The Bloggers Guide to Using Google+ Effectively - Google / Blogger Interaction

Hey there, I'm Chef Dennis and we're here today with the Blogger's Guide to Using Google+ Effectively and we're doing a little remote for my co-host Jean Layton. So we're going to see how she can do. I may end up doing the screen share and she'll just talk over it but she is on her way home from California so she has found a quiet corner for the time being and we'll take it from there. So Jean, I'm going to turn it over to you and you can start. Like you said, I'll screen share if you want. It's up to you. Okay.

Hi everybody. I have been down in Anaheim, California for the past 5 days for the National Products Expo West, which is a natural food conference and supplements and all sorts of fun things. Doing that means I'm traveling home today and this is gonna be our first time, so if there's some glitches, be gentle with us. We're trying. Today's show is all about Google and Blogger interactions. So what I'm discovering is that if you're starting a new blog, the place to start it is on Google and stay with Blogger. The interactions between the two make life so much simpler, especially if you have an Android phone. I don't know about you, but I use my phone for most of my progress shots. As I'm cooking. I may go to a more impressive camera for things beyond that. But most of my progress shots are taken with my Android phone. And my Android phone automagically uploads to Google+, which automagically downloads to Blogger in the correct size. And you can edit in Google+ the type, and words across it. So it just makes life really simple. So I'm going to attempt here, I should be able to pull up my site, and we'll just talk through the connections that have to happen. Let's see if this will work.

While you're there, Adrian, just a comment. She loves your photo with the Stormtrooper. We were just talking about that. Thanks, Adrienne. I'm glad I'm not the only one that liked that one. I get mine with Tigger, and you get yours with a Stormtrooper. I love it.

Oh, I feel goofy too.

I saw that one too.

Yeah.

You like me to screen share?

It's just taking its time.

Okay.

Okay. Actually, you know what, if you would, because I realize I have to sign into the Hangout from the laptop as well. I'm doing this on my phone, people. All right.

I am on your blog now.

Awesome. So when you start out, the first thing you have to do is pick your name. And I give a lot of— information in the blog post about choosing your name. One of the things I realized at this conference is that many people don't look at all the different social media platforms before they choose their name. Because I walked up to a lot of companies and said, what's your Twitter handle? And their Twitter handle was something completely different from their brand name, and completely different from their Facebook page, and completely different from everything else. The more you can have the one simple, easy to remember name, the better. Shorter, of course, is always better. And since the internet has been alive for 25 years, that's complicated. But choose several combinations, and then look. I would strongly encourage for Google use, check out your actual physical name. And if you have to, throw in a middle initial. Don't try and use titles, but use your name and your middle initial, and see if you are unique enough that no one has taken it. I was fortunate enough to do that. And for most people, that is the best way to have a Google+ presentation, because it establishes you as the expert. And that is really what you want to do. You may be talking about anything, but if you are the expert in whatever the topic is, you want to have your name. So the first, part of the screen share is showing where you put in your name as you choose it. And it will tell you whether or not it's already taken. Your title can be different from your URL, but I would really encourage you to have the same if it's in any way possible, because that's the way people are going to look for you. And make sure you check how it sounds as it's spoken. And how it spells out when it's all in lowercase and runs together. There are a couple of spots where I show you things that are inadvertently inappropriate. And you don't want to be that person.

Very good examples, Jean. No, you are absolutely right.

