My Blogging Experiences Exposed

Blogging Business and Me

So I’ve been such a busy little bee this past year and I can’t tell you how much of a nerd I have become. (Just really educated)

When it comes to WordPress, Social Media and Local Business It’s been quite the wild ride and I’ve loved it.  However I want to tie this into the context of this blogs message which is human engagement via Tony Teegarden.

Self Exploration Optimization is the term I coined (Human SEO) when I thought about the technical quality as well as the organic quality that makes up social media. I know this touches on the surface level of social media to say it’s just about building relationships. However this is the starting point that requires the most awareness & education before you open your social media mouth. 🙂

There’s a lot to social media that I don’t claim to be an expert on, such as ROI, tracking etc. Although I do my fair amount of studying and implementing both. By the way I do NOT claim to be a social media Expert. It’s a topic that is both organic as well as technical to me and it relates to people skills and development on so many levels. Hence my few posts like social media equaling social skills.

Blogging has taught me a lot about human dynamics and attraction as well as social media.

My Blogging Beginnings

My blogging beginning started nearly 5 years ago because a good friend of mine suggested I would be good at it.

I thought he was nuts and almost didn’t do it because I couldn’t imagine people would want to read what I had to say. (He was right though)

Because of taking the risk of blogging I was able to find myself new friends, new business relationships and it even allowed me to  be featured in Joe Vitale’s New York Times best seller Expect Miracles book. All because I took the risk of doing something outside of my comfort zone.

I started out on the Typepad platform for my blogging beginnings. It wasn’t a bad platform at all although later on before I switched to a free standing WordPress blog Typepad was dragging really really bad and I got annoyed any time I went to do a blog post.

The real problem was I didn’t own the Typepad base and there for it wasn’t very customizable, I didn’t have much creative control and quite frankly I didn’t own it. I wanted to own the content and have the creative control. I just wasn’t nuts about putting all of that hard work into a site that could disappear over night. (Type A personality maybe?) It’s like buying the house but renting the land it sits on.

So I blogged on Typepad for a few years and eventually made the jump to free standing WordPress. (Not to be confused with WordPress.com) I educated myself to the point of just jumping in and doing it. Of course I was a bit worried considering I didn’t even know how to spell computer a few years ago. However I did it and I’ve been pleased every since with my progress.

My first wordpress blog project was New Way Of Wealth. I still have plans of putting out a product based on the concepts there but right now I’m not doing anything else with it. There is lots of good content there that I may do something with soon.

I’ve since helped a few people put together WordPress Blogs for personal and business use and so far it’s been good stuff for all involved. Most recently I’ve done JuliaGorzka.com. She’s a community builder & social media strategist. I decided to use the Headway Theme on her WordPress blog and it’s an absolute dream of a WP theme.

I was a bit nervous about helping others put their blogs together but now based on trial and error I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Trial and error on MY blogs not theirs 🙂

Blogging Local Business and My Evolution

Now because I’ve taken the time to figure out all of this blogging business, I’ve been approached by so many people in my local market about blogging that it’s been scary. Not to mention the amount of emails I get from people wanting me to share with them my WP experience. From as far away as Israel & Australia! It’s scary only because I’ve found that teaching people how to set up a blog one on one is not scalable to me nor has it really been in my interest. (It’s scalable if you want to make a business out of it I’m sure but that’s not where my heart is)

I’ve passed up tons of opportunities to consult or set up blogs for people and businesses and quite frankly I was ok with it. I set up a few for people I’m close to but never really charged what I know I could. Check out this unsolicited testimonial.

In my opinion local businesses in the coming 36 months are going to rely heavily on social media, local search marketing (Google Local) and other means of more inexpensive or free advertising mediums. My personal opinion (And the opinion of several millionaires I speak with) is that the next 36 months will be some of the most financially challenging times we’ve ever seen and local communities will come together because of it.

Tie in social media and you have a perfect medium of expanding your local market exposure and by passing traditional advertising mediums.

Now I’m not jumping off into the deep end and screaming the economy is going to hell in a hand basket.(Ok maybe I am) but there is going to be more opportunity and more millions made in the next 36 months for the few people who pay attention than ever before in our life time.

So knowing that local community is going to get tighter and more connected through social media doesn’t it make sense that if you’re a business owner you have a professional hub that’s interactive? A place to call home where customers can come to get to know you? And no not a Blogger blog please. (No offense)

Newbies, Businesses, Social Media and WordPress

My point is if you’re someone who is investigating blogging for local or or even global reasons you must investigate the right platform to blog from. If someone would have stressed to me how important it was for me to start out with a free standing Blog and the benefits of it I would have saved myself a lot of time and energy today.

However it happened how it happened and there’s no looking back. Learn from my mistake. 🙂

Blogs are not going away any time soon and with the integration of social media into a WordPress blog they become wonderful hubs of excitement. I.E Communities!

My blog platform of choice is WordPress and will be for some time unless someone comes out with something better, more flexible and has the capability of so many different plugins to customize your user experience. Oh and most all of it is free.

Not to mention it’s easy integration of social media like Twitter, Youtube Flickr & Facebook. Just take a look at this blog itself. (Although I prefer to use Vimeo for embedded video on this blog)

WordPress is a fantastic community and I love it. (Google loves it too)

So why all of this talk of blogging?

Because I’ve scoured the internet for some of the best information on setting up a WordPress blog I could find. I’ve put it all together for you in order to better assist you in creating you very first professional blog if you so desire.

I didn’t really want to do this however based on my experience so far and the fact that so many people keep asking me for it, I’m putting it together. Yup, I’ve taken care of all of the heavy lifting for you. It’s actually screen capture video shot by someone else which keeps this scalable for me and easy to update for you. (WordPress updates often)

It’s called Blog Action Class and in it you will find videos and more on:

• How to buy a domain name
• How to set up your first hosting account for your WordPress blog
• How to set up a free standing WordPress blog
• How to optimize it for your niche via keywords
• How to create a list of fans and how to email them at the touch of a button
• How to drive traffic to your blog via link building
• And a lot more…

All in all there are 6 modules chock full of almost 40 videos and video transcriptions all for you easy consumption.

Blog Action Class is not my main focus at all, but I figured I’d share my personal experience of blogging in this post and the growth that has come from approaching it head on, even though I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. 😉

Blog action class will be an inexpensive option for many newbie bloggers as well as businesses to plug into in order to get their very own blog off the ground and into the game.

So far I’ve only let a few of my close friends inside the site in order to give me feedback and for them to use it for their own educational uses since I’m so busy. If you have any interest in Blog Action Class shoot me an email and I’ll hurry it up in order to get it “public ready.”