Creating a Personal Website

Rather than making your landing page a resource for your contacts, consider linking to your personal website. This will give you greater flexibility and control over your design and organization of your topics... as well as cleaning up your landing page.

I have found Weebly to be an intuitive, easy-to-use website host. They offer a free version which may be sufficient for your needs, or you can pay for extra features. There are lots of very professional templates to choose from, and it's easy to customize them with your own pictures.

You can see my "writer" website at http://karlacook.weebly.com/. The free version mandates using "weebly" in your URL, but if you go with the "pro" version you can choose your own URL (depending on availability).

Adding Social Media Icon Buttons

The first thing you want to do is find a set of social media icons that you like. You can just Google "free social media icons" to find all kinds of sets. I went with the ones at http://www.twelveskip.com/resources/icons/1091/boxxed-flat-social-media-icons because they were clean, simple, available in various sizes, plus she didn't require a link back to use them.

Next, download the set to your computer and unzip the file. Mostly likely you won't use every icon in the set. (That would be way overkill!) I wanted to link to Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter so those are the icons I chose to work with.

Now you're ready to watch the tutorial at http://www.diydesignfanatic.com/2013/08/how-to-add-social-media-buttons-to-your.html. She shows how to put the icons on the side-bar of your blog, but it's the same idea for putting them at the bottom of your first post. You just wouldn't need to create a separate post to remain unpublished.

 

Adding an Action Button

Email Karla

• Go to http://buttons.cm/.
• The default style and color is the gray one that says "Show me the button!" There are 3 other styles to choose from at the bottom. I liked the wider shape of the turquoise blue one so I clicked on that one.
• Type your desired text into the Button Text window. 
• Unselect "Background Image" to change to a custom color.
• Under "Background Color" you can change the 6 digit hex code to one of the following to match the Sonlight site:
• Logo Blue: 0089d0
• Dark Blue: 005d93
• Yellow: f2be1a
• You can change the font color the same way, if you like.
• Other customization options, obviously, are Button Width, Button Height, Border Color, Border Radius.
• To link your button to another page (such as the catalog request page), just paste in the URL of the page you want the button to lead to.
• To make an email button: Under Button URL take out the "http://" and type in "mailto:youremailaddress@sonlight.com." (Be sure to change "youremailaddress" to your actual email address! LOL!)
• Now copy the coding. (Highlight it then Ctrl C.)
• Go to your  post on Blogger to find where you want to insert the button. Change from the "Compose" mode to "HTML". You may have to hunt a little bit through the coding to find your place again, but once you do, just paste (CTRL V) the code in that spot. Switch back to "Compose" to see if it looks like you want it to. 
• If you want to center it, when you are in HTML mode, type <center> just before where you inserted the code, and </center> just after the code.
• Click the "Update" button to save it to your page.

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Managing Your Time

Blogging and social networking do take a commitment of time. To be effective you really need to be posting and interacting with your communities at a minimum of once a week. I have read that every-other-day is optimal. I'm still working on that.

For efficient blog reading, you'll want to set up a blog reader which will "collect" all the latest posts from the blogs you follow into one place where you can scan through them quickly. I use Google Reader Feedly, though others are available.

I have a filter set up on Google Reader Feedly to group my favorite blogs together. I "follow" hundreds of blogs. Obviously, I'm not able to keep up with reading that many. When I log on to Google Reader Feedly, I first read through the recent posts on my favorite blogs. (My favorites include blogs of personal friends, family, and a few that I read regularly just because I find them especially helpful or inspiring.) When I have time I scan through posts on other blogs I follow. You can also set up your filters to sort the blogs you following into categories-- so you could group all the homeschooling blogs together in one group, and maybe another group would be homemaking blogs, or gardening blogs, or whatever you are interested in.

Tracking Results

I really have no way of tracking how my blog affects my sales. I have had people at conventions tell me they read my blog. Usually they had never left a comment, so I had no idea who they were. I also get emails from people who read my blog, asking for advice on Sonlight. So I have to think it helps, and for sure, it doesn't hurt my sales.

There are tools to help track how many visitors your blog gets, and other non-identifying information such as general geographical area and referring URL. On your blog dashboard is a Stats tab that provides a lot of this information. I also like to use Feedjit on my sidebar because it shows visitor information as a live feed.

This information is helpful to me because it shows what blog posts are most popular, and if any changes I make increase traffic.

Design

In 2009 when I helped some of you set up your blogs in Florida, I recommended customizing the background using a design from Cutest Blog on the Block or similar sites. Since then, Blogger has upgraded their template options, so it's no longer necessary to use outside coding to have a customized look that reflects your personality. A specially designed header is still a nice touch, but not as necessary as it was previously. Look for the Template Designer tool under the Design tab on your Blogger dashboard.

Your blog design should:

• Reflect your personality.
• Look professional.
• Have an easy-to-read font, especially for the body of your posts. Save the fun fonts for titles.
• Not be too cluttered.
• Leave off the music.

Have fun!

Blog Post #2

This is the second post on your blog, and it's the one that feeds the side-bar on your homepage at Sonlight.com. Be sure and update it with your convention schedule each year. I like to include a picture of my booth at the top of this post, for visual appeal. (Keep the picture small so it will fit nicely on the side-bar.)

I also added a Facebook "Like Box" here so people who visited my homepage on Sonlight could also subscribe to my page on Facebook. (For step-by-step directions, see the How To page tabbed at the top.) In addition, I put the Facebook box on my sidebar, so that's there on my blog even after this post is buried.