Tag Archives: better blogging

Poll: How Did You Find Capt Jills Journeys?

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I’m still working my way through the Blogging 201 challenge. This is my attempt to complete the assignment for Day 12 (create a poll/survey to gather feedback from your readers on your site and its content).

The Blogging 201 challenge actually ended a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to finish it anyway. I’m hopeful that by following through I will continue to learn how to make my blog better.

I hope that will help me grow my audience.

So, here’s a poll. Please feel free to add anything you’d like to say in the comment section below (as always!). I’m interested to know how people found my blog (and also what they like about it).

Thanks!

Blogging 201: Day Eleven- Buddy Up

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Late to start. Late to finish. That’s just typical for me. 🙁

I started the Blogging 201 challenge a couple of weeks late. Too late to really get into the whole community aspect of it. IMHO, that is the best part of it. Interacting with all the other bloggers working on the same challenge and all their different takes on it.

Since I was so far behind, everyone was working on totally different things than I was. I just kept an eye on what they were doing and tried to catch up.

The challenge ended a couple of weeks ago, but I hate to quit anything I’ve started. So, here I am again, plugging on with the Blogging 201 challenge.

The assignment for Day 11 was (is) to “find a blog buddy”.

I did read the assignment only a few days late. 😉 I’ve been thinking about it since (in the back of my mind). I haven’t yet come up with anybody specific to ask to ‘be my buddy’. 🙁

I wonder if it would be better to try and buddy with someone with similar interests (offshore, maritime, travel, politics, nature, sailing, boats, philosophy, liberty, food & drinks, music, books), or someone with interests that I really don’t post about much here (fashion, beauty, celebrities, family, kids, relationships, sports).

I think for now, I’ll still just keep this idea in the back of my mind. I really haven’t had the time to work on this blog as much as I would like to lately. I’d hate to have someone else depending on my being able to keep to a writing schedule right now. 🙁

At some point in the future, I’d like to try to use the guest blogging idea. I think either way (like/unlike my blog) would work to try a different audience.

Has anybody else been participating in the Blogging 201 challenge? Did you complete the assignment for Day 11? How did it go?

Does anybody want to be my buddy?

Blogging 201: Day 9-10

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Yes, I am still trying to finish the Blogging 201 Challenge! I’ve been traveling in Korea and so busy. I don’t want to spend all my time inside on the computer when there are so many interesting things to see and do going on outside my hotel room!

So, I know I’m late but I’m still trying to complete the challenge. The one for Day 9 was “to create a page or section on your blog to display links to your online presence elsewhere, and make sure your other presences reflect the brand you’re developing on your blog.” 

I’ve been thinking about this challenge for the last couple of days. I don’t really think I want to make a special page for that. At least not right now. I already have links to my Facebook page, About.me page, Twitter feed, and Flickr pictures on my home page.

I am online in a few of other places like Pinterest, Tumblr, Oilpro, Linkedin, Gcaptain, and probably a few others I can’t remember right now. That might tell you one reason why I don’t really see the need to make a special page for them here right now. I really haven’t done much with some of these yet (plus I get a bit scattered sometimes). 😉

I’ve barely started with Pinterest. I only check into Tumblr- (islandgirl37- I can’t get a link to work)- every once in a blue moon, tho I do notice my posts here are automatically posted there (which is nice).

I rarely comment on Oilpro, tho I do like a lot of their content. A lot of it is outside my area of interest.

I love Gcaptain and I comment on there fairly often (as JP), tho not as much as I used to. They have a lot of really great back and forth conversations between real mariners (like me) on there in the forum section. Lately, I’ve been following the discussion on the Korean ferry disaster tho I haven’t been commenting.

I’m probably on Linkedin more than a lot of other places. There’s such a wide variety of groups on there. It’s too bad they limit you to only joining 50! I read and comment on a lot of different groups. I thought about linking my blog to it, but I’m still a little leery about doing that since it is really more for business. I’m trying to keep my posting there more professional. 😉

I think the main thing I can take away from the challenge for Day 9 is to go back and make sure I put a link to my blog into each of my profiles on these other sites. 🙂

OK, so I’ve got Day 9 pretty much in the bag. The assignment for Day 10 is to “invest in your community by leaving five comments, adding (or updating) a blogroll, and introducing a comment policy.”

