social media

Adjusting

September 7, 2012 by Lisa 1 Comment

I’ve been playing around with some of the features on my blog so you’re likely to notice a few things changing.

My Side Bar: I have moved my side bar content to the bottom of the blog. I have been debating on doing this for quite a while, because I like to think people who visit my blog might click on something and stay on my blog for a while. I got to the point where I didn’t feel too comfortable with myself about this. This might be just a test for a few weeks and I might end up redoing everything again, but for now that’s where all the extras are (down below).

My Photography: I wanted to be able to post larger pictures in my posts. Photography is a hobby (and a business) for me and when I read my blog I like to see the photos larger.

My Content: One draw back I have with using a full size blog is the length of each line in the content. I like blog articles to be close in on the sides, like a magazine article. It helps me read faster. But we’ll see how this works for a while.

My Footers: I’m still playing around with the footer of each blog post. I don’t want it inundated with ads (I don’t take paid ads, by the way). The ‘ads’ I have on my blog are of other networks I truly enjoy. There’s no “deal” going on between me and them.

My Marketing: I also notice in my stats that some peeps are pinning some of my articles (thank you kindly). I hesitate with Pinterest for two reasons, when people don’t give proper credit and when my photos end up being used off of Pinterest’s site (through their code which doesn’t go back to where my photos are hosted, my Pix-O-Sphere profile). So I’ve had to think long about this. For now, I am adding the Pinterest button so you can pin my posts. I’m also going to get creative with putting the link to my photo profile in each blog post to make up for that.

My Gift to you: For those who would like to use my pictures in their blog posts, you can do so for free by joining Pix-O-Sphere. You’ll have access to all my photos and have free hosting for them. Even if I were to delete a photo from my account, if you have copied it over to your Pix-O-Sphere account, it will not disappear on you.

Sometimes we go to a friends blog and there are so many changes going on that we feel lost. All of a sudden things aren’t where they’re normally at and I wouldn’t want you to feel that way here. I think these few changes are subtle enough that we can all adjust and I’m assuming most people look at the bottom of a blog when they notice the side bars are gone. I’m also currently working on another category a little at a time and once I have a few more posts in it, I’ll be adding it to the nav bar up top. Other than this, you won’t see anything drastic and we can move right along quite smoothly.

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Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: blogging, Pinterest, social media, updates

Managing my Twitter Community

September 6, 2012 by Lisa 1 Comment

Lots of bloggers have their favorite ways of managing their Twitter streams, so my method may not work for everyone. You can spend an ungodly amount of time on Twitter if you’re not careful. Even I got sucked into the black hole of Twitter and had to re-prioritize to make myself a more purposeful blogger. I have tried different ways of coordinating my Twitter time into manageable pockets of my schedule and so far, this is what works for me. However, I try to stay as flexible as possible to adjust as needed. If you’re not flexible then you might find yourself giving up, because the Internet continually grows and changes.

When I’m in Twitter I put people into lists. This is one of the best ways for me to manage my time in the twitterverse. I have various different ways in which I list people and some of them get listed in more than one list.

Once I have them in lists, I log into Hootsuite. In Hootsuite, I can view more lists all at once instead of one list at a time. I can also have several tabs too, but in the image below I omitted the names of the tabs for privacy’s sake. All that tabs can be moved into your preferred order. View this video to find out how to import your Twitter lists into Hootsuite.

You can see in the image below, that I can observe a vast grouping of people at a glance.

Creating Twitter Lists:

I create different lists, but might list one person more than once. For ex; if they are a blogger, homeschooler, and photographer; they would get on three lists.
Some lists I LOCK to keep private. Only I can see them.
I can follow lists made by other people. Go to their profile and look for their lists. In there, you can ‘follow list’.

Options:

When I hover my cursor over a tweet, a window opens to show me my options. I can..

reply
retweet
direct message (DM)
reply all
email the tweet to myself
or reply all (if there are more people in the conversation)

Schedule ReTweets:

A little pet peeve I have is when my stream looks like I was on for one pocket of time during the day. So if I am retweeting something, I like to schedule it to publish later. I don’t want all my retweets to appear at once, it makes it look like I’m attacking my followers with a machine gun.

Schedule Tweets:

I also like to schedule my tweets at intervals throughout the day. I do this because people are not always sitting on Twitter at the same time every day. So I like to have my posts go out at different times. A few tips for that are:

Re-word the text when sending out the same link.
Use the link shortener (Add a link window) to give you more character space in your tweet.
Don’t hesitate sending out popular posts from your archives
Use the scheduler to send out links to conversations from your Facebook pages.

In addition to these simple steps, I use the Twitter app on my phone to reply to those who have replied, retweeted, or send me direct messages (without having to be at my desk).

Use Hashtags:

Using hashtags is how you can get your tweet to appear in streams that people follow.
Be sure the hashtag is appropriate for that audience (ex; don’t use a #photo hashtag if you’re not using your own photos)

Homeschool Community Hashtags:

#hsbloggers
#homeschool
#EdChat
#eLearning
#MathChat
#Science
#Grammar
#preschool

List of 70 Super Useful Homeschool hashtags

Christian Hashtags:

#Christian
#faith
#grace
#church
#Jesus
#worship

Photography Hashtags:

#photos
#photography
#photogs
#photochat

You can add hashtags to the tweets you want to retweet. If you find a tweet useful for a hashtag group you collaborate with, add their hashtag. For ex; sometimes I find interesting things on National Geo’s stream that #HSbloggers might be interested in for #Science class. When I retweet, I add the coordinating hashtag.