You don't want to be the person with the funky blog that everybody— I have to admit, I found those by looking for inappropriate names on the internet, and that's how they came up in a Google search. I don't think that that's how you want your brand to be. But who knows? It could be. You would certainly get hits based on it. So once you choose the name, you just enter it into the box. You hit Accept. And then it's really very, very simple. You have a blog at that point. You just have to fill everything in. You have to choose your background. Do yourself a favor, pick one that is mobile ready, and that makes your life super simple. People can look at it on a phone just as easily. And you are done. You have a blog at that point. Now you have a blog with absolutely no followers, which is perfect for getting completely set up. You need to look at how posts are created, and know what labels you want to put on your blog. Your labels should always include your own name. As well as your blog title if it's different. And then you want whatever the topic of the post is. But where Google+ and blog really interact best is in commenting. Once you say yes to allowing comments, you can have it set up for registered users who include OpenIDs. So that's a broad way of being set up. But it also allows people to use their Google account in order to comment on your post. So if you put out a post of your favorite cinnamon rolls, and a lot of people reshare it, what happens is all of these comments go into that post. You can then in turn have those posts move to your blog if you embed your post. And we will talk about embedding in a different show. But you don't have to worry about security. You can ask for word verification so that when somebody comments on your blog directly instead of through Google+, there is some way to have it and then you can choose to show or hide backlinks. But then down at the bottom of that page, starting from 6 Ways to Improve Your Blog with Google+, it talks about adding your Google+ buttons and gadgets. That's where you can have your little hover card brought in so that people can follow your blog, your Google+ profile right from your blog. Perfect way to have an interaction. You can show your followers. You can show— ask for 1+es. I wouldn't encourage asking for 1+es. It's just not the way you are in Google+. You can share your posts publicly. And when you do, anybody you +mentioned within your post will get notification. So frequently I will be using people's information for these posts. And each of those people, when I +mention them, get a notification that the blog post is going out. Kind of like the WordPress pings that happen. But this way you can just do it that— within the post itself. You can participate in communities related to your blog. You can put all the comments into one place. And of course, you can hold a Hangout. So sharing your posts to Google automatically is important. And it's not a huge or a difficult process. So I'm hoping there's a ton of questions. Because that's it. You just have to be posting away and having a good time with it. So I think we can go off the screen share. Chef, what platform do you have yours on?

My blog is on WordPress. It originally started on Blogger, I think, as just about almost everyone did. And then because of all the implications of SEO and how it was supposed to be a better platform, platform. I jumped to WordPress. I don't understand why Blogger hasn't become a stronger platform. Everybody, we've all been sold that bill of goods too. I don't think WordPress is a bad platform. At the time I jumped, Blogger was really a little cumbersome and not as intuitive. I think it's gotten a lot better since then from what I see.

There are people who can help you set up. And I was pushing this post out rapidly, but I will go back and edit it. There are some wonderful people in Google+ who can answer blogger questions. And David Kuchner is the first one I can think of. And Craig Fifield can answer blogger questions for people or help them with the setup, although I think Craig is a little busy right now doing Circles. Because of the ease, I find it far easier for me to put up a post on Googleman Productions, which is on Blogger, than it is for me to work on my WordPress blog. And I have to be honest, I was talking to my IT guy from WordPress over this weekend. And I said to him, I'm frustrated because it takes so long to edit every image down to the right size. And then get the text up. I have to go out of my editing tools and into other tools in order to get that work done. And it just drives me a little crazy. And he said, "Yeah, I understand." We do have one question here.

I'm gonna pop it up. And it is from Daily Forage Gluten Free. It says, "Hi, Jean Layton. Can you create a URL that is personalized and doesn't have the Blogger name in the URL.

Sorry, guys. The noise behind me. They're going to stop it. Yes, you can custom URL your blog. You have to purchase your domain in some other place, buy it from yourself. Once you have that, you redirect from the place you bought the blog. You change the name servers. And it's different for every company. So GoDaddy will change it in a slightly different way than Bluehost, or Media Temple, or any of those. So what you need to do is look at your host for your URL and see how they change their name servers. But yes, it means just changing the name servers and you can have a branded blog, which is what Wingnut Workshop Productions is. It's not a .blogspot.com.

And you can also just go right through Google too. If you don't want to have it self-hosted, you can just pay them $10 to remove the Blogspot a year and they change it over to whatever your name is.

I thought they stopped that.

Oh, did they stop that? I have not been on it for a long time. That was the way it was.

They used to sell you the URL, but they don't actually do hosting. So this one I went and I picked it up at Bluehost, which I think is less than $8 a year. And yeah, it just means changing the nameservers, so it's not difficult.

