More! More! ( #AtoZchallenge )

 

The team's theme of the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge this year is:
ACCOMPLISHING YOUR DREAMS, AND THE DUALITY OF 22

       We are at the middle of the April Challenge, but there is more to come!  We hope you have hung in there and please keep hanging on.  If you've gotten this far you might as well keep going forward.  

      Are you still visiting and commenting on other blogs?  It's a fact that the more you circulate amongst the blogs and leave your presence to be known, the more visits you will likely receive on your own blog.  Do you feel like you've been ignored?  Increase your commenting and that feeling should be remedied.  To be known you need to make yourself known.  Your increased visibility in the blogging community will likely mean others will want to see what you are doing.

      Sure, you're probably a busy person, but so are most of us.  To do this Challenge right you should set aside at least fifteen or twenty minutes a day visiting other blogs and leaving comments.  The more visits you make and comments you leave, the greater the odds that you are going to get more visitors.  

       We can't stress this enough and it's really kind of a matter of common sense.  It's pretty much how life works

   

       Now let's keep moving forward, onward, to the letter Z.  We're halfway there!

    How do you make time to visit other blogs?   What is your best strategy for luring visitors to your own blog?    Have you been keeping up okay so far?

bloglovin.com/blogs/blogging-from-a-to-z-april-challenge-3294742
@a.to.z.challenge @atozchallenge
@AprilA2Z Our hashtag is #AtoZChallenge
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Friday, April 15, 2022

A to Z tips - Keeping track of the blogs you visit during the #atozchallenge

Half the fun is the blogging.
The other half is the visiting.

It is basic A to Z etiquette to visit back the people that have visited you and left comments on your blog. In addition, we also recommend visiting a couple of people from the sign-up list every day, to promote blogging friendships and to support each other's work.

But even if you only visit 5 new blogs a day, keeping track of all of them can become daunting. Since the list numbers change over the course of the challenge as inactive blogs and broken links are deleted, simply visiting by number is not always the best way to go.

Here are some other things you can try. I have done them before and they worked for me, but you'll have to try to see which one works for you best:

1. Bookmark your favorites
Create a new folder in your Bookmarks on your browser, and bookmark any blogs you came across that you definitely want to visit again.
(I usually just clicked "Open all bookmarks", got my morning coffee and cereal while the browser loaded them, and then leisurely clicked through them every morning)

2. Follow / sign up
Even better: Sign up for the blog itself! Bloggers love to see their follower numbers go up during A to Z - they tell us that people didn't just walk by, they want to stay to read more. If you see a blog that you definitely want to keep reading, during A to Z and beyond, make sure to click Follow (if they have a Followers gadget), or sign-up for email notifications.

3. Feedly
If you want to take blog-following to a more organized level, create yourself a Feedly account. You can add any blog to it (Wordpress, Blogger or otherwise), organize them by themes, and it will put all of their new posts into one newsfeed you can easily look through.
WARNING: Feedly allows you to read blog posts without actually going to the blog site. Make sure you go to the actual blog and leave a comment there. It's only polite. 

Important reminder: Make sure to visit blogs that are below you on the list. If everyone starts at the top, people towards the end will get a lot less much deserved attention.

Checklist: Are you READY for the BIG DAY? #atozchallenge 4/1/2014

You've signed up on the list.  You've maybe written some posts.  Maybe you have a theme, but are you REALLY ready for Tuesday, April 1, 2014 when the biggest blogging event of the year will begin?  Here's a checklist so you can be sure.

1) You might have heard this before, but you HAVE TO TURN OFF CAPTCHA, aka WORD VERIFICATION aka PROVE YOU'RE NOT A ROBOT.  You really don't need that "keep out" sign. (If you're worried about spam, disabling anonymous comments is the best defense, and you can also you use comment moderation.)

If you don't know how to turn it off, there's a video in the FAQ to help you.

2) Do you have a way for visitors to follow your blog? 
You can use Google Friend Connect (GFC), follow by email, follow by RSS feed, or all three.  We recommend that you have at least one if not all three options available for guests to be able to come read more, or look at your great photos, or listen to your creative songs, or learn your awesome craft ideas.  You do want more followers, right?

