Tag: Recap

#AWBU 2014 Recap Google Analytics Part 1

By Elizabeth Michael

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.

#5b

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

#ARWB Recap: Coping With the Anxiety of Blogging

By Dr. Margaret Rutherford

How are you dealing with the anxieties of blogging?

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Anxiety

Photo Source: Google Images

Being a blogger in general is just anxiety provoking. You are doing something that most people would never do in a million years. Reveal things and then be evaluated over the Internet? To just anyone who might be reading?

You have got to be kidding.

There are different levels of anxiety of bloggers have.

1) The BEHAVIORAL Level: Disorganization and Feeling Overwhelmed
2) The SELF-CONCEPTUAL Level: Having Doubt About Yourself and Feeling Isolated
3) The LIFE STRATEGY Level: Indecisiveness and Waffling

All of this was beginning to sound very psychological so we broke it down. Real things you can do to help keep the stress and anxiety of blogging to a minimum. Especially if you are a new blogger. Or a blogger that is kinda stuck in a rut and is getting anxious about it.

Decrease your blogging anxiety by building in these behaviors. #AWBU #Recap

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First we looked at BEHAVIORS TO BUILD IN.

1) Write on a schedule so you don’t procrastinate. A huge source of anxiety.
2) Learn the technicalities of your blog so you can fix problems when they occur.
3) Get an editor! Which can help with the loneliness of blogging. Another big source of anxiety. And get someone who will be honest with you. So you will get better.
4) Network. Support other bloggers.

Above all : Keep you in your plan so it will work.

What I mean by that is – if you are trying to get back on track by doing something that you “hear” works for someone else, but just isn’t you? It’s not going to work. Stick to your plan. Your track. Use your editor to help you with fresh ideas. If you are shy, don’t play to go a conference by yourself. Take a friend. Accept who and where you are. It’s okay!

The second big area we looked at was SELF-CONCEPT.

1) Trust in the power of your voice.

If you are always putting yourself down, or even sometimes doing it, please challenge that. We are all insecure. All of us. But your voice can be strong. You can find it. It is unique.

We all talked about this in the session. How we came or were coming to trust our own voices.

2) Dare to not compare. Just step into the light that is yours.

Comparison with others is just not helpful. We all have to realize that we are all on a spectrum. There is always going to be someone who we can find that we feel has more going for her than us. And And believe it or not. There is someone who is looking at you. And wanting to be you. I promise you that’s true.

Then the third part.

LIFE STRATEGY ANXIETIES.

These are caused more due to not knowing the answers to questions about where you are going with your website or blog. What you want from it. What your goals are for it. You might be indecisive about advertising or whether or not you wanted to be featured on certain websites. Because you are not sure of where your own parameters are. Of who you are. Of what you stand for.

If you are clear about what you are creating, the reader will be clear as well. And seek you out.

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Dr. Margaret Rutherford is a clinical psychologist who has been in private practice for over 20 years in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She began blogging in 2012, coining the term “NestAche” for her empty nest experience. She launched Dr.MargaretRutherford.com in April of 2014 and now can be found on the Huffington Post, MidlifeBoulevard, BetterAfter50, Boomeon, and here at Arkansas Women Bloggers!

#AWBU Recap Still Life Photography, Styling, and Basic Photo Editing

By Mel Lockcuff

Great photos allow the memories of life to live on. Remember sifting through your grandma’s photo albums when you were a kid? Photos of family (both near and far), family pets, farm animals, babies, kids, vacations or trips to distant places, trees, flowers, school days, the family car, trips to town…

Great photos allow the memories of life to live on. #photographytips #AWBU #Recap @mamabuzz

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Photos are a window into the past. Photos allow us to visually share our story with the next generation. It’s important to think about the moments you want to capture, the message you want to convey.

Photos are a window into the past. #AWBU #Recap #photographytips @mamabuzz

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Photos make your content even more visual for your readers. They bring an added measure of beauty to your writing. Good photos draw the eyes in and make readers want to click on that Pin or want to read more. They allow you to more visually promote a brand, but in a relevant way that also connects with your readers.