I’ve been leaving comments all along, I enjoy interacting with other people on the things they’re doing that interest me. I’ve never really been one to keep my opinions to myself. 😉

I already have a blogroll and it updates itself according to who I’m visiting (“more good stuff” in the sidebar). I also have a list on the bottom of my home page, but I haven’t really had time to update it recently so I’m sure it’s missing a lot. I was trying to include links that I’ve written about in posts. To have them all in one convenient place, but I got out of the habit of updating that list and so I know it’s going to take some work to catch up on.

I don’t have a formal comment policy (yet) and don’t really see the need to add one at this point. I do believe in free speech and hopefully won’t come up with any reasons to throw somebody out of here. 😉

I suppose eventually somebody might come up with something that pisses me off enough to get rid of them (online), but so far no one has come close. 🙂

So, I guess I’ll just wait and see on adding the ‘comment policy’. Hope ya’ll don’t take this as license to start giving me shit now! 😉

Blogging 201: Day Eight- Create a Social Schedule

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I am working on the assignment for Day Eight in the Blogging 201 challenge. The task is to “create a 30 day plan for how you’ll grow your presence (and your blog)” on Facebook, which is the social network I chose in the Day Seven assignment.

I’m not really sure of any “plan” yet. I just read over and followed the directions on todays assignment post (here) and created another Facebook page. I thought I already had a Facebook page that was for my blog. I wondered why it never had anything show up on it.

Turns out I didn’t really set it up correctly. I remember it being a major pain in the ass when I was trying to get it started. Now that I can just follow the directions, setting up the page was pretty simple. Its there now and seems to be working so far.

I haven’t yet posted anything to it directly from my blog. This post will be my first test. 🙂

Now for the hard part. The PLAN.

OK, I plan to ‘publicize’ all of my posts. I already do that! Now, I just need to see if they actually show up on my new Facebook blog page. They have (mostly) been showing up on my personal page (except sometimes they don’t. I think I figured out they won’t if I do a ‘gallery’ post).

I used to get quite a few referalls to my blog from my Facebook page, but I haven’t for the last couple of months. I can’t figure out what’s up with that. I hope this new page will correct that situation.

What else for the PLAN? I’ll stick to the goals I made during Day Ones assignment. And, of course, I’ll continue to do what I’m already doing on Facebook. Sharing all the interesting stuff I see that I think other people would be interested in (and generally pissing people off). 😉

I just learned something when I checked the ‘publicize settings’. It will only allow me to post to ONE Facebook page at a time. I guess thats why nothing shows up on my other page I created for this blog! So now what? Do I need to post it once on my blog page and again on my personal page? If I do that will it post twice on my other networks (Twitter, Tumblr, etc)?

I can’t really think of anything else to do with it. Does anybody else have any suggestions?

 

Blogging 201: Day 6- Drive Traffic to Your Archives

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The assignment for Day Six of the Blogging 201 challenge is to drive traffic to your archives. They suggest a couple of ways of doing that.

1. Use links. I’ve already been doing that for quite a while. I could probably use more of them, but I get involved with what I’m posting sometimes and forget.

2. Widgets. They suggest using the “Top Posts and Pages Widget, Categories Widget, and Archives Widget”. I already have the Categories and Archive widgets. I also have the “Recent Posts Widget”. Maybe I should trade that one in for the “Top Posts and Pages Widget”? It does seem sort of redundant since it just shows the same posts you can see on my home page. Any comments on that idea?

3. Activate the “Related Posts feature”. I had already done that and liked it. I learned from reading the assignment today that you can change the way this feature looks on your blog. I changed mine today to show more than just the post title. So far I like what I’m seeing. Any comments on the change?

4. Compile a “Best Of Page”. I’ll have to think about this for a bit. I think the Top Posts and Pages Widget would serve the same purpose. Is the idea that more people would look at a separate PAGE than the Widget? I’m not sure how many people look at the widgets I have or even if there’s a way to track that. I know the page views are tracked, so that’s something. 🙂

All in all another helpful assignment from the bloggers at the Blogging University. I’m glad I signed up! 🙂

 

Blogging 201: Day 5- Give 'Em What They Want

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The assignment for Day 5 in the Blogging 201 challenge is to take a look at your blog statistics and see what they can tell you about how to better manage your blog.

I’m already a stats junkie. I check my stats page every day. I love to see lots of visitors and views. I really like to see where people are visiting from. I think it’s interesting to see people from all over the world looking at my blog and I wonder what brought them to my blog?

