Some Good Newbie Resources

[Michele Martin]

I'm starting this discussion thread for us to share resources that might be particularly helpful to blogging newbies. Please feel free to add your own.

Beginner's Blog Guide, including 5 Days to Starting a Blog from Sue Waters

Intermediate Blogging Guide with structured activities for moving your blog to the next level, also from Sue Waters.

[Dottie May]

Newbie here... I'll be checking out these resources. I started blogging this year and do okay with it, but sometimes I get hung up by some things.

[Michele Martin]

Great! Let me know if you have any problems or questions about anything and I'll try to help or we'll get someone who can.

[Nancy Riffer]

Top 10 tips for effective blog reading

These have been helpful to me as I learn to read RSS feeds.

[Nancy Riffer]

Here's an excellent short video on social bookmarking.

CommonCraft also has videos on RSS, Wikis, and social networking.

I found these clear and right at my beginner's level.

[Justine Mize]

I am working through the Beginner's Blog Guide. Because of it I have discovered co.mments.com. I am so excited about it. I have been trying to comment on other blogs but I have a very difficult time keeping track of it all.

[Colleen Sheridan]

I just started blogging last month and my blog is MySqaureFeet . I selected TypePad as my blogging platform. I found it really difficult for a newbie.. and it took a lot of research to get it looking halfway decent. (or at least I think it is half-way decent now). In the process of learing how to blog, I purchased Blogging for Dummies... which had some useful information on the basics so at least I could understand the terms. Surprisingly, I found a posting on YouTube where Chris Andersen posted a very, very long and detailed PowerPoint presentation on setting up a blog on TypePad. It was very helpful for me because it was platform specific. I will also checking out the resources you listed.

[Michele Martin]

Hi Colleen--welcome to the blogosphere! I'd love to hear more about your experiences with blogging and Typepad and what you found to be difficult--was it that the software didn't seem user-friendly enough? Was it just getting around the concepts of blogging, like handling posting, tags, comments, etc.? I'm trying to work on helping people make the transition into blogging, so I'm very curious about "newbie" experiences.

Also--if you could share the YouTube video that you found, that would be awesome. You can put it in the video section or just leave a link here and I'm happy to put it in for you. I think that could be very helpful to everyone.

So glad to have you join in--let me know if you have any questions or need any help. I'm a Typepad user too, so I might be able to answer some questions.

[Colleen Sheridan]

Hi Michele,

Thanks for the fast response! You asked about my experiences as a newbie. Well, I understood the basic concept of blogging, and I thought I would have a topic that would have a following - commercial real estate. I am doing it primarily for business resaons. I run a commercial real estate web based listing service, and I thought a blog would help drive traffic to the site, and would be a good educational resource for commercial real estate brokers and small business owners who need some help navigating the complex world of commercial real estate. My SIte is www.MySquareFeet.com and my blog is http://blog.mysquarefeet.com.

I had started out on eBlogger, which is free, but quickly abandoned that because my blog there was generating a lot of spam comments. And I had some technical problems getting the name I wanted (I actually think I have it, but I could never get back to it) so I moved on and signed up with TypePad. I heard it was the platform Marth Stewart used, so I figured, she is such a taskmaster that it must have the utilites needed to run a good blog.

First, I had a hard time finding their tutorial for beginners. When I finally found it, it covered the absolute basics, but once I ran into a problem, it was torture finding the answer. My first problem was I didn't understand the difference between pages and posts. To further complicate the problem, the WYSIWYG on the posts was turned off, but it was turned on on pages, so I falsely assumed that I should be adding pages not posts, only to realize they did not show up on the blog, so I knew it needed to be posts, not pages. Without the WYSIWYG, adding content was torture. I followed all their instructions.. typed it in word, moved it to notepad, stripped all the formatting, saved as a text doc, then pasted into the post and ARRGGH it looked awful. I did this about 10 times. I looked everywhere on their knowledge base to find the answer, but found nothing useful. I sent them an email to support, but got no answer. In frustration, I Googled "TypePad Sucks". LOL, there were many entries, but one seem useful, it was a link to a tutorial on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGPDh3s5iDg">

It was very long, but it took me step by step through the process and I found out that there was a little link at the bottom of the text entry box to turn the WYSIWYG on. I had spent hours and hours trying to add a properly formatted post, only to find that with the click of this little link, I could do it easily. Ouch!

I upgraded the TypePad service from basic to Pro, then I had my website programmer change it so I did not have to have the .typepad address in my blog address. I decided that I was not going to tackle that myself, because if I screwed it up, I migh blow up my site.

Now I would like to create my own template, add my logo, and format better, so it is professional looking. After the launch of my latest entry, I sent an email to our mailing list using www.icontact.com. I was amazed at how many click-throughs we got fot the blog. It was more than double what we get for our general email newsletters. So, my conclusion is that blogging is worth the effort... but for a newbie, it took a LOT of effort.

After I clean up the look, I want to tackle page ranking. I know that SEO is a world unto itself, but I am up for the challenge...with a little help from friends!

[Michele Martin]

Wow, Colleen--that's quite a saga! I can see where you'd be confused! I found Typepad Hacks to be helpful in figuring out how to do a bunch of things, although at times it could be pretty technical. If you need help with getting your logo, up etc., I can offer some help, although if you start digging into CSS, I'd say that you need more of a professional. :-) Thanks for the tip on icontact, too. I'll have to check that one out.

[Michele Martin]

Also--I think your blog is looking good!

[Josh Pimental]

i've found orble.com to be very helpful with getting traffic to your blog and hosting...