Blogging Helps

Reflection is not a bad thing

December 19, 2020 By Annette1 10 Comments

Oh no! It’s the last Five minute Friday post of the year. I’ve been pondering this week’s word Conclude all day and still really have no idea what to write. If you are struggling with your own posts you might want to get some inspiration from those who have already linked up! 🙂

One of the aspects of writing for Five minute Friday is how often, when I haven’t an idea of what to write, I start writing and suddenly a post a written. Do you ever have that? Don’t you find it fascinating? Anyways, I give you Reflection is not a bad thing.

reflection is not a bad thing, mirrored image

Reflection is a bad thing

Just the other day,
I saw a post.
What has your reflection
over the past year taught you?

I thought WHAT? I need to reflect?
How’s I don’t wanna?
You can’t make me!
Reflection is only for planners!

But you know what happens
when someone puts a bug
in your brain?
You start thinking.

Shucks! There I go
Reflecting.
Noting how
Something I did was good.

This summer I
Decided… less time on my blog.
I focused on the yard,
On Building change.

I modified the rabbitry,
Brought in new cages.
Built new stands.
More stuff, yet more room.

Amazing how it worked out.
and then
I built gardens,
New raised beds.

Even the pond
was reconstructed.
A bit deeper, a bit longer.
The fish more room, happy.

The lad and I did much
Together.
Time to talk and laugh.
Creating connections.

It’s good to connect
to make different choices
Perhaps at the conclusion of a year
Reflection is not a bad thing?

Making Facebook Easier

December 31, 2019 By Annette1 14 Comments

You know what happens when you aren’t feeling well? You say to yourself “nuts to this facebook” and you start deleting pages and groups. The end goal was very simple: to be about making facebook easier to manage. Get rid of the old (unless you like the old) and making room for the new (should you find anything you like).

Pages

I started with what seemed the easiest – pages. People always invite you to like their pages and often I do without even thinking about it. Not worrying about what might happen with groups I actually like, or how cumbersome it could be down the road. But interacting with one new page can throw off the algorithms that facebook uses to show you new posts.

I would far rather that facebook show me everything and let me CHOOSE what I want to see or not see. But it doesn’t. It takes what you show interest in, or comment on, and shows you those few pages only.

I had an on-line friend ask how I did this, so this post is kinda to help her out as well! 🙂

Step One: Go to your facebook home page

Click on your pages, which will open to a page showing different subsections. You’ll want the liked page section. Then it just a matter of either keeping the liked on or shutting it off.

If you can’t remember what the page is about… click on it and it opens in a new page. You might find some treasures you had forgotten about.

OH.. and for fellow bloggers out there. There were a TON of pages called Homeschool, homeschool blog, or homeschool today. I unliked them all. Be original with your page names to keep them memorable!

Groups – Making Facebook Easier

The biggest time suck I have are the groups, but seriously I only have so much time you know? No need to waste my day on facebook and the groups of others.

Finding your groups is much like finding your liked pages. Go to your sidebar and find them.

Click on the link and you’ll see them partially listed on your sidebar.

Unlike with pages I couldn’t get this section to open to a new page, I simply had to click on See More. That would open another 10 groups in the list. Just click on the group (so it opens in a new tab) if you can’t remember what it is or if you want to remain a member. Click on the Leave Group if you no longer wish to be part of it.

I was surprised by the number of archived groups I had.

leave facebook group, making facebook easier

Friends

I do still need to go through my friends list. There are a number of people on my list that I simply don’t know well and never interact with, so I want to (hopefully) increase the posts I see of people I actually care about. I know I need to start just going and visiting them manually to help with this. But less friends increases the chance right?

And in the end, making facebook easier is the whole purpose. 🙂

This post is part of blogging through the alphabet, Letter M.

Others in this Series

Making A Privacy Policy

May 28, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

You know how everywhere you go lately you are being inundated with privacy policies and needing to renew commitments to newsletters and websites and what not? My topic today is…my privacy policy.

It is still a work in progress as I’ve been working my way through the requirements. I know that I need to talk about what cookies are, any type of cookies that might be found on my site, and how any information collected, is used and how any information given to me is kept private.

As I looked at making one I thought I could do the dry legalize language, or I could attempt to say the same thing, but within the way I would say it. Making it all legally sounding isn’t my forte and would have meant doing a lot of copying and pasting from other sites and I thought it would sound better written the way I would say it (at least at this point in my blogging life). If you do some googling you’ll find sample privacy policies to look to for advice, I suggest you do a lot of reading before you do so in order to gain the necessary coverage. If your email is anything like mine over the past couple of weeks you’ll have at least 50 links in them to just click and read. Many are very comprehensive and a few a short and sweet.

This is what I have come up with so far.

My Privacy Policy

Hi
Welcome.

