Marketing your podcast episodes

Blogger is a great tool for posting podcast transcripts along with old fashioned text posts. Podcasts can be hosted many places, but a greater concern is building an audience. How can you distribute your podcast episodes so people can find them in the first place?

There are many places besides iTunes available to podcasters. First, look for a niche distribution site. The web is a big place and chances are there are sites featuring podcasts on your favorite podcast topic. A second option is to cast the net a bit wider and use a site that hosts podcasts on multiple topics. A favorite site of mine is www.podiobooks.com Sites like this often require a creative commons license, so be sure to read the fine print. They also typically have a way for listeners to donate, which can help defray costs. Another advantage of sites such as Podiobooks is if you don't see your genre or topic category represented, you can be the first pioneer. Another one to try is Podcast Pickle where you can share podcasts and vidcasts.

Just like you would with iTunes or a home grown distribution service (i.e. your web host) having several episodes lined up and ready to go is good karma. We listeners like to know there is more to come when subscribing to an audio or video feed. Be careful who you sign up with and read the fine print. And most important of all - Have fun. You'll meet new people and get feedback on your work.

Setting up a Blogger Custom Domain

Setting up a custom domain for Blogger blogs is a frequent source of questions on Blogger Help. Chapter 10 of Blogger: Beyond the Basics from Packt Publishing covers the pros, cons, and tips on custom domains.

If you are looking for a step by step video on how to set up a custom domain for your Blogger blog, check out Purchasing and setting up a custom domain with Blogger on YouTube. The most important thing to remember is even after you purchase your domain, it takes time for the domain registration powers that be to publish your domain and for other servers on the Internet to recognize it.

Good luck and let me know how it turns out!

Blog it or Knol it?

Google recently announced the public launch of Knol, a single topic web site publishing and hosting tool. If you're familiar with Squidoo, then you instantly grasp knol. Be an authority on a specific topic and go in detail in a way it can be hard to do on a blog. You can also use it as a way to increase potential hits to your blog by linking your knols back to your blog.

So are there times you should use Knol without using Blogger at all? It's up to you, but if you want to do an article about a topic that has nothing to do with your regular blog, and don't want to create a new blog and maintain it, then Knol it.

Have a topic you posted on Blogger and want to dive deeper into the subject? Create a content rich article on Knol and link to your topic from Blogger.

Other potential uses for Knol:

• Post podcast/videocast show notes for a set theme
• List references for topics you've researched
• Host an interest group about a topic on Knol (book club, community group, etc)
• Promote your business with an article that provides free information
• Write a FAQ

Cash from email trash

Fred Black over at Problogger.com had a great post today about the troubles bloggers who use advertising face when trying to balance product reviews, having a life, and bringing in more advertising revenue for their blogs. This got me thinking about ways that any blogger on any platform can build relationships with potential advertisers and still get away from their email once in a while.

I can sum it up in five words: Auto responders are your friends. Most email platforms come with an autoresponder/vacation message service. And most of us have multiple emails. Create multiple emails and use them to field different inquiries and share information. Especially if you host your domain. It takes only a few minutes to set up email addresses for accepting product review inquiries, advertising inquiries, and general information requests. Each of these addresses can have an auto response text set up within their settings on the email platform. You can also add links to pages on your blog that explain the details of how you handle requests for product reviews, sales, advertising, etc.

Going into the nitty gritty details of how to do this is beyond the scope of this blog, since it is slightly different for each email program or client. You will usually find the auto responder in the settings of your email account. Set up auto responses and even filters if you prefer and soon you will have an easier time of managing your email responses and hopefully making more trips to the bank from all the new advertisers you have connected with.

Blinged out Blogger blogrolls

We've all been waiting and hoping for a while now and finally we have a real blogroll widget for Blogger. The actual uses of the blogroll tool go way beyond basic text links. Anything that can be a feed can be added to the blogroll, along with a nice little icon that helps identify whether it is a typepad blog, a Blogger blog, an rss feed ... you get the picture.