The reason why I do all of this is because I want people in the twitterverse to find value in my tweets. The more value they place on my tweets, the more they are allowing me to influence them. I want to be an influencer because I find value in what I have to say and I aim to produce tweets that have value. I believe in lifting people up. The more people who follow my stream, the better chance I have at getting on their lists.

Does all this really work? Is it even necessary?

I believe so! When I am faithful at using the scheduler on Hootsuite, the more traffic that comes to my blog. But to spend all this time driving traffic to my blog would be pointless if I don’t have good content. Since I don’t have a lot of time to write every day on my blog (and I honestly don’t want to because there is a life out there to live), then I make sure to put my ALL into the few articles I do post each week.

Keep in mind though, I’m driving traffic to my blog so I can connect with PEOPLE, not with advertisers or for a cash flow. So that’s my Twitter time in a nutshell. I hope you’ll follow me on Twitter and add me to one (or more) of your lists.

How do you manage your Twitter time?

Got any tips to share?

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Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Hootsuite, how to manage Twitter, social media, Twitter, Twitter lists

Tips for the Purposeful Blogger

August 30, 2012 by Lisa 4 Comments

This week has been interesting in the social media sphere as I tried to play catch up with blogs and Twitter after a 5 month hiatus to get settled in from our move. I have been easing my way back into blogging and thought I’d dip into the Twitterverse to get reacquainted with the tweeps and boy, do I ever have something to say!

It’s amazing what you notice after taking a break. I don’t want to lay this all out as if it’s the tweeple’s faults, because it could just very well be that I’m following too many of the same kind of tweeple. Thus my twitter stream looks like a massive informercial filled with gimmicks and promises of the best products, services, and even religion if I’ll just *click here*.

Somewhere, somehow, some bigger entity out there has found a way to coordinate all these people into one rather large unending commercial. So I have been looking through some of these folks’ profiles to see what their stream looks like as a whole, because it could be that all these people tweet out advertisements at the same time I happen to be on.

Nope. I’m seeing tons of twitter streams filled with cyber commercials and it makes me wonder if these people ever blog for enjoyment anymore.

Clickity click.

I must go see these blogs and investigate what’s going on.

Floating ads coming from the right, left and even from under my keyboard?!?

Ladies, we want to read your blogs, not be subscribed to your advertisers.

Can these floating ads come up into the side bar instead of over the content?

My time is precious and when I want to read something to inspire me or just to get connected with another mom blogger, the last thing I want to deal with is chasing down the eensy teensy tiny “x” to eliminate that dang ad from my view and accidentally clicking on the ad; thus getting redirected to another website that has even more ads.

ugh!

Sometimes it feels like Alice with a stack of cards falling down all around me.

I want to be honest, kind, and yet humorous at the same time here, because humor always helps us to take medicine a bit easier.

But gals, we need to be better stewards of our time and attention.

{ What are we filling our heads with?}

We don’t have to be bogged down with all this fluff. Endless advertisements makes our heads, hearts, and nerves race like crazy making us feel like; we don’t have the ‘right’ product, we’ll “miss” our chance to get in on something early, and it raises our anxiety level. In a world where we’re constantly told we aren’t good enough: we just can’t afford to get sucked into cyber bondage.

I’m going to be diligent in being a purposeful blogger. I need to make some changes in order to make my online time more beneficial. Maybe these tips will prove helpful to you as well.

Stop following brands: I’ve seen enough advertisements to last me a lifetime and these brands really aren’t paying any attention to me anyway. This will eliminate over 100 advertisements from my stream! Note: Twitter limits how many people you can unfollow in one day, so this will take me some time.
Stop following bloggers I don’t really have much in common with: This will take some time as well. I want my Twitter time to be condensed into the bloggers that *I* want to have influence me.
Use Twitter Lists: I can condense the bloggers I’ll choose to keep, by placing them in lists. I won’t be able to view every list ever day, but it will help immensely.
Klout: I can take it or leave it, honestly. I know who has ‘klout’ in MY book so why do I bother letting an algorithm dictate to me who I should follow? I’ll keep it for now, because it’s interesting, but I’m no longer going to be addicted to checking it regularly.
Block Spammers: sadly, some of our own blogging circles are spammers. I can’t tell you how many times these women spam me with DM propaganda. Please refrain from DMing me unless you really want to talk to me.
Unsubscribe from blogs: I used to subscribe to my ‘friends’ blogs to help them get their subscriptions up. No longer! I am unsubscribing from ~~many~~ most of them. This doesn’t mean I’m not supportive or loving toward them, I just need to be smarter with my online time. Other than that, my inbox is cluttered and I spend far too much time deleting mass amounts of them. Sorry ladies, I just can’t keep up.

These are the main steps I’m going to do for me to make better use of my online time.

I feel so free and empowered!

I’ll be sharing another article to go over the steps I’m taking to get my online time more organized; including why and who I diligently follow. I addition to that, I’ll be informing you how you can get in on a little something special I have in the works.

Until then have a great weekend! Unplug and go enjoy life. I’m going to!