I just want to take a moment to reassure you that I don’t share your personal information with anyone. I don’t. (frankly it’s because I have enough in my life keeping me busy that sharing your stuff with anyone doesn’t even make it to a list of priorities). AND BESIDES… I wouldn’t want someone doing that to me so why in the world would I do that to you? Would be rather rude… which I try not to be. God tells us to treat others as we want to be treated, and though I often fail at this, when I can plan for it, I do. Makes sense eh?

I wanted to talk to you a moment about the use of cookies on this website. A cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user’s computer by the user’s web browser while the user is browsing. They can be used to help you comment more easily on a website, or to say where you are coming from, as well as help you with filling in data and what not. Different sites use different types of cookies. I don’t use all the ones that are available as I don’t have need for them. I will talk about what does happen on my blog.

Third party places such as google analytics or statcounter also use cookies to record where in the world you come from and some pages that you might check out while visiting me, but they don’t store anything personal about you, all they do is analyze content performance. AND you can turn that off by modifying your Internet browser’s settings.

I am not responsible for the republishing of the content found on this blog on other Web sites or media without my permission. I try to be mindful but people are sometimes misguided and I can’t be held responsible for that.

I currently don’t have an email list, but should I ever get one, I won’t ask for more than your first name (give me a fake one if you want to) and an email address. It won’t be used for anything more than saying HEY I wrote some stuff this week, if interested, come check it out. 🙂 I’m not quite there yet, but at some point hope to be. AND if I ever get one I want to divide it into categories so any emails you get will be ones you want.

This privacy policy is subject to change without notice, particularly as I rewrite and fine tune it all.

If you have any questions, use my contact page. Thank you.

Cheers!

From what I understand I should have two ways for you to contact me, but at this point I don’t. Not sure what I’m going to do about that as somethings I’m not keen on making public so.. I dunno. I’m still thinking that aspect through. At this point I’m just a blogger/influencer and not a business with a business address and phone number, so pondering will continue for a bit.

Figuring Out Social Media

May 14, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

This isn’t going to be one of those posts where I have all the answers cause trust me… I don’t! I feel like I muddle my way through this area like a horse with blinders on. You might ask then, why do a post on social media?

Well.. because I’m trying to sort it out and talking it through here means I have to do some research and just maybe one of two (I hope) things will happen.

I’ll learn something that will be of value to me AND to my readers.
Someone might find my post who knows what piece I am missing and will chime in.

NOW.. wouldn’t both of those outcomes be wonderful!?!?!

What do I know?

I know that having a social media presence is important.
I know that a social media presence can drive business to your site. It can open new doors to people you hadn’t considered talking with before. It’s often a two way street.
I know that sometimes when people look at their social media that they are surprised as to where their business is coming from. They might think twitter and discover it’s pinterest.
I know that trying to master all forms of social media all at once is not recommended.

What don’t I know?

I know that some forms of social media get a bad rap but I don’t know why.
I don’t know if it is wise to have two different social media sized images in one post. BUT I don’t know how to work around the different size requirements for different types of social media. I wonder why they have to make them different. I don’t know how important it is to follow those different size recommendations.
I wonder how people make it work when their blog theme likes a certain type of post image, but social media calls for a different size.
I am not sure what it means when a social media guru says “optimize all your social media to work together”. Does that mean have your blog post go out on all of them at the same time OR does it mean to make sure they all have your blog address, button, style etc to all be the same across the board?
What does it mean to curate a blog post? Does it mean to “sell” a blog post?

What have I learned?

It’s important to understand your audience. This is one of the reasons why people will often fragment their blogging. Doing one thing on a certain blog and doing another thing on a separate blog and so forth. I used to do that until I became convinced that I needed to join my blogging together. Might not be best for social media, but makes it easier for me as I blog and makes me feel less fractured and more accountable. But really, if you understand your audience it means you can write posts that appeal to them, and your readers can then more easily refer other readers to you.

Watching your trends can be helpful. I know from listening to people and reading blog posts that some bloggers use one social media platform the most for the bulk of the year, but at certain times they have learned to focus on another platform. They learned to do this by watching the numbers of what was retweeted, or how people found their way to their site and such like.

Not to rush in. The encouragement is to take your time doing the background knowledge stuff before you leap into your social media posts. To do one type at a time until you learn the ropes of it well, and then move on to the next.

To make use of a social media helper.. like Buffer, Tailwind, Social Bee… just helps you to keep putting your posts and comments to increase your outreach without making you crazy in the end. Trying to do it all, all the time will make you feel frazzled. 🙂 Therefore the encouragement is to get help where you can find it.

Content for social media includes more than blog posts. I’m really learning a lot about this through Social Bee where they encourage me to add quotes, guest posts, interesting content I find, as well as blog posts. There is one field I am not sure what it is for called “Curated content” and I am really not sure what that is all about. Other content you might use are good images, videos, company news, infographics and interviews.

