Monday, October 20, 2014

The Book Blogger Platform

Today's special guest is Barb Drozdowich, a Social Media and Wordpress Consultant who has taught at Universities and Colleges, trained technical personnel in the banking industry and, most recently, used her expertise to help dozens of authors develop the social media platform needed to succeed in today’s fast evolving publishing world. She owns Bakerview Consulting and manages the popular blog, Sugarbeat’s Books.


ABOUT THE BOOK

Book Blogging - One of the Best Hobbies in the World!


Join thousands of book bloggers in expressing their joy of reading!

Are you a book blogger or do you want to be one? Are you having trouble handling the technical details of blogging? The Book Blogger Platform can be a "user manual" for your blog! A book written by a book blogger for book bloggers and that answers all your questions!

The Book Blogger Platform covers topics such as:

1.         What a book blogger blog needs to contain
2.         A step by step guide to manipulating images and videos
3.         A description of all the common features hosted by book bloggers
4.         A description of the social media aspect to a book blogger platform
5.         Being Social - the social aspect of book blogging

 If you are tired of always asking other bloggers questions

Let The Book Blogger Platform guide you painlessly. Over 80 color graphics lead you step by step through some of the more difficult technical issues that bloggers face.

Pick up a copy today and approach blogging with confidence!
 



AN EXCERPT

During the 1990s, a blog was known as a weblog, indicating that it was something found on the Internet as a serial recording of information—a diary, if you will. Today blogs are quite different; they are personalized and modified to display information in a variety of ways. But ultimately, a blog is still a serial collection of information.

In my experience, many book bloggers either start their blog on Blogger or on WordPress.com because they both offer a free platform. Whether you’re a new or seasoned blogger, I hope that by the end of our discussion of blogs you will have a better sense of the components required for a successful blogging experience.

This brings me to an important point—regardless of your web designer’s opinion, ultimately your blog must be easy to use and tailored to your needs. If you have a blog that is too complicated for your skill level, ask for help. If you have paid someone to design a blog for you, ensure that the designer understands your skill level and creates something you are comfortable using.

Blogging is a very popular activity. In February 2011, it was estimated that there were approximately 152,000,000 blogs worldwide on various platforms (according to Wikipedia). That number has only increased since then. There are many different platforms for blogs. The most common include Blogger, free WordPress (also known as WordPress.com), and self-hosted WordPress (also known as WordPress.org). In addition, there is Tumblr, Medium, Google+, Squarespace, LiveJournal, Weebly, Typepad, and Joomla. Each platform has positive and negative aspects. For the purposes of this book, we will be talking about Blogger and WordPress, as they are by far the most popular of the platforms.

When I went looking for some stats, I found it impossible to get current numbers of Blogger blogs. Apparently they haven’t published their numbers in over a decade. Of the numbers that are published, they are impressive! As of midway through 2013,
·         There were 101.7 million Tumblr blogs
·         There were 63 million WordPress blogs
·         There were 62.6 million LiveJournal blogs
·         There were 12 million Weebly blogs


As I’m sure you will determine as we go along, my preference for blogging is self-hosted WordPress. As of this writing, a self-hosted WordPress blog costs no more than $100.00 a year. There are some additional startup costs (for example, how much you spend depends on the graphics selected for your blog). If you decide to go with a “free” platform, you can register a domain for a nominal charge. I’m not a huge fan of the massive URLs that come with WordPress.com or Blogger blogs.

Do you care if you register your own domain? Only you can answer that question. In my opinion, you should.


SPECIAL LINKS


Bakerview Consulting (Business Site) http://bakerviewconsulting.com

Barb Drozdowich (Author Site) http://barbdrozdowich.com

Sugarbeat’s Books (Book Blog) http://sugarbeatsbooks.com




Buy link: http://amzn.to/1seIYyc (only available currently on Amazon)


Barb will be awarding a $20.00 Amazon/B&N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour, and a $20.00 Amazon/B&N gift card to a randomly drawn host.

Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here: 




 

a Rafflecopter giveaway