Photos bring an added measure of beauty to your writing.@mamabuzz #photographytips #stilllife #AWBU

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We had a great time in this session, covering the following points:

– Photography in Everyday Life, Travel, Blogging, and Working with Brands
– Positioning and Lighting
– Handy Tools
– Photo Styling and Props
– Mobile Apps
– Basic Photoshop and PicMonkey Skills

You can read all of the presentation and learn more by visiting the SlideShare for the presentation.

Mel Lockcuff is a wife and homeschool mom to 2 boys and a cat named Harold. She and her family are transfers to Arkansas and are loving life in Northwest Arkansas. They have 10 chickens and a lovely little garden in their budding back yard homestead.

Mel is a lifestyle and travel blogger at MamaBuzz, where her goal is to inspire life every day with creative inspiration related to food and recipes, travel and local places of interest, home and garden, crafts, DIY projects, back yard homesteading, awareness, and more. Mel is also a freelance writer, the founder of MamaBuzz Media, and has extensive experience as a community manager. Her work has been published on VisitRogersArkansas.com, OnlyinArk.com, and 66TheMotherRoad Magazine. She’s also the author of the eBook, Blog Design Elements of Success: How to Make Your Blog Stand Out.You can find Mel on Twitter @MamaBuzz, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

#AWBU Recap Take Better Pictures

IMG_4023 copy (1) By Sarabeth Jones and Whitney Lobber

First of all, think about:

why are you taking pictures?
why are you sharing what you share?
why do you like to look at pictures?

Now. Pull up your instagram profile. Look at the grid of pictures under your name. What do you see? What story are you telling? Here is a random list of some of our favorites – they are telling a clear story with beautiful images, and they run the gamut from professional photographers to regular people who have simply learned some tricks to help out their photos. Take a look at:

@abeautifulmessofficial
@alisonchino
@destinationeu
@kjp
@smileandwave
@garethpon
@taza
@bobdavidson
@ryanbyrd
@christenbyrd
@mooshinindy

Now that you’ve seen these, we hope you’re inspired to take better pictures. Here are some things you can do! While you’re shooting: What are you shooting with?

iPhone camera (Whitney) I shoot 99% of my phone photos with my iPhone camera. No fuss, No frills.

Touch the screen to control the focus and exposure (brightness).
Lock the focus (helpful when your subject is close or hard to focus on) by holding down on the spot you want to focus until the yellow box pops up.
Help yourself with the rule of thirds (more on this later) by turning on your grid, I think the default is off, but you can turn it on under settings.

VSCOcam (Sarabeth) I also shoot mostly with my iPhone camera but I also like the camera in this app for a few reasons:

Tap the screen with 2 fingers to separate your focus from exposure which gives you a little added control over brightness.
Shoot in a square mode to help you see what you’re getting for Instagram – the full rectangular frame is still captured in case you want more to work with later.
The whole bottom of the screen turns into the camera button – it’s just bigger and easier.

Don’t shoot in an app that’s not made to be a camera – like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. You just have more tools to work with and will get better pics using a camera app.

Things to keep in mind while you’re shooting:

Why: take a minute to think about the purpose of the content. You wouldn’t share on the fly on your blog; remember that this is part of a bigger story. Pictures of your kids, pets, dinner, place you visit…all fine, but does it fit the story you are telling

