Sunday, September 19, 2010

Learning As I Go On 'Blogger'




About 9 months ago, I discovered the world of Giveaways, Reviews and Social Networking.  I already had a blog that I did just for fun among friends and family and so when I found out how you can integrate a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Stumble, Technorati, Digg and any number of the blogging communities into one great social engine, I was definitely hooked.  I do believe it changed my life trajectory somewhat!
The thing is, I really didn't use a blog mentor or a coach. I just started from scratch and learned and am learning as I go, probably making horrible, glaring, stupid mistakes, but loving it nonetheless.  A couple of things I learned JUST this week are:
  • Blogger has Stats that you can look at to see how your blog is doing!. You can get where traffic is coming from, how many page views per hour, day, week, month, etc., what kinds of searches are being done to land someone on your page, etc.  That is so cool.  I knew that you could go to outside sources to get that info but it's so much easier to get it from your own blog source. I'm not sure if I just didn't notice this before or if it's a new feature.  But I like!  Just click on Stats and you will see everything I did!
    • I just learned how to disable comments on a certain post.  Say, if I'm done with a giveaway, I can disable more comments from coming in.  (Not sure if I'll use it for that purpose, but very useful to know because you never know when you might need that feature!)  Just go to EDIT POST, click POST OPTIONS, click DON'T ALLOW, SHOW EXISTING! Easy!
    • I learned about a great tool for bloggers called screen capture software!  It allows you to capture anything you see on your screen window including windows, menus, full screen, rectangular regions, web pages and even shots of moving images!  Maybe now I can actually capture that tricky Random.org window to show winners of my giveaways!
    So another week is upon me and there are surely more things to learn as I make my way through this blog realm, which is surely every bit as captivating and interesting as anything Alice found in Wonderland!  One of these days I will look up how to create my own siggy!  Until then!

     Hugs,
    Helena

    8 comments:

    ~Dawn~ said...

    New follower. Great tips for new bloggers. Thanks for sharing.

    Dawn
    http://www.mom-a-logues.blogspot.com

    Julie Kieras said...

    Following you back from Sunday Strolling http://www.ayearwithmomanddad.com

    Just wondering - when you turn OFF comments after a giveaway - does it just turn off comments for a particular post or all posts?

    Ruth said...

    Thanks for the tips! I am currently downloading the screen capture tool as we speak. And I wondered about how to close posts. I tried to do that before and couldn't figure it out.

    And I'm your new follower from Sunday Strolling. If you're interested, here's my blog:
    http://mydevotionalthoughts.blogspot.com/

    Anonymous said...

    I should digg your post therefore other folks are able to look at it, very helpful, I had a hard time finding the results searching on the web, thanks.

    - Norman

    Unknown said...

    you make me so happy! i feel like the biggest dweeb on the block trying to figure this stuff out. actually plan on blogging about the whole stay at home mom fell off the tech wagon thing today =)

    it's hard but i keep plugging away at making my blog look nicer! good luck to you, too!

    Melissa G said...

    Awesome! I just learned all this from YOU! =) Thanks for sharing the knowledge!

    Mehnaz Kapadia said...

    Simple but informative post! I leanrt about the comment disabling thing right now from you! i used to think how they do it though i dont think i would ever need to do that! But having knowledge about everything is better than being ignorant! :) Thanks!

    Sarah said...

    You can also press the Prt Scrn (Print Screen) button on your computer if you have a PC. Then open up Microsoft Word and press paste. The screenshot will come up in your page. Then save it as a web page and the pic will save as a png and jpeg (I think). You can use webresizer.com to crop and fix your pics for free. You can't get as detailed as with editing software, but it works for a quick fix. Good luck!