3) Have you cleaned up your sidebar?  (I need to...egads, it's cluttered...) What I mean is, do you have your sidebar in a logical order?  How to follow you (see #2) should be near the top, if not THE top item. Arrange the rest of your items in the order of importance ~ what do you want people to know about you and your blog.  Some may not scroll all the way to the bottom, so put the important "stuff" at the top.

4) Do you have your participant badge displayed?  I'm talking about this one, found in the banners/badges tab above:

I know some of you have very legitimate reasons for not displaying it, and we're not forcing anyone to have it up. However, here are some reasons why it's to YOUR advantage to have it in your sidebar, and I suggest placing it right under your follower widget of choice.

* visitors know right away that you're participating

* if you put it up NOW it's advertising and we get more participants

* you avoid a reminder email from one of the co-hosts or one of the minions to please display your badge (which saves us work and we'd really appreciate that)

5) Do you know where the sign-up list is?  I suggest having it open in your browser all day so that it's easy to visit someone when you have just a few minutes.  All of those add up, and pretty soon you've been to more than the suggested 5 blogs immediately following your number on the list.  That will bring you more visitors!  This is the sign-up list.

6) Do you know what to do once you've put your first post up?  A lot of people have been asking.  The quick answer is: you've already signed up on the list I linked in #5, you don't have to link up each day.  However, here's what you should do to insure success:

* advertise your post using your other social media outlets of choice

* if Twitter is one of those, include the #atozchallenge hashtag

* for those of you on facebook, get active with the A-Z facebook page by visiting it daily to see what's going on, liking comments, adding your own.  Doing so will bring more visibility to your blog, and more visitors.

* if you include an image, others can pin your post on Pinterest

* make sure you're visiting others.  If you visit, they will come.  If you sit there, they will not.  Your success, your connections with others, your increase in friends and exposure all depends on YOU.  If you invest the time to make the first move, it WILL pay off.

* the more you get yourself out there, the more you will get out of this adventure

Yes, most of this has been said before.  It's worth repeating though.  The A to Z Team's goal is for this be a rewarding experience for you, and we really do care about you.  We may not be able to read all of your posts...but we want you to succeed.

Questions?  Contact Us tab is right up there.

~Tina, on behalf of the A to Z Team

P.S Got some new info this morning.  Be sure to read Ida's comment below. It has other following suggestions and shows you how to fix GFC if you're having problems with it.  Thanks, Ida!

How to Hyper Blog Like a Pro!

The best way to increase your chances for having a great Blogging from A-to-Z Challenge experience is by actively working specific areas of this blogathon to meet goals you have (whether formal or informal) for your blog in April. Even among bloggers who do not have solid long or short-term goals for blogging through the 26 letters of the alphabet; chances are that when you sign-up, you do so with a set of expectations or hopes for what you want to get out of your participation in the Blogging from A-to-Z Challenge.

On Monday, Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out filled us in on the secret to this challenge – it’s about the letters, but it’s also about the numbers. 

"Hyper Blogging" is what he calls it; a kind of blogging on steroids that is necessary action for participants who aim to see any real significant increase in your number of subscribers, fans, friends, followers, visitors and comments – or whatever area you are seeking a boost in for your blog. As founder and ruler-of-them-all when it comes to the Blogging from A-to-Z Challenge, Arlee has a great point when he emphasizes that you have to put in the work to see results.

I’ve participated in this challenge long enough to understand how its mere size can be enough to overwhelm even the most seasoned bloggers. Since we cannot be everywhere all of the time, while trying to visit nearly two thousand blogs in 26 days, it’s beneficial to use those A-to-Z goals, expectations and/or hopes as a foundation for your plan of attack on this April blogathon. Focus on activities that lead toward what you want and do less of the online stuff that doesn’t move in that same direction. Here are some ways that you can get your numbers up during the Blogging from A-to-Z Challenge without returning to your blog empty-handed by the time May rolls around.

The Key to Playing the Numbers Game

Locate the objective that most matches what you want out of the Blogging from A-to-Z Challenge and then focus on doing the activities listed for those particular goals during April. You don’t have to ignore all of the other activities altogether; just make sure to pay close attention to the actions that directly serve you, your blogging interests and your reasons for participating in the challenge.