Where: look at your surroundings, how does your location play into the photograph,
Light: Where is it coming from, and what kind? filtered sunlight, direct sun, interior light, backlighting, side light. Turn off your flash. Don’t be afraid to play with light, moving around to see how it plays in your photo.
What (check background, etc): be aware of the entire frame, even the background tells a story. With food you want the water on the fresh produce to give the photo a feeling, same can be true of the surrounding/background. For example…if I’m (Whitney) taking a picture of my son on my couch I might get up and open my blinds to add better light or shadows and move laundry off my couch to give a clean look. It’s still true to a natural moment, but just a cleaner version. I am a photographer and I will set people up for a natural photo; it’s very rare for it to happen completely naturally.
Angles: start by taking lots of photos. Don’t be afraid to move around and see what works. Shoot from above, get lower (on the level of your subject), straight on, from the side. Then, in editing, decide what you like best. Resist your urge to post multiples and only post one! Save the progression and full story for your blog.
Color: pay attention to it in each photo as well as your total feed/story. Use it, don’t let it overwhelm. A note about black and white – make it black and white, lots of contrast, not just a bunch of gray.
Rule of thirds, leading lines: imagine you take your frame and cut it in 9 equal parts, like a tic tac toe board. This is the rule of thirds. Use the intersections of those lines as points of interest, something the eye will naturally be drawn to. By placing a subject in the middle of the frame your eye is immediately drawn to it and then has no place to go. By placing your subject on one of these points of interest, near a side, your eyes follow the photo and linger longer. Another tool to lead a viewer into a photo is the use of leading lines. Often a road, bridge, straight line, path, but can also be a softer line that leads you deeper into the photo.
Try the opposite: Always important to remember that sometimes we have to throw out all of these rules. Some of our favorite photos are real life, messy and all, or a photo off the grid. We can really love a photo in full center focus. or something with so much negative space.
Take a LOT of pictures: It’s worth repeating. Take several, look at what you got, adjust. Try the opposite! Lather, rinse, repeat. J

While you’re editing (you ARE editing, right?):

Cropping can make your picture stronger – make it look better, give it a stronger point of view. You can adjust to use leading lines or the rule of thirds, or can fix things you didn’t get quite right when you shot.

Contrast & saturation: if I (Sarabeth) don’t do anything else, I always adjust – increase – these. Especially for these pictures that are viewed on small screens.
Don’t over adjust – remember to keep a natural look, especially if you are going to share these at a larger size, like on your blog.
Color: Would your picture be stronger if it were black & white?
You can do all of this in Instagram, or you can try our favorite apps –

Snapseed – we love the sliders for adjustments, mostly use crop, tune image & sharpening screens. You can vignette with the center focus screen.
VSCOcam – also has same tools – I like the separate shadows/highlight tools here – but VSCO sliders have stops, so they’re not quite as flexible as snapseed. Easier to vignette because there’s a specific tool for it. Some really nice filters too.

This is a lot of information, and it’s a little hard to convey without visuals, but there are so many great tutorials on pretty much every aspect of photography – so if there’s a term you don’t understand, start Googling (or ask us)! Here’s to taking better pictures: Slideshare.

freeclipartcamera

Whitney Loibner and Sarabeth Jones are framily. They love to take trips together, especially cruises. They love to have drinks on the patio together, especially margaritas. And they love living in Dogtown and taking pictures of it all. Whitney is quite adept at putting funny things in Sarabeth’s purse for her to find later, and Sarabeth is practically a professional at borrowing Whitney’s clothes. [whitneyloibner.com | sarabethjones.com, @whitneyloibner & @sarabethjones on twitter & instagram]

Bloggy Boot Camp: The Recap

Hi everyone! I had a great time live blogging from Bloggy Boot Camp Dallas yesterday. Thanks to those of you who tweeted to me and left comments. I was glad that you all were finding the posts to be valuable. Over the next few days I’ll be going back through the posts and adding in a few more resources and some pictures. Tonight I wanted to do a quick recap of the event and also talk about some of the reasons why actually attending a blog conference might be a goal that you should set for yourself as a blogger.

So, first the recap. I have been to a few blog conferences, but this was my first Bloggy Boot Camp. It was relatively small – about 150 attendees. Almost all the bloggers there were from Texas, and a lot of them were attending their first ever blog conference. Several ladies I met hadn’t even started their blog yet. They were attending the conference to “learn how to do things so I don’t screw it up,” as one gal put it.

