Why You Should Start a Second Blog on Blogger

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WordPress is the #1 blogging platform of choice for many bloggers including myself. But in this episode I'll share with you, why I chose Blogger as the platform for the Ms. Ileane Speaks Podcast blog.

Question - Is it time for you to start a SECOND blog?

When it was time for me to find a home for this podcast I had to decide where I would host the blog. Since I already have a thriving and successful, self-hosted WordPress blog, I didn't want to add the podcast to that site because of branding issues. After all this podcast is Ms. Ileane Speaks and my WordPress blog is Basic Blog Tips and the two brands don't mesh together seamlessly. 

After careful consideration I decided to use Google's Blogger platform and in this episode I talk about my reasons for coming to this conclusion. Here's what I discuss:

Why I'm Using Google's Blogger Platform for this Podcast's Blog

1. Visibility on Google (Google+ was shut down)

2. Libsyn's "On Publish" podcasting feature works with Blogger which I first heard about from +Ray Ortega in an interview on The Podcasters Studio with +Rob Walch 

3. Blogger's built in mobile template

4. Drag and Drop layout customization

5. Google Analytics integration

6. Social Sharing options without plugins

7. Uploading images from Smart Phones

8. Consistent "Up time" and no plugin conflicts with platform updates

9. It's FREE!

All in all, I think that anyone who is addicted to blogging like I am should consider starting a second (or ancillary) blog with Google's Blogger platform.

Will you consider starting a second blog in 2020?

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5 Ways to Grow Your Email List With YouTube Videos

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Building an email list is an important task for any blogger or webmaster. In this episode we explore 5 ways you can use YouTube Videos to get email subscribers for your newsletter.

Grow Your List With YouTube

Over the last few months several people have subscribed to my email list after watching one of my YouTube video tutorials. 

Here are 5 methods I used to grow my list:

• Add a link in each video description to my optin form
• Ask - I simply ask people to subscribe
• SlideShare Pro users can upload videos and capture leads
• LeadPlayer Plugin for WordPress
• Viewbix - is by far the most effective tool for growing my email list with YouTube Videos.

Additional resources mentioned in today's show:

Join my Email List
AWeber Email Marketing

LeadPlayer Review by VidiSEO

A Marketer's Guide to SlideShare

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My All Time Favorite Tip for Getting Blog Traffic

MS. ILEANE SPEAKS PODCAST HAS MOVED!

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In this episode I talk about how you can get more blog traffic by paying attention to the information found in Google Analytics.

Getting Traffic

We always communicate with our readers on blog comments, Twitter, Facebook and even through email responses to our newsletters. Even though these readers are extremely important and they represent our core group of followers, there is another group that we need to listen to as well.

The only way to understand what this "silent" group of readers is trying to tell us is by looking at our tracking statistics. There are a lot of different software programs we can use to do tracking but I recommend using Google Analytics.

Analytics Integration with Webmaster Tools

Google Analytics can be integrated with so many other Google products and primarily I go into detail about the integration with Google Webmaster Tools. You can learn more about Google Webmaster Tools in a previous episode of the podcast and you can find watch this video tof find out how to make the connection between the two accounts.

How to Connect Google Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWtKoMA1gY

Once you connect the two account the Search Engine Optimization reports will help you find which posts on your blog are getting the most traffic from Google. This is really helpful for you determine how effective you are at getting search traffic for the terms you are going after. On the other hand, you'll also gain insights on what you might be doing wrong! But once you have that information you can put a positive spin in this by creating more content that people like. 

I share two examples of this from posts on my Basic Blog Tips blog and how I was able to turn this into a successful traffic generation tool for my blog.

Google Analytics and FeedBurner Integration

It's also a wonderful idea to allow FeedBurner to integrate with Google Analytics. I give an excellent example of how Justin Young from Major Money Tips http://www.majormoneytips.com/how-to-use-google-reader-find-and-share-content-553/ put this to good use on his blog.

This is how you can really listen to your readers and develop  more of the content they want to read about and more importantly, you can provide them with the content that they are searching for. This will help you get more traffic but also help your readers by giving them information that addresses a problem they are trying to solve or fulfills a need that they have. Eventually these "silent" readers will become part of you core group of commenters, followers and subscribers.

Happy blogging!

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