Want more comments on your blog? Do these activities:

• End your blog post with a question
• Leave a comment on every blog that you visit. 
• Blog about a controversial topic (Tread lightly here when swimming in controversial waters, and choose topics at your own risk.)
• Reply to comments on your own blog.
• Write a blog post comparing something such as baby names, products, people, services, situations, songs, movies, etc.
• Reciprocate comments by visiting and commenting on the blogs of those who left a comment on your blog.

Want more people to visit your blog? Do these activities:

• Visit additional blogs on Sundays when we have the day off from blogging in the A-to-Z Challenge, and then leave comments on these blogs.
• Use the #atozchallenge hashtag on Twitter when mentioning your blog posts that are related to the challenge.
• Add your blog URL below every comment you leave on other blogs. You do not need to know HTML to do this. Writing out the URL address (www.yourblog.com) will suffice.
• Become a minion for one of the Co-Hosts. (It’s a lot of work in addition to what you already have in store as a challenge participant, but being a minion also comes with various perks such as having your blog featured on in A-to-Z Blog posts as well as on the blogs of Co-Hosts.)
• Make your blog posts shareable by adding a “Share this” button or related social media links to your A-to-Z Challenge posts, allowing readers to share them on their blogs or among their social networks.
• Link to other blogs that are participating in the challenge and/or feature another blogger in one of your blog posts. He or she will likely announce the news – either on his or her own blog or in their respective online social circles.
• Swap guest posts with another blogger who is participating in the challenge. (For example, you can write a guest post for letter L or N on another blog and that blogger can give you a guest post for Letter M or O. This can be an effective way to increase readership outside of your own circle of visitors.)

Want more subscribers/followers/fans, etc. of your blog? Do these activities:

• Place subscribe buttons and/or forms in your sidebar above the fold (near the top of the sidebar, positioned high enough that visitors do not have to scroll down the page to find it).
• Add your social media handle (FB, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google + or whatever your pimping) to your signature at the end of your blog post or in your comments when visiting other blogs. (Don’t go crazy here, or else people will be quick to consider you a self-serving spammer. Pick a social profile...or two but I really wouldn’t recommend listing more than two...that is most important to you and use that one and that only. Notice I did not mention your blog URL. That’s because if you’re interested in followers, then it isn’t necessary for your blog URL to be listed in your comments because your blog address should already be prominently featured somewhere on your social media profile and easy for your social network to access. Duh!)
• Make hybrid content for your blog posts, that can double as content for your social media websites and/or vice versa. (Meaning....If you are active on Instagram, write a blog post about one of the photos that you posted there, add the proper tags such as #Instagram, etc. and then share the blog post URL on FB or other social networks that you belong to. Grab a quotable section from one of your blog posts such as a short blurb that could stand on its own and Tweet it or Pin it or Tumblr it, all while making sure to add/embed a permalink back to your original blog post.)

Happy Blogging!

What are the reasons why YOU participate in the Blogging from A-to-Z Challenge?

Do YOU get the results that you hope for when it’s all said and done?

Nicole Ayers at The Madlab Post

Rosanna: Strategies for Next Year's Challenge

Today please welcome Rosanna of  Writing and Photo Prompts from Life. She hails from The Philippines, and has completed two challenges. She's so excited for next year, she's ready share some tips to get your thoughts going. It's never to early to start planning!

Last year I joined my very first 30-day blogging challenge - The Blogging from A to Z  2012 Challenge - and it was quite stressful.  After picking up my "Survivor" badge, I wondered if it was worth all the stress and decided that it wasn't.

"No more blogging challenges for me."  It was a firm decision that stayed with me till early this year, but as April approached, I asked myself, "Why not?"  I had been mulling the idea of featuring my country, the Philippines, in my blog and I figured that the A to Z challenge would be the perfect way to highlight the many beautiful aspects of my country.

I survived this year's challenge as well, and I'm proud to say that this time I had fun. I did things differently this year: I began the challenge with a list of topics that I wanted to write about - from A to Z of course. This year, I also made it a point to visit at least ten other blogs after posting - and that by itself  was a fun experience.  It was like visiting different places and meeting all sorts of people.