—And when you're doing that, sometimes it's a good idea if you think, you know, if you have these aspirations of becoming huge, and you might want to pick up the .net and maybe the .org while you're at it, and sometimes it'll be cheaper that way too. I picked up all 3 for mine when I did get my new site, and I think it came out to be like $17 or $20 a month for for all 3 of them because they come all at the same time.

And you may very well want to look for the .recipes. I don't know what they call the .com. Instead of being .com, there is now .recipes. So for somebody who is running a blog that is a food blog, you may want that one. Although I have to admit, nobody is going to think to use that yet, but it has just been launched. So everybody else is talking about inappropriate. Yeah. Yeah, the inappropriate is huge. And the other one, you know, Chow Time, you know, when I first heard of that business, I heard Chow Time like a barbecue restaurant, C-H-O-W-T-H-Y-M-E, or T-I-M-E, and it's actually chow like Italian chow and time like the Earth. Very difficult to explain in social media. If you're introducing yourself, you do not want to have to spell your name if you can help it.

Easy to remember and as short as possible with getting your message out, because you don't want someone having to type in like a sentence to go to your blog site either.

Yeah, and you don't want underscores. You don't want to use punctuation if you can help it because you can't speak punctuation. So when you're introducing yourself, somebody was saying farm fresh something, you don't want to have to take farm_fresh_ whatever, the third word, because it's just not comfortable in conversation. So if you have questions more about the interaction between the two, feel free to drop it into the comments. That's what my my hour before I hop on my plane, see if I can answer them for you. But I think I'm going to let us have a short one this year, this time. Absolutely.

Well, yep, there aren't any more up there, so let's keep this short and sweet for once. We'll surprise everyone and have it done. Ashley, we picked a good topic for while you were coming back, so.. And then next week we'll be back probably with our nice lengthy show again.

Yeah, next week I'm actually in Chicago, but I'll be in a hotel room, so it'll be easier. Yeah, I actually have to figure out the time change. That's going to be— but yes, I must say, actually, if anybody's going to the International Association of Culinary Professionals, please look me up. I'm actually doing one of the roundtables on Google+. It would be fun to have you guys pop in. That's great.

Maybe you can do a live Hangout from there.

I was thinking about trying to do that, but I'd need to remote people. I may ping you on it and see.

I think what Ronnie's been doing is someone's been starting it and then inviting them in. That seems to work pretty good.

I could leave my laptop up in my hotel room and just auto-start it. I might just do that. I did it in Nat Products Expo. I did do that in Nat Products Expo. I started up the laptop and walked away from it with my phone and did a little walk around. Ronnie's inspiring.

He is. He certainly is, and thank God for him. What would we do without him and his vast wealth of knowledge? Here's one last question. From Kristin Mattes, do you have any advice for where I can find widgets for Blogger? When I do a Google search, for example, looking for a hover box to encourage folks to subscribe via email, all the options that come up are for WordPress.

Well, it doesn't need to be a hover box. There is a built-in one in Blogger. But the hover, I think— You may have to have somebody custom build it. The person I would reach out to, the blogger who has been blogging the longest who lives on the Blogger platform is Kaylen Dennie who writes— gosh, what's her blog name? She's a South Beach diet. But that's not her blog name. But she's been on Blogger her entire time. Ads, she's a blogger, I mean she's a big blogger, has never moved off the blog platform. So I would just shoot her a note. She's very nice, and she would probably say, you know, it's from my designer, and give you a name. So I would reach out to Kayln. It's K-A-Y-L-N-D-E-N-N-E-Y. That's how she spells her name.

And I think she's on Google+, but she's not No, no, Facebook is her platform. She's one of the disgruntled Google users.

Well, you know, she doesn't want to have to move, but she's doing fabulously, so— Yep. Yep, it's up to her. Absolutely. And see you all next week.

Alright guys, thanks so much for stopping by. I kept it short and sweet. The Blogger's Guide to Using Google+ Effectively. Jean Layton and I are going to say goodbye for this week. Have a great rest of the week and I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.