From looking at my stats, it seems like I must have a lot of people who like to drink! My most popular posts of all time (other than the home page and about page) are the ones on making your own booze! Peach or apple? Peach has more views, but maybe that’s only because I posted it after I had a few more visitors. What do you think?

After the booze posts, it looks like people are actually pretty interested in the maritime stuff. I wasn’t really sure when I started this if ANYBODY would be interested in that sort of thing, but it looks like there are at least a few. And, to my surprise, they’re not all other mariners! 🙂

It looks like the photography has a pretty good showing too. People like my travel posts, which is great since I haven’t really put much of my travels up on here yet. The food/drink/recipes get a lot of views too. 🙂

Even the political posts get a pretty good showing. The Worlds Smallest Political Quiz is right up there at the top! That’s really encouraging. I had hopes to get people at least thinking more about politics with my blog. 🙂

I can’t really tell much for a pattern as to when I get the most traffic. I seem to remember the weekends being high traffic days, but when I just looked at the most recent weeks it seems I have more traffic on Wed-Thurs-Fridays.

So, what have I learned from looking at my stats? Maybe I should post more home-made booze recipes on Friday to give everybody a head start on the weekend?

I’m already trying to stick to a Creature Feature post on Wednesdays, combining photos (maybe mine, maybe not) with some interesting information about some kind of critter. 😉

I’ve been trying to do a post on the Songs of the Sea on the weekend, since that’s normally when I have more time to get online to surf the web to try and find a video. I do love my music, it’s just hard to put the whole thing together into a post sometimes. 😉

Maybe I should try to put more of the quirky stuff, things I just find interesting towards the beginning of the week, tho I normally only post those things on the spur of the moment when I come accross them.

The thing that really stands out to me is the HUGE difference in my stats from when I had the time to work on the blog. When I had time to post every day (or close to it). When I had the time to post even more than once in a day. Those time periods were when I really got a lot of interest.

I can see that made a difference and I would love to be able to do that well all the time, but I just don’t really know how to make that happen. I’m doing about the best I can with working on the blog along with all my other projects (my JOB, looking for work, keeping my household running, taking care of my rental property business, traveling, photography, etc).

I guess I’ll just keep on muddling along and hope for the best. I’m learning more from this challenge, which is good. Looking forward to more in the Day 6 assignment. 🙂

 

Blogging 201: Day 4- Get Read All Over

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The assignment for Day Four of the Blogging 201 challenge is to make sure your site is ‘mobile-friendly’. I checked and it seems that my ‘theme’ Twenty Eleven is already ‘responsive’. That means it should already be OK for all sorts of mobile devices automatically. 🙂

That’s a really good thing, since I had no idea it might not show up looking the same way. I just never thought about it before this assignment.

I did take a look at it in the appearance menu on wordpress to see what my blog would look like on mobile phones and tablets. I think it looks pretty good on both. I only saw a couple of things I’d like to change, but I don’t know how. 🙁

The first thing is that all the ‘widgets’ show up at the very end. I’d like to have my ‘follow me’ widget up closer to the top so that people might be more likely to see it (and hopefully click on it!). 🙂

The other thing is that for some reason, the post’s I’ve done with a slideshow (the Bike and Blues Fest for example) don’t show up inside the screenshot on the phone preview. I’m not sure if that’s something going on with this computer when I look at it, or if it really looks like that when someone looks at my blog from a cel phone. 🙁

I also took a look at my blog on www.quirktools.com/screenfly that another blogger on the Blogging 201 Commons mentioned. Those posts with the slideshows show up the same way there, like they’re way off-center for some reason.

Can anybody out there check it out and let me know? If it IS a problem, does anybody know what I need to do to fix it?

Has anyone else had this issue? I’m trying to look through the Commons but haven’t seen anything yet. I admit, I haven’t had a lot of time to spend on this project so far, but trying to catch up. 🙂

Blogging 201: Day One- Set 3 Goals

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I’m late again (sigh), but I’ve been so busy I just haven’t been able to get around to this project til now. I had high hopes for this Blogging 201 challenge, but I’m thinking since I’m so late to join, that I’m probably not going to get as much out of it as I had hoped.

Maybe they’ll do it again some time. I hope so. I’d like to be able to start with everybody else. I think it would help to be on the same page. I’m going to jump right in anyway and hopefully I’ll at least learn something, even if not as much as I could have if I’d been able to get started on time.

So, to start off on Day One (when it’s actually Day 10), the task for the day is to come up with 3 goals for your blog. To “write down 3 concrete goals you want to achieve”.