After this year's A to Z challenge, I was ready to join other challenges - both blogging and photo challenges. As a result, I have been blogging more and I've been having a blast. I've also been learning a lot about blogging, and come next year's challenge, I know I will have more tools at my disposal, which will make the one-month challenge easier, and will leave me with more time to visit other blogs.

Up until recently, my blogging skills have been quite limited, and as it was with my posts in this year's challenge, I wrote articles accompanied by photos in each and every blog post.  Now I know there are other ways to blog - a late bloomer I am!

Here are some things I hope to do for next year's challenge:

• Feature video clips in some blogs. As we all know, there are thousands of videos on file on YouTube. To embed a video in a blog post, all one need do is click on "Share" which appears under the video box.  Upon clicking, a highlighted code will appear.  Copy the code and paste it on your blog.
• Do a photo essay - colorful, inspiring, and easier to do than writing so much text!
• Switch guest posts with another participant
• Reblog an interesting post by one of the participants
• Feature a list of the five, seven - even ten - participating blogs I like best
• Interview one of the challenge organizers or another blogging participant
• Feature the blog of a frequent commenter

As you can see, I'm already gearing up for next year's Blogging from A to Z Challenge.  See you then!

Those are some great goals! I also encourage you to learn something new when it comes to the technical side of your blog. Thanks for taking the time to be with us today, Rosanna!

~Tina

D is for Determination

Determination! 

That's what this Challenge is going to take. We are just a few days in, but the newness may have lost a bit of it's shine, you may be feeling discouraged for any number of reasons.

Not getting as many comments as you expected?

~ are you visiting a lot of blogs?

~ are you acknowledging the comments you've gotten?

Finding dead links?

~ please report them to me, Tina, through the info@ email or my personal email, both found under the CONTACT US tab. Please know we are continually combing the list for ads, dead links, and non-participants. Our assistants are out there in the trenches spending a LOT of their Challenge time doing that. So are the co-hosts. We welcome ANY help you can give.

Having trouble writing your posts?

~ these aren't works of art, perfect specimens of your very best writing, or masterpieces of any kind. They are short and sweet and meant to get you in the habit of blogging daily. Or if you're a perfectionist like me, hitting publish even though you could spend hours still editing. This is NOT the time to be trying that. Write it. Push publish.

Still feeling discouraged?

~ go hang out with your blogging buddies. Maybe you've all decided that for the Challenge you're going to visit others, but maybe you need a dose of that favorite blog you usually start your day with. That's OK. I wouldn't make you skip your coffee in the morning...

Above all, this is supposed to be FUN! Now go out there and have some FUN and don't worry so much. (Advice this girl needs to take a dose of herself...)

~Tina

Making the Sign-up List Work

With the sign-up for the A to Z Challenge starting on Monday, some of you may have questions and concerns. There were almost thirteen hundred participants last year and some people felt overwhelmed. Some signed up but never posted. A few sites were nothing but advertisement.

This year, we are prepared!

The sign-up list will be monitored by all thirteen hosts. We will check every link before the Challenge begins. This should eliminate advertisement and ghost sites.

Once the Challenge is underway, non-participating blogs will be removed. Now, we will give people a chance to get started and benefit of the doubt if they miss a post or two. No problem! But those who fail to post over a long stretch or at all will be removed as soon as they are discovered. Wasting time visiting sites that weren’t participating was a complaint we heard often in 2011, and we want to maximize everyone’s time this year.

Looking at a list of over a thousand blogs is daunting! Here’s the plan for avoiding feelings of hopelessness:

In order for everyone to benefit from the Challenge, we ask that you start with the blog immediately following yours and move towards the end of the list. (Looping back around to the beginning if you ARE the end of the list!)

Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to visit everyone. Can you visit just five a day? Start with the one after yours and visit five each day –  after twenty-six days, that’s a hundred and thirty blogs. Everyone on the list has time to visit five new blogs a day!

By implementing all of this, we hope that everyone will have a great time during the Challenge.

Because if you don’t have fun, we don’t have fun!

And for me, that is cause for Epic Ninja Fail….