Different Bloggy Boot Camps address different subjects. This one was primarily centered around generating income from your blog. Obviously this isn’t everyone’s focus, but generally the way you make money from blogging is by making your blog better and keeping up with what is going on in the blogging community. Both of those things are good to do for any blogger, so even if you’re not into the business side of things, there was plenty of value to be had (hopefully you saw that in the live posts I did yesterday).

The ticket price for Bloggy Boot Camp is $99. I would say, based on the amount of things that I learned in the sessions alone, that this is a great deal. Bloggy Boot Camp is definitely learning-centric. It really isn’t about big parties or swag. As you saw in the post, there were some sponsors and some social events, and we did get to take home a goodie bag of fun stuff, but the focus was definitely on tangible take-aways that we could apply to our blogs immediately. The small size of the conference and the limited number of sponsors that were there was nice because there were plenty of opportunities to interact directly with the sponsors and learn about their brands. The conference organizers and “big gun” bloggers were also very friendly and accessible. The speakers didn’t just come in and do their presentation and get out. They were at the social events, mingling and answering questions. The SITSGirls and the team that works for them were super friendly and genuine – it was hard to tell them apart from the attendees when they weren’t on the microphone. I think that’s a good thing.

Now, I know I live blogged the whole she-bang for you, so you got the gist of the conference sessions and what they were about. But, conference going, even at a learning-centric conference, is much more than snagging tips and to-do lists out of sessions. So, here’s a list of what you missed:

Networking. Hands-down my second favorite thing about blog conferences (behind learning) is networking. If you’re not there, you can’t network. I’m not really talking about sponsors and big guns. I’m talking about fellow bloggers. That’s the good stuff. Comparing notes, fostering friendships, commiserating about writers block, and brainstorming ways to partner are just a few examples of why getting into a room full of women (and maybe a few men) that love to blog as much as you do can be fantastic.
Asking Questions. The ability to ask questions of speakers, conference organizers, PR professionals, and brand reps face-to-face is pretty awesome. Sure, you can talk with these folks via email, but it’s just not nearly as cool as having a real live conversation.
Immersion. Nothing can get you more energized about your craft than spending a large block of time thinking and doing nothing BUT that craft. Aside from the jewels that you are hand fed by the speakers and fellow attendees, I guarantee your creative juices will flow faster and deeper at conference, and you’ll likely come home with a list of ideas that you brainstormed all on your own while you were immersed in bloggy goodness.
Confidence. We all have our various social anxieties and worries. It takes some courage to go to an event where you don’t know anyone in a town you’re not familiar with. I always have a little case of nerves just before going to a conference. But, once I get there, it’s refreshing to see that everyone – from the blogger who’s making six figures, to the PR mavens, to the brand reps, and on down to the quietest blogger at the table – everyone is a real person. Every once in a while I am disappointed to find that someone I thought was pretty cool online turns out to be not-so-fantastic in real life, but still, it builds my confidence in knowing that we are all just people. Getting to the conference is 75% of the battle. Once you get one conference under your belt, you’ll likely feel your confidence rise.
The little things. Ok, so yes, I said there wasn’t a ton of swag at Bloggy Boot Camp, but I still came home with two new flash drives with brand information on them, sweet rolls from King’s Hawaiian, snacks for the kids from Happy Family, OPI nail polish from Kroger, a grilling apron for hubby, a fistfull of business cards from bloggers I had never met before (I’m already working out a guest post swap with one of them!), product coupons and samples, and some fun photos.

So, if you’re considering attending a blog conference, I think you absolutely cannot beat the annual Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged conference for a first-time go at it. It’s more of a retreat/camp type atmosphere. I would highly recommend Bloggy Boot Camp as well, though. Especially if you are ready to take your blog toward blogging for business, it’s a great value for the wealth of info you get and the amount of time you have to invest.

Thanks again for letting me take over the “blogwaves” on Arkansas Women Bloggers for these past 72 hours. I’ve had a blast!

~Fawn from Instead of the Dishes

Bloggy Boot Camp Session Posts: