Blogging Tips from a Newb

Since I really started blogging last month, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned the past month. By no means am I an expert, but these few things have helped me. (Obviously I’m not an expert, I have 22 readers, not 49K+ like Mr. Scott Hanselman :) By the way, I recently downloaded his Baby Smash creation and my baby loves it! So if you have a kid, you might want to check it out. Anyhow…

1. I started using Windows Live Writer. It saves a TON of time and is really easy. Benefits I’ve found thus far:

• Pings servers for you
• Easily save drafts and publish later
• Manage multiple blogs (not that I have more than one)
• Download plugins
• Setup auto linking
• Spell check
• Setup your tags/categories before publishing

2. I started pinging different services to let them know I posted. Below is a list of the services I’m currently pinging through Windows Live Writer.

3. I setup some plugins to help automate some things. Below are the plugins I’m using.

Quick run down of what each plugin does: (Note: all of the plugins were free)

• Delicious Plugin – Automatically sends your blog posts to delicious
• DiggThis – Automatically adds the DiggThis badge to your posts
• Paste as Visual Studio Code – Pastes code straight from VS with line numbers and all – I’ve yet to use this one. I prefer VSPaste so far.
• TweetMeMe Plugin – Automatically adds the tweetmeme button to your posts
• Twitter Notify – Sends a Tweet announching the new blog post.
• Paste from Visual Studio (VSPaste) – Pastes from Visual Studio, but only the formatting not with lines and all

4. I downloaded Cropper to grab screenshots. I found this tool last week thanks to Jeffrey Palermo’s post on it. I love it now! It makes doing screenshots A LOT easier.

5. I setup Feedburner recently too because it gives more statistics on who’s reading your blog. However, it gets discouraging to me. It topped out at 41 I think and now it’s at 22. I’m not sure why because I really haven’t read up on how it averages the “subscribers”.

6. I setup Google Analytics when I first started back in April and it’s helped a lot.

Again, I am by NO MEANS an expert NOT EVEN CLOSE! So, if you are an expert, please provide us with some comments of advice. I love learning new things and could definitely use the help!

As always, thanks for reading!