Conclusion

I know I have lots to learn yet, perhaps you might be a person who knows the answers! 🙂 If so, leave me a comment, help me learn more eh?

Alt tags on images, how to use

April 30, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

I have to admit that the alt tag in images is one of the most confusing things I’ve yet to learn about with blogging. I’ve heard and read so many things about them that it’s left me feeling a bit “GAH” about them with not really knowing what to do with them. Are you the same way?

Here’s what I have heard before I did any research.

It’s a great place to put your blog address.
It’s where you put what the name of your image is.
It’s for blind people so they can tell what the image is.
It’s where you put SEO labeling in for your images.
It’s where you fully describe your image.

This is what my research told me: what an the “alt tag” is. This is an abbreviation for what is an alt attribute (so like an alternative way of describing your image) on an image for blind readers. Screen readers use this to tell blind people what the image is about. This makes your images more accessible.

Some of what I’ve heard is obviously not correct based on what an alt tag on images is defined then is it? It’s not a place to stick your blog address, nor it is where you put your SEO labeling. It is a place to describe your image, but to do it accurately in order to help the sight impaired.

Yoast describes it this way. Each image should have an alt text. Not just for SEO purposes but also because blind and visually impaired people otherwise won’t know what the image is for. A title attribute is not required. It can be useful but in most cases, leaving it out shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Let’s say you have posted an image of a product you are hoping to sell. In the Alt tag you would say something like “product x is available for $19”.

If you are adding a picture like this one, you would want to use a specific alt tag of chocolate tort Holland lop

You do this by clicking on the edit button of your image (at least in WordPress you do)

You need to do this with every image on your post, at least that’s what the recommendation is. I have to admit, I’m still learning the best way to do this, especially with images that I’m using just to “pretty up” my post. But mostly I try to make images work for me.

One thing you don’t want to do (according to Google) is shove a bunch of SEO words in there. It looks spammy and could quite well get your site listed as spam if that’s what you do. This means no putting in words like “rabbit bunny rabbits bunnies Holland lop Holland lops tort torts tortoise” That just doesn’t look good and google doesn’t like it because it creates a bad user experience. Help people like your photos and google says “YAY” more easily to your whole post.

Recently with a post I included this image, for the alt image tag I used this “Using Sound to write better”. I honestly don’t know if that was the best way to describe it for the sight impaired. I want them to know what my image is being used for. But it’s not truly describing what my image is, more what the image represents to me. As you can see I still find this process a bit confusing. 🙂

But from what I can tell, doing something is better than doing nothing and it’s better to have some words in there that accurately describe what the picture is, or what the picture is about, than to have nothing in there at all. Help google use your photos, so people can better find your posts. Makes sense that eh?

Other hints

only tag images that are yours originally (so not a question mark tag you can find anywhere)
using the alt tag is part of optimizing your website
describe your image before you add your company name
limit to 145 characters due to limitations of sight readers.
use SEO rich language in your alt tag and titles in your title attribute spot.

I hope this post helped you make better sense of the alt tag for images. In the end, use the alt tag to help people find your site regardless of their seeing abilities. Just make it easier, that’s what they are there for.

Raventools did a good job of explaining alt tags as well. Good luck with optimizing your images and site!

The Value of a Media Kit

April 9, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

If you are a blogger I have this question to ask you. Now that you have your disclaimer written, how do you promote your blog? Are you blogging as a business? Do people know the value of contacting you? How will you answer people when they contact you wanting you to add a link to their blog on your site?

I know I’ve had this a lot over just this past week, and I had a friend asking me how to deal with such people. It brought to mind the need for a media kit. Of course, you may be asking yourself, like I did, when I first came across this term in relation to blogging. What is a media kit? And what is the value in having one?

What is a Media Kit?

A media kit is a document containing information about your business, product or event. You put them on your blog to give businesses a reason to pay you to promote their material (as long as it fits within your niche). It’s basically a customer orientation into who you are and what you are all about. Gives you a place to put your stats in, showcase your talents, and to give people a reason to contact you in a meaningful way. Blogger media kits also typically list prices for the services you offer and how people might collaborate with you. Here are some samples to help..

Why do you need one?

There are several reasons to have a media kit for your blog.

Shows you are serious about your blog.
A polished, well thought out, professional media kit can lead to better brand collaboration which means more money in your pocket. Also work that is more exciting.
It showcases that work that you do.
It gives you something that you can give to people who reach out to you for promotion. It makes you look more professional in your response.
Having a media kit gives you something to show businesses that you do want to work for.
It is something you can print off and take with you to conferences and get togethers.
You can have two different media kits…one that is longer and more comprehensive, and one that is basically a one page short form that touches on the basics.

How does one put one together?