Want to link to your twitter feed in style? Check. Flickr stream? Yep, that too. This is a huge step forward in functionality.

The Blogger folks took the time to put together a nice demo feed on how to use the new blogroll widget. You can find it here

Podcasting with Blogger Part One

I really wanted to include a section on the Enclosure link feature of Blogger in the Blogger:Beyond the Basics book, but ran out of space. Now I can take the time to give you all some extra info on how to use Blogger to promote and share your podcasts.
Setting Up Podcast Hosting
You still need to have somewhere to host your podcast. There are a lot of places to do this, and with regular web hosting packages running as low at $5 a month, you may want to consider just uploading the podcasts to a file folder. The big issues for podcasting are going to be:

• Bandwidth - As your podcasts become more popular, regular downloads from a growing audience can eat up the amount of file transfer bandwidth you have. Monitor bandwidth usage closely.
• Storage space - Podcasts are a minimum of 5mb on average, taking up as much as 20mb for a long podcast. Do some math based on how often you will podcast, and how long you expect each episode to run
• Finding a good place to host a podcast - and preparing to move if your audience outgrows the location. There are many choices out there.
  
• Gathering the right equipment and resources - If you're new to podcasting, check out http://www.podcast411.com/ for lots of tips
• Distributing your podcast - Podcastpickle (http://www.podcastpickle.com), Podiobooks (www.podiobooks.com), and of course iTunes are popular places to share your podcast with others. These distribution sites can also help grow your audience, since they are popular destinations.
  
• Providing production notes and info on the individual podcasts and getting feedback - This is where Blogger comes in. You can use Blogger to link to your podcast files (one post for each episode) then include production notes about the episode, such as an overview of what the episode was about, who was involved, that sort of thing. It is also another way to promote the episode, since it will be crawled by search engines.

Blogging your podcast
Now that we have all the prep work done, lets use Blogger to share our podcast.

1. To create a blog post for an individual podcast episode using Blogger, first login to Blogger and click the "Create" menu option under the Posting tab.
   
2. Type the title of your post, then enter the link to your episode by clicking "Add enclosure link" under the Link field.
   
3. You will need to type the URL (path) of your podcast episode. Then enter the type of file it is in the Mime Type field. You can add additional episodes to a single post by clicking the "Add enclosure link" text link.
   
4. Type your production notes in the Compose content box, just like you would normally do for a standard blog post.
   
5. Add some labels to your post to make it easier to find
6. Set the posting options for your post. Click the Post Options text link located below the content box. You can set Reader Comments to allow/don't allow, manage Backlinks settings for the individual post, and the time for your episode, if you want it to appear at a certain time.
7. Publish your post and let the fun begin.
   

Using OpenID to promote your blog

Did you notice the OpenID menu option on the settings tab of Blogger's admin panel? OpenID isn't just a great way to make it easier for visitors to post comments to your blog, it is also a way to seamlessly promote your blog on sites like Technorati. You can see in the screenshot below where I'm using this blog as my OpenID URL. The box below the url lists all sites which can see my OpenID URL. There could be social networking, bookmarking sites, or other blogs on this list. Notice I still need check up on a couple of the social networking sites I belong to, and make sure I'm taking advantage of OpenID with them.



Why OpenID with Blogger really? If you want to make it easy for people to find you and your blog in the blogosphere, taking advantage of OpenID will save you time and keep your identity consistent across multiple sites.

Presenting: Multimedia presentations for Blogger

Recently the folks at Blogger announced the ability to put mini-presentations into your blog. Don't yawn! You can put up presentations that have multimedia elements embedded in them, such as YouTube videos or scary glittery animations. It's easy - you can do it in less than 5 steps.

Let's give this a try. Now, if you've never gone to the trouble of Publishing a presentation with Google Docs before, it can be a little confusing, so I'll take you through it step by step.

1. Log in to Google Documents and create a presentation (New -> Presentation) then, after you have created your presentation it will appear in your documents list as shown in the screenshot below.


2. Select the Publish option from the drop down. If you're using a tabbed browser, the Publish screen will open in a new tab. Click the Publish button.

