Back to School, Back to Blogging Kickoff & Pre-Work!

by kludgymom on September 3, 2010

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. And be sure to register for our fall blog challenge, Back to School, Back to Blogging. Thanks for visiting!

Welcome to Back to School, Back to Blogging!

 

Hopefully you have all of your school supplies. Did you get a new Trapper Keeper? Some of you probably don’t know what a Trapper Keeper is, and that means I’m old enough to be your mom. Damn.

I am SO excited with the turnout for this event. I hope you all have some fun and improve your blog in the process. It’s not too late for people to join, so encourage your bloggy friends to sign up!

Anyway, this is our kickoff post that contains info on how we’ll get started, and what you’ll need to have done by September 12.

Overview of the Course:  this is a 6-week minicourse. Each week we will cover a different topic. If you don’t want to participate in one week, no worries. Each week is pretty self-contained, but all follow the same model:

Read:  Reading will be posted on Sunday. Finish it by Wednesday. Some reading will have suggestions and tips for your blog. You can pick and choose which tips you want to utilize (and when), and which you don’t. Totally flexible, totally optional.

Write:  The writing task is loosely based on the reading. Some will be simple, like the first week’s. Others might be more challenging or just plain fun. Post your writing task by Thursday of the week. If you don’t want to do the writing task, don’t do it. You won’t go to detention. But you may not get as many visits from other participants.

Share: On Thursday and Friday, we’ll be sharing our writing, learnings, and tips together in my BlogFrog community, on Twitter, etc. You can learn the most about blogging from other bloggers, so this is where I hope you’ll get the most benefit.  Don’t be afraid to get out there and interact!

Pre-Work

This will really be pretty easy! Many of you will already have these done:

1. Join my BlogFrog. As mentioned, we’ll be sharing a lot of information via BlogFrog, so you’ll want to join mine before we get started.

2. Follow me on Twitter.

3. Subscribe to my RSS feed. All of the course material will be posted here on KludgyMom, so you’ll want to make sure you stay on top of every update.

3. Have a ReTweet or Twitter Share button loaded onto your blog. You should have a button on your blog for people to retweet or share your blog posts.The most commonly used one is Tweet MeMe (you can also use Topsy). If you have techno-fear, don’t worry!  I will give you resources and tutorials on how to install one of these buttons on your site. See the bottom of this post.  If you run the tutorials and still have problems, post questions in my BlogFrog!

4. Create a StumbleUpon Account. StumbleUpon is another great way to get additional traffic to your site. But, you need to create an account (make sure you put your blog URL in there!), and ideally download and install the StumbleUpon toolbar onto your browser of choice.

5. Create a Facebook fan page for your blog. We’re not doing much with Facebook, but while you’re at it, create a fan page for your blog there. It helps keep your personal FB account separate from your blogging, too. Just do a quick and dirty one is great to start. People from this challenge may want to “fan” you. See my tutorial and resources page if you need help.

That’s it! In Week 1, we’ll be talking about how to do housekeeping on your blog and finding enhancements to make your site perform better. There’ll be a great guest post as well! 

If you need help on Retweet buttons,  Facebook “Like” buttons or other questions, go to the Twitter & FB Resources Post for extra help! See you on September 12!

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Resources and Tutorials for Adding Twitter and Facebook Like Buttons To Your Blog

If you’re here from the B2S/B2B Prework Post, great! This is your list of tutorials and resources to help you add retweet buttons, or Facebook “Like” buttons to your blog.  I’ve organized it by blog platform type: Blogger, WordPress.com (free WordPress) and WordPress.org (self-hosted).

If you just stumbled upon this post, hi. We’re right in the middle of gearing up for a 6 week minicourse on blog improvement called Back To School, Back To Blogging. You’re welcome to join us. It’s free, easy and low-pressure. You can go here for more information on it and learn how to register. We begin the course on September 12!

To all Twitterphobes: if you want a beginner’s guide to Twitter to use throughout the challenge, get a download copy of my free e-book, Getting Over Your Fears…of Twitter.

Blogger Users:

To install the TweetMeme button on your site,  Anshul Dudeja wrote this great tutorial called How To Add ReTweet Buttons to Your Blogger Posts . Or, Solid Blogger has a nice step-by-step walkthrough as well, entitled How To Add Twitter (Retweet) Button To Every Blogger Post.

If you want to add a Facebook “like” button to your blog, bloggerplugins.org has a great tutorial called Adding a Facebook Like/Recommend Button for Blogger.

Finally, a handy tool for being able to Tweet other people’s posts even if THEY don’t have a retweet button on their site. Grab the Twitter Share Bookmarklet.

WordPress.com Users:

To install the TweetMeme button, go here to download a special plugin created for WordPress.com users. And here’s more info about the plugin from its creator, Scott.

For a Facebook “like” button added to your posts, check out Get Social’s Social Bookmarks.

For WordPress.org Self-Hosted Users:

To install TweetMeme, use this TweetMeme plugin. Install like a normal plugin. Very easy!

For a Facebook “like” button on your posts, use either: Facebook “Like” Plugin  or Facebook “Like Button” plugin. 

Ever want to retweet someone’s post who doesn’t have a retweet button? Install this Twitter bookmarklet.

All users: You may hear about Twitter having launched its own “official” Twitter Retweet button a week or two ago. After reading up on this new button, I’m on the fence whether it’s the best solution for you to have your posts retweeted right now. There may still be some problems with it.  Until it’s more of a proven technology, I think I’d still recommend either using TweetMeme or Topsy as your retweet button.  I’ve not included Topsy as part of this tutorial for the purposes of keeping this simple, but you are welcome to look into it.

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