I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while. Not in specifics. Not “concrete”. But here’s what I’ve come up with now that I’m trying to be specific...These will be my goals for the next 3 months. After that, I think I should think some more and re-assess.

1. Increase traffic to my blog. I’d like to see at least 30 views a day and/or at least 1 new follower a day.

2. Get more organized. I tried to set up an ‘editorial calendar’ while I was doing the original Blogging 101 challenge. I was going to do a post called Wild Wednesdays (or Creature Feature). I was going to post something about some sort of interesting creature I thought other people would think was neat. 🙂

I was also planning to do a series of “Songs of the Sea”. Hopefully every Saturday. So far, I have fallen WAY off the schedule for both of those things. My goal is to get back on track and get at least those posts done every week.

3. Spend at least an hour a week on the Reader, checking out other blogs I’m following. I already get a lot of emails from blogs I follow and I read all of them (just not all on the same day they come in the email). I follow more blogs in the reader and I’d like to keep up with them better.

I spend a lot of time trying to keep up with people who’ve visited my blog so I’m not really sure how much more time I can afford to put into this right now, but I think I ought to be able to commit to at least an hour.

OK, so those are my goals for the next 3 months! On to the next days challenge!!

Zero to Hero- Days 8-9: About + More Cool Blogs!

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Since I got off the ship the other day, I’ve been busy just trying to get back on schedule. It’s really hard to switch back and forth from working nights for 3 weeks to being up in the daytime like most normal people. I feel like I need to be up days while I’m home, it’s hard to get anything much done at night here.

So, I’m a little caught up on sleep and mail and bills, got some groceries in the house and so ready to take up the Zero to Hero Challenge once again.

I did go over my About page again (day 8’s assignment). I don’t really know how to make it ‘irresistible’, but I did spiff it up a bit. I’ve been thinking about adding some other things there but not sure if it would actually make it any better.

For day 9’s assignment, to find more blogs to follow, I’m having a hard time limiting myself to just 5! I am starting to wonder just how much time can I spend wandering around the blogosphere? 😉

It’s REALLY hard to try and find ‘new’ things, things I’m not already following or new subjects that I don’t already have an interest in. So, I didn’t really follow directions, I did take a look at some things I really have no interest in, like sports, and cars, and fashion, but I don’t really see the point in following things I’m not interested in at all.

So, I looked around some more and found some outliers in subjects I am interested in but don’t follow as much as I would like.

Here are my picks for today…

  1. Human Rights Warrior– I love her tagline “There is some good in this world…and it’s worth fighting for.”
  2. The Official How To Blog– It’s always good to learn how to do things! Laugh while learning is good!! 🙂
  3. Beer & Whiskey Brothers– I always like a good drink, beer was never my favorite, but it’s always available so learned to like it. Learning about more flavors is great!
  4. The Squeaky Robot– This looks like an interesting blog with nice photos. 🙂
  5. Coffee and Irony– I liked the post on the Civil Wars (I LOVE their music!) and lots of variety on this blog, I think it’s worth following for a while.
  6. Austin Music Source-This one’s not a wordpress blog, but it’s one I like and found today while wandering around online. I do love Austin! Lots of good stuff on this one!
  7. Texas Music Scene– Here’s one last one, it’s not a wordpress blog either, but I found it today and really liked the stuff they had on there.

I found all of them interesting and plenty more, but I don’t have enough hours in the day to devote the time and energy they deserve, so limiting myself to these today. 😉

Maybe I’ll find some more in the next few days. 🙂

 

 

Zero to Hero- Day 2- ‘About’ Widget

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Todays assignment for the Zero to Hero challenge is to add an ‘about widget’. It took me a long time to figure out how to do that and I’m still not sure I got it right.

I fiddled around with it all night. I finally got it to look a little bit like what I was going for (but I’m still not happy with it). I used an image widget instead of a text one and added some text as a caption to the image.

I took the photo on the way to work a few months ago. It was on the way out of Fourchon LA when we had to ride the crewboat instead of the helicopter. I thought it conveyed the idea of searching through the fog, which is how I feel sometimes.

The idea was to make a quick descriptive widget to show people what your blog is all about. Why would they want to take a longer look?

I already had an ‘about me’ widget and also an about page. I added this new widget just to try to do the challenge for the day. I’m not really sure if I should keep it. I almost think it makes my sidebar look more cluttered.

Anybody out there have any comments? I’d appreciate any feedback.