Tasting the Internet, One Byte at a Time - Blogging Your Way to Success!

Volume: 3 Issue: #14

August/2010

Keep Up with the Social Media Scoop!

Check Out These Links!

Our Website

Our Blog

Our Products/Services

Send Out Cards

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

YouTube

eWomen Network

Social Networking Nuggets

Share your Blog

There are many ways to share your blog content easily and seamlessly for more exposure online.

Import the feed into Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
If your blog is not part of your main website, put an RSS feed on your site to connect with your blog.
Paste a link in your email signature to your blog.
Use a WordPress Plugin called CommentLuv to share your blog link each time you post a comment on another blog.
Join a Social Media Tribe or Blog Challenge

You Can Catch Me Here

US Foodservice Food Show
October 4, 2010
Johnson City, TN

US Foodservice Food Show
November 8, 2010
Chattanooga, TN

Looking for a Speaker?

I'm available to speak on social media, online business start-up, building a home-based business and many more topics.

Email me!

Can I Ask A Favor?

One of the best ways to market is word of mouth marketing. If you saw something in this issue of The Social Media Scoop that you would like to share with someone, please click the link below to "Forward Email" I would really appreciate it! :)

A Tasty Morsel

I thought I would add a fun little area to my newsletter and share a few of my favorite recipes with you since my whole new theme is all about tasting, bytes and scoops!

Crockpot Hash Brown Casserole

2 cups sour cream
1 can (10 3/4 oz) cream of mushroom soup
dash pepper
2 cups Velveeta cheese, shredded or cubed
1/2 cup chopped onions
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 pounds frozen hash brown potatoes

In a large bowl, combine sour cream, soup, pepper, cheese, onions, salt and pepper; gently stir in potatoes. Spoon mixture into lightly buttered slow cooker or crockpot. Cover and cook on high for 1 1/2 hours; turn to low and cook 2 1/2 hours longer.
Serves 8 to 10.

Diana Rattray

If you have A Tasty Morsel recipe that you would like to share, email me at Recipes. Include your name and website and a picture of the finished recipe, if you have one.

A special welcome to all my new subscribers. It's great to have you! I hope you always find a helpful "scoop" of social media here.

Greetings!

I guess you could tell from the title of this ezine, that we are going to be talking about Blogs. I tell my client's all the time that a blog is the foundation of your online business. You can branch off in many different directions from your blog to grow your business.

That's just what I have done this month. I have joined the Ultimate Blog Challenge and I am posting at least one blog post every day. Man, that's a lot of work! But I am already seeing great results in the amount of traffic that is visiting and hopefully I'll see it my bank account when folks begin to purchase my products and services.

So sit back and relax and take in all these great blogging ideas that this issue has to share.

To Your Online Business Success!

Blog Challenges

As I mentioned I have joined the Ultimate Blog Challenge for the month of August. My friend Michele Scism, The Results Lady from Decisive Minds invited me to join. I guess she really didn't know me that well, or maybe she did.

I struggle to keep my blog up-to-date. I try very hard to post at least two, sometimes three blog posts per week. And I even have a secret weapon (shhhh...don't tell anyone, I use a ghostwriter to help me) So for me to take on a challenge to blog everyday for 30 days, is almost crazy!! But so far, so good!

Actually, I'm enjoying being part of the challenge. I'm meeting new online friends who are helping me share my content and I am doing the same for them. We Re-tweet each other's posts and share them on Facebook and LinkedIn. (Here's a link to a post about Re-tweeting and Facebook sharing. 4 Easy Ways to Share Your Online Content)

Since I began the challenge on August 1st, I have seen an incredible increase in the amount of traffic coming to my blog. And as an online business owner, I want as much traffic (visitors) as I can get!

Here is an image of the monthly visits to my blog. I have already almost had as many visitors to my blog in 10 days as I had in the entire months of May and July. (I was on vacation in May and I was just lazy in July) :)
blog stats

This is so encouraging to see people coming to read your information and sharing it with others.

So if you haven't ever been part of a Blog Challenge, there's still time to join this one, or find one later that you can be part of. It will make a huge difference in your personal commitment and your business success.

Things You Might Be Interested In

Grow Your Business

Equine assisted techniques can help your business grow and prosper!

Come to a free demonstration of equine assisted learning activities--especially for business owners and entrepreneurs.

Shade

What does this horse know about YOUR business?

My friend, Linda Pucci, Ph.D. is holding an Equine Assisted Business Training at her "Hold your Horses Ranch" on September 10th. This is a free training so if you are in the East Tennessee area, you don't want to miss it. Click the link below for more information.

Equine Assisted Training

I'll be there, hope to see you!

31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a downloadable e-book designed to help you revitalize your blog by giving you 31 tasks that will all help to turn it into the page view powerhouse you've always dreamed of.

Get your Free copy of Denise Wakeman of The Blog Squad's

5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success

Act on your Promptings, send an unexpected card or gift to someone today!

Visit my Send Out Cards Retail site to send
1 or 1,000 cards and gifts. Click the image below.

From the Social Media Blog

There are some very helpful posts on my blog this month, I hope you will take a few minutes and visit at Social Media Blog. And here is a link to all my articles that have to do with Blogging.

5 Essential WordPress Plugins

If you use WordPress as a blogging application or for your website, then chances are you already know how powerful, yet simple this platform is. Many popular blogs these days are built using WordPress, and the availability of widgets and plug-ins to customize each site is almost limitless.

So how can one choose the right plug-ins to install, without overdoing it and have your site suffer from plug-in overkill? As with most things, less is more. I consulted with my friend and colleague Cyndi Papia of WordPress Guru and owner of Office To-Go to share her top WordPress Plugins with you. And if you can only have a few plug-ins for your site, here's Cyndi's top picks to help you out.

Akismet - you'll want something to stop SPAM comments from flooding your blog, so a SPAM filter is crucial to any site. Aksimet, developed by the WordPress folks themselves, is free for non-commercial users (and inexpensive for businesses - only $5 per month) and will help weed out those nasty bots and spammers looking to proliferate your comments sections is nonsensical words and trackback links.
All in One SEO pack - making your site easy to find to your audience is number one priority if you want it to thrive. This plug-in allows you to edit Title, Meta description, and meta tags for each of your entries - allowing search engines to look through your site more efficiently, using the keywords that your viewers are using to look for your blog.
Google XML Sitemaps - on the Internet, there's no denying that Google is king of the search engines - if you're not ranked on Google, you can forget about people finding your blog. This plug-in builds an XML sitemap just for search engines (including Yahoo! Ask.com and Bing), allowing them to index your site easily and retrieve it faster. Another bonus component? It notifies the search engines each time you put in a new blog post.

Read the rest ...5 Essential