3. You will now have the option to share your presentation in a mini format. Choose your favorite size from the drop down, then select the code. Here is the sample code for my presentation:

<iframe src="%27http://docs.google.com/EmbedSlideshow?docid=" dg2mm9w9_63fcqgn9cn="" frameborder="'0'" height="342" width="410"></iframe><br />

4. Now you are ready to take the code and place in in your blog as part of a blog post, or into an HTML/JavaScript page element. Paste the code into the post or content section of the page element and save. Voila! All done in less than 5 steps.

Your presentation should display something like this one I whipped up this morning before I had enough coffee:





What does this really mean for users of Blogger? Now you can easily add demos or tutorials to your blog, or even little illustrated stories. Instead of having to upload a static image or figure out how to post a YouTube video, bloggers can quickly whip up a presentation in Google Docs or import an existing document, convert it, then upload it.

Will this be abused by spammers and your evil twin? Yes. Is it a new way to share with clients, friends, and archenemies? Oh, yes.

Find work as a Freelance Blogger for small businesses

Today our department at work got a call for one of our companies customers about blogging. They wanted to start a blog, but didn't understand what it really was, had no one set up in their company to actually do the blogging, and weren't sure what they were going to actually blog about. Seth Godin calls this situation a "meatball sundae" where businesses think just because they start using newer web tools, their business will automatically benefit.

The good news for bloggers: There is a gap, as many of you who freelance already know, for bloggers to fill. Small businesses with a web presence or who are looking to get started with one need your help. Whether you offer them advice as a consultant or become their "ghost" blogger, this is an area of freelance writing I think will continue to grow.

Speaking of writing, if you write an article for Packt Publishing and they accept it, they will send you two copies of books published by them for free. A good way for writers who need references to get them.

Blogger: Beyond the Basics at a discount

Want hundreds of pages of tips, tutorials, and worksheets about advanced Blogger techniques at a discount? Blogger: Beyond the Basics is now available for preorder from Packtpub.com in e-book (under $23) and paperback format (under $32) They are both discounted 20% for early birds.

If you like to read books for free and then tell people what you think about them, you can also sign up to be a technical reviewer for Packt. It's fun, easy, and you get to read books before they are published.

Edit: Anyone who read the post earlier - The wrong book prices were on the Packt site. That's what I get for eagerly posting about it first thing in the morning.

If you'd like to review the book, I'll give the first three people who email me a free copy. Be sure to list your mailing address.

If you blog was a fruit, what would it be?

I was telling my personal trainer today all about Blogger and how a blog would be useful to a fitness professional like him. He could post articles about fitness and health, interact with potential clients, and build a reputation as an expert. This got me thinking of the different reasons people blog.

What kind of blog do you have now? Do you have a vision for what you want it to be like, and how you want other people to experience it? Below is the fruit "horoscope" for your blog.

Apple- Regular, down to earth, every day.
Peach - Simple, juicy, different but approachable
Pear - Refined, Corporate, formal, exclusive
Star Fruit - Unique, Geometric, Exotic, surprising

What's in a blog name?

While editing chapter 9 of the Blogger book, it struck me just how crucial good names are for a blog. Whenever I browse Blogger's blogs of note, it is the titles of the blogs that grab my attention first.

What is the key to a successful blog title? The title of your blog should explain the purpose of your blog clearly, but be short enough to type manually into a browser window and catchy enough to remember. One of my favorites is Cooking with Amy. She clearly describes the experience potential readers can expect when they visit her blog.

If you chose an awkward name for your blog, or if your blog URL no longer really fits, you can still edit the blog title and description. Changing those two items will also increase the chances of people finding you when they perform a search, and potentially improve your search engine rankings if the new title and description more closely match what your blog is about.

Changing the Background color of a widget

Do you have a widget on your blog you want people to notice? Want to add a little extra flair to your blog with different background colors? It is really easy to do. In this article I'll show you how to apply a background color to individual widgets using a little css.

First, you need to find the unique id of your widget. Each page element in Blogger has a unique id, usually a combination of letters and numbers like this: Profile1.
Find the widget ID
You can find the unique ID in your Blogger template.

1. Login in to Blogger, Click Layout, and selecting the Edit HTML sub tab.
   
2. Click the "Expand Widget Templates" checkbox.
   
3. Scroll down the template until you see the widget's tag. Here is the profile tag for example:
4. Now that you have the id, you are ready to style it with CSS.

Styling the widget

1. Scroll all the way back up to the styles area of the template. look for the #side-wrapper style, and position your cursor just after the closing bracket } of that style.
2. Create a new div style for your widget. Type the pound sign # then type the widget id Profile1, then an opening bracket. Click the enter key on the keyboard, then add the background-color attribute: background-color:#ccccff; It can be any color you like. Hexadecimal format is the most flexible way to declare a color. This will put a blue background color on your profile. Type a closing bracket }
   
3. You should now have a new div tag style for the specific widget. It should look like the example below:
   #sidebar-wrapper {
   margin-$endSide: 14px;
   width: 240px;
   float: $endSide;
   background-color: $mainBgColor;
   display: inline; /* fix for doubling margin in IE */
   word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
   overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
   }
   #Profile1{
   background-color:#3399ff;}
   /* Headings
   ----------------------------------------------- */
4. Save the changes, Clear your browser's cache, (ctrl + f5 on a PC) then view the changes. You can now change the color anytime by editing the style you just created in your template.
   

Adding a second sidebar to your Blogger template

Have you been struggling to change your default two column blog template to a more flexible three column one? You can do it in 15 minutes or less with a little math and some copy/paste skills.

Before you begin making any changes, back up your current template. If you are already using Minima, you're in luck, it is the easiest Blogger template to customize. We're focusing on converting more recent Blogger templates, sometimes referred to as Blogger Beta templates.

Making room for an additional sidebar is going to require increasing the width of the Outer-wrapper and the Header-wrapper div styles. We'll use a formula since the width of your blog might not match the width of mine.
Find your ideal width using the following formula:

First find the extra padding by subtracting your main-wrapper + sidebar width from your outer-wrapper width:
extra padding = outer-wrapper width - (main-wrapper width + sidebar-wrapper width)

A template with default Minima widths would look like this when applying the formula:
extra padding = 660 - (410 + 220)
extra padding = 30

Template width formula:
outer-wrapper= main-wrapper width + (sidebar width x 2) + extra padding

The math for a default Minima blog template width formula should look like this:

outer-wrapper = 410 + (220 x 2) + 30
outer-wrapper = 860

Now we know what the overall width of the template we can apply it. everywhere we see our old template width we'll replace it with our new outer-wrapper width. ( like in the #header-wrapper style)


After we've edited the styles it is time to add a new sidebar div tag to the XML tag portion of the template. We will add the new tag directly after the closing div tag for the crosscol-wrapper div. Type
<br /></text><div id="'sidebartwo-wrapper'"><br /> <b:section class="'sidebar'id=" preferred="'yes'"><br /></b:section><br /> </div>
just below that closing crosscol-wrapper div and before the main-wrapper div. Your results should look like this:
<div id="'content-wrapper'"><br /> <div id="'crosscol-wrapper'" style=""><br /> <b:section class="'crosscol'" id="'crosscol'" showaddelement="'no'/"><br /> </b:section></div><br /><div id="'sidebartwo-wrapper'"><b:section class="'sidebar'" id="'sidebartwo'" preferred="'yes'"><br /></b:section></div><div id="'main-wrapper'"></div></div>
Save the template. Now we can add widgets to the new sidebar. Click on the Page Elements sub tab under Layouts and drag widgets over to the new sidebar. Save and view the results.

You can experiment with placing the sidebar in other locations like directly under the main-content wrapper div ending tag or below the ending div tag of the original sidebar.

Want to know more about styling the template for another sidebar? It's all in chapter 2 of my book Blogger Beefed Up, coming out this summer from Packt Publishing. Once the book is released I'll be uploading extra code and images about this and other hot Blogger topics. You'll also be able to download sample pages from the book on Packt's site and get ebook and printed book discounts for ordering early.

Can't Scroll on Blogger Layouts page

Multiple reports of the Layouts page editor not allowing users to scroll have been posted to the Blogger Help Groups recently. Blogger has reported the issue resolved as of today. Clear your browser's cache (ctrl + f5 on a PC), close your browser, then re-open it and login to your blog. Please report any continuing issues to http://knownissues.blogspot.com

There does seem to be an unofficial limit on how many page elements you can stuff into a sidebar or other section of a template before it breaks the visibility of the Layouts tab screen.

Why can't I scroll my Layouts screen?
Blogger code issues - There was an issue with the scrollbars that was fixed today. The knownissues.blogspot.com blog had the following update:
--------------------

Since 2/12, the Layouts page elements editor has not had scrollbars around the wireframe template. Until this is resolved, you can often scroll wide templates by clicking and dragging on empty space.

Nevertheless, we encourage template designers to use the body#layout CSS selector to add CSS styles that adapt templates to the editor.
Update, 2/29: The Layouts editor now expands to the size of the template. — latest update on Friday, February 15, 2008

----------------------------------
Browser updates can cause temporary problems
It can be related to how different browsers display information. IE6 appears to display a full scrollbar, while recent updates to FireFox seem to be causing display issues. Find out how to compress your layout

Custom Templates may break the Layout Editor
Making custom changes to your blog template can cause issues with the layout editor. Blogger controls the layout and look of the administration screens using CSS. Be careful when adding new CSS styles or code to your template.

Jazzing up a Twitter Badge with CSS

When using a plain HTML/JavaScript Twitter badge, you have to provide your own CSS styling. Your badge will look similar to the one below:

Here is a simple CSS style block you can modify to glam up your basic Twitter badge:
<style>#twitter_div{width:87%;margin:5px 5px 5px 10px;padding:0 3px 3px 3px;background:#ffffff url(http://www.leesjordan.net/fruitforall/images/ffa-mini-logo.gif)no-repeat;border: #008000 3px solid;text-align:left;}#twitter_update_list{font-weight:bold;display: inline;}#twitter_update_list ul{float:left;}#twitter_update_list li{list-style:none; padding:0 2px 2px 2px;}</style>

You should already have the code for your Twitter badge. If you don't, go to www.twitter.com/badges to grab the code. It should look similar to this:
<div id="twitter_div"><ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/fruitforall.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=2"></script><br />

Got a Blogger Issue? Known Issues can help

I see a lot of posts in the Blogger Help Group that could be easily fixed by visiting Blogger's Known Issues blog. There were a whole slew of updates posted last week, ranging from making the layouts screen work nice with the browser Safari 3.0, to changing the Template tab to the less confusing "Layout".

Why visit the Known Issues blog? When an issue is still open, you can easily report it right there on the blog. The top of the known issues blog contains a tag cloud of links to specific issue topics. You can also comment on an issue. The main page of the blog also contains a series of brief updates and listings of the latest issues. Temporary fixes are often posted to work around known issues as well.

Additional navigational features on the blog include the ability to sort issues by Outstanding, Fixed, and All Issues. You can also search the blog and subscribe to a feed.

Optimizing your blog for search engines

Bloggers have unique issues when it comes to search engines. We have a lot of content over time, which makes search engines happy. We also face more difficulties if we primarily post images, video, and other multimedia files. Search engines are scrambling to catch up and accommodate searches for rich media content.

Why do the search engines care?
Video, audio, and image content are extremely popular right now and search engine users are looking for better ways to find this content. The search engine that can successfully solve this problem for users will widen the opportunities for additional ad revenue. They will collect more revenue from site owners who mainly offer rich media content and want to be found, and from search engine users who are looking for the content.

What you can do in the meantime
If you create original video content, you can submit it to Yahoo!'s own video content stream and YouTube (Google). Photographers and original image creators will want to take advantage of meta-data for their work and alt image tags. Whenever you add a video or image to a blog post, try to add a descriptive message with it.
Use an RSS/alternative content service such as www.feedburner.com to package your content into different formats for visitors and other interested parties to enjoy. You will be creating additional information about your content at the same time. Useful!

These changes are happening at a rapid pace. Expect big changes over the coming months as the YouTube and Feedburner services acquired by Google mature.

Playing with Google Analytics Report Charts

Google Analytics charts can be viewed in multiple formats. Clicking one of the tiny icons next to the view link under the chart of any report will change the visual format of the chart. You can also specify how much information to see on a chart. The default visual for most reports is a line graph displaying one item. Clicking on the date above the graph will display additional choices, including comparing multiple metric items against each other. Analytics calls this reporting feature "Graph Mode".

When you have your graphical report set up the way you want, you can dive deeper into the display by clicking or hovering your cursor over any point on the chart. You can change the date range displayed by editing the date range at the top of the report.

Want to see a report on your main dashboard when you first login? Click the "add to dashboard" button. Once the report is on the main dashboard, it can be rearranged with other reports by dragging and dropping.

Email a report to yourself and others while you sleep. Click on the email feature at the top of a report. Fill out the "Setup to run automatically" tab of the email report form. The report will be emailed out in the format you choose on the date you specified.

Have a burning question about Analytics? You're not alone. Share your issue and I'll feature it here so others can benefit too.

Improving your blog with Analytics Goals

People come to blogs to read actual content, watch videos, or check out images but that's not all they do. Blogs aren't structured the same way as other sites, especially blogs hosted on a system like Blogger. How do you measure user interactions on your site beyond basic Analytics reports? With Analytics goals of course.

Setting up goals enable you to report on the actions users attempt to take when they visit your blog and see where they are running into problems. You can create goals for many things on your blog including:

• Leaving comments
• Subscribing to feeds
• Making purchases
• Taking a survey or poll
• Visiting a particular post or archive section
• Multi-step widget interaction

In the book we go through an example of tracking users who create their own widgets of our site feed to place on their own site. I worked through many different examples. Whatever you pick for your first goal it should be a measurable task with a definite beginning and end. Start simple - If I wanted to track how many people visited my book page on Packt after clicking a link on this blog I could do that. Hey, that's a nice example! Let's work through this scenario step-by-step.

Mapping out the user path to your goal
First, you pick an action the user will take as their first step. Usually for a product sale it would be a checkout cart page. Then you make a note of all the other steps, if any between that page and the goal page, usually a "thank you for your purchase" page.

Preparing to set up your goal
When you login to Analytics and click on the profile for your blog, you can add up to four goals per profile. Why would you need that many? If it's a really long process, with over 10 intermediate pages, you're going to need to break up the big goal into multiple goals. Each goal under a profile is identified by a letter and number combination. The first goal will be G1. Click the link to create a new goal and you're taken to a special form page to setup the first goal.

Matching up Match types with your Goal URL
Here's where the fun starts. There are three different types of URL situations Analytics currently recognizes, called Match types. If the thank you page is a static URL, you would pick Exact match. There can be no dynamic queries or session ids used on an Exact match goal URL. A page with a session id or other dynamic identifier on the end of it belongs in the Head type, since only the end of the URL is different. The last and most versatile match type is the Regular Expression type. And just to add to the fun, you can use regular expressions with any of the other types. The regular expression type is for those times when you have multiple sub domains all with the same final page in their URL like : http://leesjordan.net/contactus.html and http://portfolio.leesjordan.net/contactus.html.

Adding the Goal URL
After you have selected the match type, enter the goal URL into the, you guessed it Goal URL box. You should also have named your goal something unique, like "Visited Packt Book page" or "Bought Blogger Beefed Up". Don't go naming it "Mary" or "Made Purchase". Remember, you'll probably be adding other goals in the future. You wouldn't name all your children or dogs the same would you? No harm meant Mr. George Foreman. Sir.

Time out for Regular Expressions
In the book I go into detail about regular expressions and how they make your life easier. If you've taken any higher math classes or programming classes you know variables can hold the place of other things. Regular expressions at the simplest level can act as placeholders. They also make things happen, which is where people get scared. It's simple really. Say you have a URL like, oh "http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=12345678910111213145". If you select the Head match type, you only have to enter "^/post-create.g\?" without the quotation marks in the Goal URL box. Cool, huh? Less typing, more flexibility.

Funneling users step by step
Remember all those URLs for each step you saved up? Now it's time to enter one of them into each step field, in order. For example, the first step in a user ordering my book through Packt would be adding the book to their cart, so I would enter the URL of the cart page "http://www.packtpub.com/cart". When you are done, click the Finish button.

Waiting for Goal results
Now comes the hardest part: waiting for results. If you get no results on the Goals section of the Reports page after a week, go back and click edit to double check your setup. If you get lots and lots of results, and users aren't making it to the goal page, you have a problem. Example the funner results to see if there is any way you can make it easier for your visitors.

Have suggestions for creating more effective goals in Analytics? Am I just plain wrong? Did something not work? Let me know with a comment or an email. Next Friday I'll did deeper into Regular Expressions, and how to have fun with them. No, really.

Analytics and you

Google Analytics is a handy way to measure the success and effectiveness of your site. You can view many types of reports and track ad campaigns. AdWords customers have it easy. Google automatically sets up campaign goals for any bought AdWords in Analytics.

Using Analytics is a lot like experiencing the ocean. You can drift on the surface and enjoy many benefits, or dive deep for adventure and hidden treasure. Just as diving in the ocean requires special equipment, using the full potential of Analytics takes time and training. I was talking to my aunt yesterday, a former VP of Marketing for Autotrader.com. She mentioned to me that in Marketing it is important to specialize. If you are not an Advertising or Marketing person, or if this whole advertising thing is brand new to you, the advertising portion of Analytics can be confusing and intimidating. I'll be going into detail about goals, funnels, and campaigns as well as the various dashboards available for Analytics users over the next week.

Sidebar Trauma

I see a lot of posts in the Blogger Help Center about sidebar issues. Most of the templates have pretty narrow sidebars - about 240 pixels on average. If you know you want to host video unit ads or showcase large pictures without using default Blogger widgets, you will need to edit your template.

It is important to increase the overall width of the template and the sidebar. Sketch a little diagram of your template on paper with the measurements if you are a visual person like me. Check the properties of the images or video players to discover the minimum width the sidebar should be to display them effectively. Then subtract that number from your current sidebar width to find out how much to increase the overall size of your template by.

Login to your blog and click layout or navigate to the Template tab. Click Edit HTML then save a backup copy of your template. Now you're ready to experiment. Increase the overall template width and sidebar width by the result of subtracting the current sidebar width from the desired sidebar width. Save the template then view your blog in Firefox and other browsers, and at different browser widths. Try uploading one of those pictures that did not fit before. Now you have a custom fit for your sidebar content.

Changing the email address on your blog

It's actually fairly easy to change the email address assigned to your blog. Whatever you do don't delete the blog. It will take some pleading with Blogger employees to get them to restore the blog for you.

Here's what you need to do: Login to your blog with your current email address, then click on Settings in the dashboard or from the admin page. Click on the permissions menu item. Add your other email account as an author. Give them admin access, then logout and log in as the other email address. Go back to the permissions page and delete the original user.

New Year, New Blog?

Did you start the year off with a resolution to share more stories with friends or get more news out to your customers with a company blog? Keeping a blog only takes a few minutes a day, but being consistent with it is tough. I just came off of a long break myself. I spent the time working on the Blogger book from Packt due out this Spring, working on a few hobbies, and even spending quality time with the kids.

This week I'm working on a chapter about bringing in additional revenue with your blog. I'll walk you through how to set up Google Adsense with your blog, give you tips on setting up the ads for maximum impact, and provide resources for additional revenue opportunities.