalist by trade and had been writing about the Internet and social media for more than a decade when my daughter was born. I’d always blogged about the media and PR, but increasingly found I wanted to use social media to capture our family story – the little everyday moments that otherwise get lost. So I started my own blog at whosthemummy.co.uk. Soon after, I found that there were dozens, maybe hundreds of other people writing parenting and family blogs just like mine – but there was no one place where you could find them all. In the mainstream media, there are lots of media databases, and I used that knowledge, with a few of my IT connections, to come up with Tots100 – a directory of parenting blogs that would provide one place to find lots of parent blogs, and which would provide some independent metrics about blogs in the same way media databases provided circulation figures for newspapers and magazines. At the time, nobody was doing that in the UK, and the business grew very quickly. Over time we’ve added new services, and launched two other directories – one of food blogs, and one for homes and interior blogs.
In the forever evolving world of blogging, what advice would you give to bloggers who are just starting out? And to veteran bloggers? Or what mistakes do you notice that bloggers are making these days?
Whenever I speak at a conference or in a magazine, I see lots of people giving very technical advice to bloggers, or advice on how to sell sponsored posts on your site. But honestly, I think that’s missing the point. For new bloggers I advise them to blog what they enjoy. Blog something you’re passionate about, blog with feeling, enjoy what you do – and ignore everything else. Don’t feel you HAVE to use this platform, or use THAT camera or whatever – have fun, write from the heart and then even if your blog doesn’t become an all-singing, all-earning multimedia platform you’ll still be doing something worthwhile that you feel proud of. But the irony of blogging is that this is the best way to grow an audience, and that audience, combined with authentic content, is the best platform if you DO then want to partner with brands.
As for mistakes, I think providing someone is enjoying their blog, I wouldn’t assume to tell them what to do differently. Some bloggers write to be creative, some to add money to the family finances, some to build a professional reputation – if there’s a mistake to be made, it’s thinking there’s one sort of blog, or one right way to do things. I get so frustrated by the whole idea that, “If you’re not doing it the way I do it, you’re doing it wrong”.
Your company offers opportunities for bloggers to work with some amazing brands! What advice do you have for bloggers about working with brands?
Two pieces of advice. First, remember that people do business with people. We’re all busy and occasionally have bad days, but I know that when I sit down at my desk to recruit blogs for a campaign, alongside stats and influence, I’m looking for people who are reliable, flexible and good fun to work with. If you work with a brand and deliver the content on time, with great photos, and you’re positive and friendly to chat to – then word of mouth ensures you’ll get more opportunities. Second – don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. I don’t mean bombarding brands with Tweets asking for free stuff, but by ensuring your blog is listed in directories, that your Twitter feed carries your blog link, that you have a nice contact form on your site, and a PR policy that explains what you’re interested in.
What’s your favorite social media channel? Why?
Probably Twitter – I think it provides those few minutes of chat at certain points of the day that I used to get from being in an office, and I now get on Twitter. I love that the 140 character limit can really highlight people’s humor and wit – on a good day – and lots of the people I follow on Twitter are just ridiculously smart and funny and interesting. What’s not to love? I like Instagram to a point, but I get frustrated easily by my own ineptitude with a camera, and Facebook can sometimes feel a bit too much like looking at the Martha Stewart version of my friends’ lives. And I’m about as far from Martha as you can get, so I get a bit depressed about all the crafting, cooking and general outdoorsiness that everyone else seems to do with their kids.
What are some of the benefits you’ve experienced from blogging? Or what do you love about blogging?