Figure out what your blog is truly about. What do you really like to write about? How can you best describe yourself and your blog. A media kit is an chance for you to show off the best of your blog: your personality, your style, and what makes your blog unique. It’s a selling point, so sell yourself! 🙂

What do you need?

Images:

Oh, you do want to use your images well. Consider the need for the following.

A photo of yourself. A good one. Smile, make yourself look nice.
Your blog logo. Preferably one you can print (remember how you can use a short form one as something to pass out at conferences?)
Photos from your blog. Make them the best photos you have. Showcase your skills and abilities. Photos aer worth a thousand words!
If you have advertising space on your blog.. take a screen shot and show it!

Statistics

If you have been growing your blog, then you should be seeing an increase in your visitors. Use that.

Do you know how many unique visitors you have to your blog? How many monthly visitors?
How many page views over the past three months?
Where people come from who visit your site?
Subscribers to email and social media sites.

Now write it

You’ll need the best introduction you can come up with. Write a personal introduction that tells a bit about yourself. People love a good story, so tell them a good story about you. Give highlights of your career if you have highlights. 🙂 Where your work has been featured. Anything you can do to promote yourself and the good things you have done.

Promote your blog. What do you write about? Do you have specific things you talk about on a given day? A pattern of information that can draw people in? It’s okay to have a blog that covers different aspects/themes, but talk about them. Talk about the readers who come visit you. It helps business know how you can help them and who you can reach on their behalf.

When you have this important stuff present your stats. Showcase your reach as best you can. Make sure you keep these stats current. Statistics from year ago won’t help you, statistics from the past three months will. If you don’t have impressive numbers, show the growth you have gained.

Outline your policies. What are your rates? If you give ad space, what will you charge? If you write a blog post what’s the fee? What if they write the post, is the fee different? Do you have the right to refuse a post? How will they pay you? When are fees due? What word count will you provide?

Testimonials go a long way in helping you promote yourself. If you go here you can find out how to get them. I know, I know… that might totally intimidate you…but go, find them. 🙂

Don’t forget to add your contact information. Use a real email service (not a gmail, yahoo, or Hotmail account).

Are there free helps?

Of course there are! 🙂 Isn’t it wonderful how helpful the online community is? Simply FANTASTIC!

Canva has some templates you can use.

There’s a whack of them on Pinterest.

Beautiful Dawn.

Creative Market has 20 templates.

Dana Nicole Designs.

Find one you like and work with you. Make a long form that has everything you need on it that you can encourage companies to send for. Have a shorter one you can use as a calling card for business you want to work with. Do whatever you can to make your efforts on your blog to pay off.

I even put together a checklist for you to help you remember the details. Click image below.

Adding Plugins to WordPress

March 26, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

We’ve talked about some different blog concerns one needs to take care of when blogging. Things like writing a disclaimer and being careful about copyright. But you know what? If you don’t have a functioning site none of that matters! With wordpress sites I’ve learned you need to use something called “plugins”. Plugins are what make a wordpress site safe (from spam) and functional (like being able to put youtube videos easily).

I am SO not a technologically savvy person that I was left feeling VERY stumped by this. I actually was causing me a lot of stress trying to sort it out. I talked about I thought I would share the advice that Kim Mills shared with me, along with some pictures (and if I can find some) videos on how to install them.

What advice did I receive?

Kim’s advice was three-fold

Get what you need. If you want something you can probably find a plug-in that will do it.
Don’t get more than you need. Too many plug-ins will slow down your site.
Only get things with good reviews that are kept up-to-date.

Then she very helpfully got me on with Akismet anti-spam, Yoast, and Updraft and a few others. I was so blessed by her help. 🙂

There are so many things to consider when you have a wordpress site that you don’t have to think about with other blog platforms. I am POSITIVE I haven’t even scratched the surface. Which of course brings me to the question of just how does one install a plug-in?

How to Install a Plugin

First you need to search out what you are looking for:

When you find one that you like, check out it’s details.

Make sure you check out when it was last updated. I know from personal experience most plugins are updated at least once a month, and also after wordpress does any update. Check out what other people think of the plugin and dont accept any that have more negative reviews than positive.

Be aware of any warnings that might pop up.

I had thought about downloading this one based on the recommendations from others, but the warnings and lack of updating steered me away. I still haven’t found one that I like. Any suggestions?

Anyways, install your plugin, don’t forget to activate it! Kim suggested trying things out on a child site (but I have really NO CLUE what she is talking about) because apparently some plugins don’t play well with each other and if you try it out on a child site then you don’t mess up your working site. But I have no idea how to go about setting something like that up. Something to research eh?

I hope you found this helpful, it was good to remind myself of what steps to take with plugins. 🙂

I found this video that you might find helpful.

Blogging Helps

Reflection is not a bad thing

Reflection is a bad thing