Blogging started as my hobby and it’s now my job, so that’s pretty amazing. I earn a decent living, and my job is flexible enough that I can spend lots of time with my daughter so I’m very blessed in that regard. And of course blogging means we get sent a lot of stuff – although that does get old pretty quickly, believe me! I now don’t really do many product reviews (there’s only so much stuff you can fit into a Victorian terraced house, in my experience) but we love the opportunity to travel, to try new experiences and meet new people. We’ve ridden rollercoasters and met famous chefs. We’ve gone to previews of new films, stayed in amazing hotels and traveled to fantastic places. For me that’s the benefit of my personal blog – the experiences it’s allowed us to have. But even without all of that, I love to write, I love to share stories, and I love to capture memories. I love that those conversations I had with Flea when she was two and three years old are always there for us to look back on – because I know if I didn’t blog, I’d have long forgotten that Flea used to imagine that puppies were lurking round every corner waiting to steal our biscuits, or that she used to pretend to be a dog when we visited the doctor. That stuff’s so precious.
Thank you so much Sally, for sharing with us! You can connect with Sally on Twitter and read stories about life with her sweet daughter on her blog, Who’s The Mummy.
Creating a watermark to add to your blog photos is quick and easy and totally accessible for those who don’t own fancy photo editing software. I’ll show you how in just 8 steps using Picmonkey.
1. Open Picmonkey in your browser and choose “Design.” Choose the square option.
2. Change the canvas color to black for the purpose of editing; we’ll be able to see our design while we work. We’ll change the background again, later.
3. For this tutorial I’m showing you how to use text as your watermark. Hit the “T.” Choose your font. Type your text.
4. Adjust the color and opacity of your watermark text. I suggest using a grey or white. You can adjust here. You’ll also be able to adjust a bit more when you add the watermark to the photo.
5. Now that you have the text the way you’d like it to appear, crop the image.
6. Now we’ll turn the canvas color to transparent so that only your image will appear. Your watermark text will most likely disappear so be sure to have it exactly the way you want before you complete this step. Hit the “Canvas Color” option on the editing menu. Click “transparent canvas.”
7. We’re ready to save this watermark! Don’t worry, you probably can’t see your image but it’s there, I promise! Be sure to name your watermark and save as a .PNG file. This will ensure that only the text youcreated will appear on your photos.
8. Great! Now open the photo you’d like to watermark. Hit the “Overlay” button on the editing menu; it looks like a butterfly. Click the “Choose Your Own” option, find the watermark you saved and there it is! Yay!! Place the watermark anywhere you’d like. You can adjust the color/opacity as needed. Save your new photo and you’re finished!
Now you can easily add your pre-made watermark to all your photos.
Photos are the first thing people see when people arrive at your website. Professional looking photos can set a blog a cut above the rest for sure, but I have to admit that I have come very slowly to the art of photography.
For the longest time, I said that I was a writer, not a photographer. I was afraid that if I spent more time on photos that I would have less time for writing. And to some extent, this has been true. However I have found a few time savers and shortcuts for those of us who want to have pretty pictures but are not ready to take the plunge as a serious photographer.
For the sake of this post, when I say “serious photographer,” I mean someone who has a very big camera, a Macbook and Photoshop. I’m not saying you can’t be serious without those things, but I am intimidated by the combination of those three because of the investment they would take from me, both in time and in money. Maybe. One. Day.
But for today, here’s what I am doing to create the best possible photos for my blog.
First, I take loads of pictures on my iPhone, which I edit with Snapseed and VSCOCam and then send straight to my blog via a WordPress App. (I wrote a guest post all about using IPhone photos for blogging that includes more detail about this.)
Back in December, I won a real camera. Seriously. I could not believe it. I submitted an Instagram photo to a real photo contest and actually managed to emerge with a new camera. Which I am still learning to use. But I am not ready for the plunge into Photoshop. So here’s what I am using:
Uploading and storing my pictures on Google+ is super easy! I did not have to purchase or install anything new. I just open Google Chrome and get started from my Google+ Dashboard.
2. Easy Editing
I can edit photos within Google+ with Snapseed photo tools, so it’s already familiar to me from using Snapseed on my phone.
Snapseed Edit Options on the Right
HDR options
My favorite edits are these more subtle tuning options.
Image Tuning in Google+
3. Auto Awesome Photos
Google+ is smarter than me! Seriously, when I upload photos, Google+ immediately recognizes groups of pictures and creates Auto Awesome images for me without my telling it too. It combines scenery images to create panoramas, combines series of photos to create animated gifs and it even combines several family pictures to create the one that has the best set of smiles. When I first realized that Google was doing this with my pictures, my mind was blown. (Easily impressed, much?)
Google generated Panoramic Image of Ireland
Google generated Panorama in HDR
4. Easy Sharing, Easy Accessing
I can choose to share albums or keep them private. And unlike a Facebook album, I can then access those albums from anywhere. I can grab a photo from my phone through a Google+ app if I want to use it on Instagram or Twitter. I can access them for my blog through a Google+ Plugin that adds a little icon to my dashboard that brings up all my Google+ photos.
Google+ Album Access
Viewing Google+ Albums from within WordPress
When you click on that little icon, it brings up all your Google+ albums.
Set your image width in Options
On the options you can choose the size width at which to import them, and because Google+ is hosting the images, they load immediately on your page.
Select the photos you want to insert
I just select and insert them.
Your images are in code on your post
In your post on your dashboard, the photos are all in code, but when you preview your post, you can see your images.
Preview your post to see your images.
Yay! Beautiful pictures for your blog from Google+!
I would love to hear from you all what you use most to edit photos for your blog! Do you use your phone, a big DSLR or even stock images from other sites?
Do tell!
Do you have any Google+ questions I didn’t answer? Ask me on Twitter!
I know I was here all last month sharing my journey of blogging, but I am super excited about showing back up at Arkansas Women Bloggers to talk some more about blogging once a month-ish.
So if you have questions about blogging or topics you wish I would cover, shoot me an email (alison at alisonchino.com) or tell me on Twitter!
This month, I want to talk about Social Media, and since there are eleventy million opinions in the world about all the different social media platforms, I’m not going to try to define the right way to go about it. Instead, I’m just going to tell you what I’m doing with social media.
Last fall, I was introduced to the idea that maybe we should view social media a little differently.
Maybe we should work on being social instead of doing social.
Here’s a group of Arkansas Women Bloggers being social!
I was challenged to stop publishing the same exact content to all of my social media channels, but instead to look at social media as a circle and to give people a reason to follow me in more than one place. Since this approach requires a little more creativity and time, I have found that I have narrowed the platforms I”m really using. For example, I have practically abandoned my Facebook page, which I feel ok about since Facebook rarely shows it to anyone anyway.
So here are my favorite platforms and what I use them for, plus a little bonus link to a post from a real expert!
1. Instagram
Instagram is my very favorite social platform. It’s where I put my favorite discoveries, my happiest moments and my most beautiful finds. I often use my Instagram photos later on my blog, but I don’t usually promote my blog on Instagram. I might mention about once a month that I have a blog and the link is in my profile, but for the most part I find that people follow me on Instagram to see the pictures and they don’t really care about my blog.
However, lots of folks have had loads of success using Instagram to build a brand. Katja of Skimbaco Lifestyle has done a great job doing just that and has released a free eBook (when you opt in for her email list) about using Instagram for travel that has a lot of great tips about Instagram in general.
2. Twitter
I publish most of what I write on my blog to Twitter, but I try to make it slightly more interesting than just listing the title of the post. I also tweet other things I read that I find helpful or enjoy. I almost think it means more these days to share someone’s post than it does to leave a comment on it. It validates your content when someone shares it with their friends!
I’m trying to really use Twitter to talk to people. I participate in a couple of Twitter chats about travel and I have several lists in Twitter where I keep up with what is happening in my industry. Then I have another list of Arkansas gals! I also have a list of folks I’m a big fan of and I engage with them when I’m feeling brave. I can be as shy on Twitter as I am in real life though!
I mentioned that I am over the whole Facebook page season of blogging. Now if you want to talk to me on Facebook, I just want you to become my friend. Every once in a while I will share a blog post I wrote on my personal Facebook, but I don’t do it all the time because I feel like it starts to seem like noise. Facebook is where I share pictures of my kids and my family. It’s where I check in with friends back home.
One new way Facebook has been really helpful for me in the last year is in the common use of Facebook groups. I belong to several blogging groups that basically act as forums and are wonderful for sharing information. Arkansas Women Bloggers Facebook group is one of them. I also started my own Facebook group for the #48walks project I am doing on my blog this year. This has been so much more effective than my Facebook page because people are engaged with groups that they join. Of course, if a group member gets tired of the group’s notifications and turns them off, then you lose that engagement, so you have to be careful not to abuse this platform.
These days I use Google+ like I used to use Facebook. I put my photos in Google+ albums, which for a non-Photoshop user like me is handy since you can do simple edits of your photos right in Google+. I also share my blog posts, as well as other ones I enjoy on Google+. I have not learned how to be super engaged with my Google+ feed, but I would say this is the platform that I am growing into the most right now.
I go in seasons with Pinterest. I really love how visual it is and so I always pin my recipe pictures. But I also use Pinterest like Evernote and pin lists I want to remember or articles about blogging to a board called Learning. This is very counter productive to keeping my Pinterest boards pretty, which is the expert advice I often hear about this platform.
Since we have arrived in Scotland, I have been writing between two and ten pitches every week to random companies trying to get them help us tell the story of our life here, while also promoting their hotel, hostel, tour guide or tour.
My pitches have improved since my first emails to the sunscreen company, but I still get mostly “nos” or “no reply.” For every fun trip I have written about on my blog, you can bet there are twenty trips I did not get to take.
(Remember how I said last time that things are not ever exactly as they seem.)
For me, all the pitching + sealing deals with people = EXHAUSTING.
Sometimes, I would rather just go on a free hike with my family on Saturday than beg, beg, beg for you to let me come stay in your hotel for a night so I can take/edit photos and spend hours writing copy that ends up reading like: Look At This Great Hotel We Got To Stay In For Free.
Because, hello BORING.
But even when I would publish (or just Instagram) pictures from hikes I would find that people often would say “Jealous!” or “I wish” or not anything. And that just made me sad.
My readers/followers and even my friends and family seem to somehow have a threshold for the number of pretty Scotland photos they care to see. (Go figure.)
After my Christmas storytelling project, I decided that I would continue to tell stories on my blog.
I thought I had been telling stories all along, but these were different. They stood out from the blog posts I had been doing lately in that they were mostly text instead of photos.
Mike suggested I tell stories once a week along a monthly theme. 12 Themes for 12 Months of Stories to follow up my 12 Days of Stories.
I began to play with this idea, but I wanted all the stories to tie together somehow. In fact, what I loved about Outdoorsy Mama + A Dreamy Life In Scotland was how it tied everything on my blog together. I still wanted an overarching theme.
But I wanted it to be something that was truly me.
And I wanted it to be something that I would not easily become bored with.
When I thought of it, I knew I had stumbled on exactly what I wanted my blog to be about in the next stage of my Blogger’s Journey.
I was walking everywhere since I had moved to Scotland. I was loving going for walks on the weekends in the woods and I knew I wanted to walk a lot of new cities this year. I love that in the UK, they refer to hiking as walking or hillwalking.
And I love that the idea of walking is so easily transferable to figurative journeys.
I started to write my introductory post about walking + storytelling. I already knew that I wanted to go on some really long walks in 2014 and that I was going to try to come up with a way to tag them all together. (I settled on #48Walks)
While I was writing, I realized that it would be so simple to invite others to do it with me!
I was so excited about this possibility that I just said, Join in! If you can think of a way to be a part of walking with me this year, then come on!
Honestly the idea was so new to me that I did not have time to create any rules or guidelines.
And here’s what really surprised me. People said yes. People started to tag their pictures with #48Walks. I set up a Facebook group and people joined it. I encouraged people to make a list of 48 walks they want to take this year, literal walks or figurative walks.
I started to write blog posts about the walks I am taking. And I started to write stories about walks of life. In January I told stories about Walking Towards the Unexpected. In February, I told stories about Walking in the Dark. This month I told stories about Walking in the Light.
Maybe when I look back on 2014, I will call it the stage of Walking + Storytelling.
Who knows? But for now, I have found a journey that I am loving and that others can share in, which just makes me giddy. Instead of seeing my picture of a walk I am taking and wishing you were there, I hope it encourages you to find a great walk of your own and show it to me. When someone snaps a picture of a walk they are taking in life and tags it for me to find, it brightens up my day.
As I have shared the story of my blog, you might have noticed that I kept a little bit of each phase along the way. Blogging (and the internet) is always changing, so it is great to experiment! In each phase, I try to keep what is helpful and leave behind what is not.
And even though I have made fun of some of the things I have done in blogging, I want you to know that when I see you trying something new on your blog, I think you are brave.
It’s important to me that you know that. Because there is a lot of comparison and meanness on the internet, you might think I am criticizing you. I promise that there is no question you could ask me about blogging that I would say was dumb. And after seven years of blogging, I know that if you have something special happening on your blog (or in your life) that you worked very hard for it. And that there are probably ten more opportunities you did not get.
Ultimately, I do not think there is any right or wrong way to go about blogging.
Which is the wonderful freedom about blogging, is it not?
I like to remember that my blog is my own creation and ultimately, I can do whatever I like with my little corner of the internet. I can try on lots of hats in that space until I find the one that fits me best. Some days I think the dashboard of my blog will continue to be a virtual costume changing room many years to come. And you know what, I am okay with that.
This post is the fourth in a series about my journey as a blogger. I just want to stop for a minute to thank you so much for coming along with me, for letting me tell the story of my blog and for your comments and encouragements!
A Blogger’s Journey: Definition and Purpose
Somewhere in the Show Me The Money phase of blogging, our family moved to Scotland. I immediately signed up to attend a travel blogging conference in order to learn where I could start getting Pounds Sterling for blogging instead of the dollars I was currently swimming in (sarcasm).
In order to get ready to go to this conference, I invested my blog savings of $150 and some money I earned from catering on a session with a blogger who is very open and honest about how she makes money on the internet. She details it all out and if you want to learn how to make money from blogging, you should read Sarah Von Bargen regularly and then do what she says. For me, the best thing I got out of doing the session with her was that she made me write down my dreams and plans for my blog. I had to answer lots of hard questions in order to sit down with her about where I was going.
Like, I had to actually say where I wanted to go.
I know that sounds simple, but I still cannot answer some of Sarah’s questions definitively. Let’s pretend I am a creative maker of jewelry and I would really love to sell it online. Then the purpose of my blog would be easy: Promote/Sell Jewelry. Then you add in all the other things around that purpose. Cute Outfit Of The Day posts that feature jewelery. Hello-I-am-a Real-Person-but-I-Like-To-Make-Jewelry posts.
I actually considered finding something to sell in order to have more “purpose” for my blog. (Note: I think this is a great way to make money as a blogger, but unfortunately, I did not want to sell anything.)
In my session with Sarah, she told me that she thought I should emphasize the details about my blog (and myself) that made me different. She recommended I push the Outdoorsy Mama, because there are lots of family blogs and lots of outdoor blogs but not necessarily that many people who are combining the two. She also gave me some suggestions for identifying myself in this way. (Release a Camping Menus eBook.) And she told me how to increase my presence on social media. (Be consistent. Be generous.)
photo by Whitney Loibner
So off to the travel conference I went as:
Stage 6: Outdoor Adventure + Family Travel Mama
Y’all, I even had cards printed.
One of the reasons I chose this particular conference was that a writer whose blog I really enjoy was speaking at two different sessions.
Somewhere in the middle of one of his talks, he confessed that he was not really making a living from blogging. In fact, he was barely scraping by with freelance jobs that were completely separate from his blog.
Let’s just revel in the irony of this for a minute, shall we?
I went to a conference to learn how to make money from blogging and to hear someone speak who was not making money blogging.
I still loved the conference. I enjoyed meeting people in the travel blogging industry. I love to travel and so did everyone I met. So that was fun. Also, I got to go on a free trip to the Northwest of Ireland as part of the conference. (Mesmerized By Free Stuff Stage 4: Resurrected!) I had the opportunity to pitch a room full of people in the travel industry who sponsor travel bloggers in which I learned that I never want to do that again. I attended talks on writing and pitching and storytelling and social media. I crammed my brain full and came back to Scotland completely overwhelmed.
I had lists of goals and plans. I made schedules and actually (kinda sorta) stuck to them. I started following all the rules I had learned from Sarah Von Bargen and from conferences.
I was blogging consistently (3-5 times per week) and promoting my blog on all the social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram). I was looking for guest posting opportunities to increase my Internet Presence.
Our family really does love hiking and the outdoors, so I was able to generate lots of content organically from how we spend our time.
I consistently posted pictures of our hiking and exploring in Scotland. Because we are living A Dreamy Life In Scotland and the world should want to know all about that, right? I no longer needed to chase the money. Soon I would be famous Outdoorsy Mama, and the money would chase me.
The funny thing about all the different clichés I bought (am currently buying) in to about blogging and success is that there are threads of truth in each of them. When I started trying to get free stuff for blogging, I really did get some free stuff. When I started trying to make some money blogging, I got a little money. When I started trying to increase my followers on social media, I was able to slowly but surely get those numbers to go up.
But threads of truth eventually unravel when you tug on them.
If you hear me say nothing else about blogging success, hear this:
Now I will tell you everything I know about how to be a HuffPo Blogger. I will tell you that in order to blog for the Huffington Post, all you have to do is email Arianna Huffington. She is the only big name in the blogging world that I have encountered who actually answers Every Single Email She Receives. Which I think is very kind, by the way. She is bestowing mad amounts of dignity upon those of us who are sending eleventy million emails into the universe. Thank you, Arianna!
If she likes your blog, she will send you off to one of her reps depending on the topic you would like to blog about and they will set you up with a log in and Voila! You are now a Huffington Post Blogger. You can write something and submit it. And if it is not total crap (grammatical errors and such) and you have followed their clear guidelines (size of pictures and such), it will be published on their site. And maybe some people will read it. But mostly do you know who will read it? The people that you send there when you put the link on your Facebook page.
I’ll pause while you take back your amazement.
But still, I am doing some very fun things for free this spring because in an email I said, I am a Huffington Post Blogger.
Almost everything in blogging is like this in that in some way, things are not exactly as they seem.
Y’all I try to be a really honest blogger. I want to be authentic. I really do.
But in blogging, as in life, we are telling a story (whether we define it or not) and for the past year or so, my story has been Outdoorsy Mama who is living A Dreamy Life in Scotland. If this is the story I am wrapping my blog around, I am not going to tell you that last week after four days of rain, I could not get out of bed. Or that I stayed awake all night from anxiety about something that was going on with one of my children.
Instead, I am going to keep on telling the (photo heavy) story of A Dreamy Life in Scotland.
photo by Whitney Loibner
And if that is the purpose of my blog, as defined by myself in previous planning sessions, then I am not being untrue to myself by continuing to tell that part of the story.
Because I am Outdoorsy. And lots of things about life in Scotland are pretty dang amazing.
However in November, I began to notice that my blog readership and (more importantly) blog engagement (commenting + sharing) was going down instead of up.
More importantly, I started to feel like maybe I was bored with it.
I was very excited about defining myself as Outdoorsy Mama who Moves To Scotland, and it was helpful for pitching my story to others to have given my blog a general theme. Or niche.
But I think maybe I concentrated on fitting this niche so much that I lost the story.
So next week I am going to tell you how I found a new stage of blogging that I am really excited about: Storytelling.
Do you have questions about any of the stages of blogging I’ve mentioned as I’ve shared my journey of blogging? I would LOVE to hear them and I’ll do my very best to answer!
If you’re feeling super brave, I would love to hear your experience of how something about your blogging is “not exactly as it seems?”
