Statistics. Who automatically cringes? Read this ...

I was totally excited when Tammy asked me to write about my experience during the Back to School, Back to Blogging Challenge hosted by Kludgy Mom. When I sat down to think about what I learned from this challenge, I was overwhelmed, I didn’t know where to start – I learned so much! I decided to do a Best of Back to School, Back to Blogging Challenge and post the favorite five things I learned and found beneficial! This is #5.  Here we go……

 Statistics

I’m guilty of obsessing over my blog statistics. I would check out my Google Analytics each night and would get excited that I had three more visitors today than I did yesterday or that the average time people spent on my site was now 2 minutes, 26 seconds! Yes, that is exciting, but other than that, I didn’t know how to get the most out of my blogs statistics. That’s where the B2S/B2B came in!

Kludgy Mom introduced us to the StatBook StatBook. She gave us an excellent tutorial on how to bring all those worthless important information we pulled from our statistics into one spot. She walked us through the making of the book, and what information was important to include. Kludgy suggested many important statistics to include that I hadn’t thought of as significant until then. Now that my StatBook is complete, each month, I will enter the prior month’s stats and can start to look for trends in my blog!

• The Official B2S/B2B information about statistics can be found here HERE and here HERE!

This is the last guest post from Cori, she was a real life-saver. I hope you enjoyed it!

Who needs ideas?? Go to the idea bankl!

Courtesy of Cori 


We’ve all gone through blogging slumps. We have nothing worthwhile to blog about. Life is boring. Thus, your blog is boring. Now can you get out of the rut, with Kludgy Mom's Idea Bank]!

The Idea Bank is comprised of nearly 700 writing prompts! Pick a prompt, and write about it! It’s as easy as that!

The Idea Bank is continually being edited and updated! Have a prompt you want to add…according to Kludgy we should “keep the Idea Bank fresh by depositing a new idea (by leaving a comment) if you make a withdrawal of an idea”. I challenge you to leave a deposit or two in the Idea Bank, let’s keep the Idea Bank balance high!

• The Official B2S/B2B information about the Idea Bank can be found here Idea Bank, if you want to check out the idea book you can find it here HERE.

If you are enjoying the guest posts, I hope you are showing the love to Cori & Gigi!! ~ TP

Photography ~ guest series continues!!

 Guest series with Cori from Coris Big Mouth continues with her comments on how to add photos to your blog....

 

I think in my next life I want to be a photographer. Lately, I am so intrigued by not only photography, but also techniques and photo editing! Prior to B2S/B2B, I became a fan and follower of Alicia’s blog A Beautiful Mess and her beautiful photography. (If you haven’t checked out her blog, you must! You’re totally missing out!). Well, it didn’t surprise me that she was chosen to do a guest post on photography for the final week of the challenge!

 

Alicia reassures all us non-photographers or photographer-wannabees that “these days, you don’t have to be a photographer to have amazing photos”. Few! There’s still hope for me! Here are a few of her suggestions to add better quality photos to your blog.

 

• Use Stock Photos – Perfect if you forgot to take photos or you don’t have photos appropriate for a blog post!
• Utilize Photo Editing Programs – I’ve been getting better about using photo editors to improve my photos! It’s amazing what a couple simple enhancements can do to a boring photo! My personal favorite photo editor is an online program Picnik [http://www.picnik.com]. With Picnik you can edit and enhance photos and make collages! All very user friendly!
• Watermarking – I’m bad at this, but I understand that in today’s world, you really need to watermark your photos, so other people don’t steal them. This is one aspect of photography and my blog that I need to improve! But with all the crazies in society today, you can never be too careful when trying to protect your family!
• The Official B2S/B2B information about Photography can be found here HERE.

 

Guest post!!

http://www.kludgymom.com/As most of you know, I'm whirling away on completing my degree (less than 3 wks, woot!). So, Cori from Cori's big mouth has graciously agreed to be my guest poster for the week while I finish up some last minute school projects.  Here are some tidbits to help you get to know her:

• started a hairbow making business
• nanny for triplets
• going to college and currently taking American Sign Language
• Preemie Awareness Advocate
•  done a lot of traveling through caribbean cruises, even been through the panama canal
• successfully finished the B2SB2B challenge
• Love, Love, Love to scrapbook just wish I had more time to do it!

This fall we participated in an event sponsored by Gigi @ kludgymom.com called "Back to School, Back to Blogging" or #B2SB2B for you Twitter affecionados.  Cori is sharing her favorite gems of wisdom from that event with you. Today's gem, NETWORKING!  Enjoy!!  Here's Cori ... :)

#1: Networking

 

Networking. You either love it, hate it or are scared to death of it! I for one, L*O*V*E networking with others, but I know that others are completely overwhelmed by the whole concept!

 

Well Kludgy Mom made it easy and broke it down into three focus areas: Blog Networks, Comments, and Social Media – even better she broke it down into an easy to follow diagram! The best part is….she made three separate diagrams (TP here, pardon the interruption, I was unable to get the pics to post ): )depending on how many followers you have to determine where you should spend most of your time in the blogosphere! How awesome is that?!  

 

1. Blog Networks: Not only do you need to JOIN blog networks, but you need to be ACTIVE in the networks! Post questions in their forums. Respond to others. Participate in events. Visit the blogs of the day. I’m a currently a member of two Blog Networks, Blog Frog and Bloggers. I know there are tons more and I challenge you to find them and join!

2. Comments: I’m sure you’re like me and read blog after blog and enjoy it! But how often do you leave a comment? If you have something thoughtful or pertinent to say, take the extra minute to comment. Everyone loves comments, no matter if they are famous established bloggers or a newbie blogger - a comment is a comment!

 

3. Social Media: I use Twitter, Facebook and Stumble Upon on a daily basis as a way to promote and share my blog with the world! You can set-up self-publishing/auto-feeds for both sites. So as soon as you publish your blog post, it’ll post to Twitter and/or Facebook…how easy is that?!

•  Twitter: Kludgy Mom wrote an awesome eBook on Getting Over Your Fears of Twitter that has some great information on how to get the most for your blog out of Twitter!
• Facebook: Facebook is a great way to share your blog feeds with your friends and family! You can even take it a step further and set-up a Facebook Fan Page for your blog! Fan pages are great because you can share your blog feeds with fellow bloggers who aren’t on your personal Facebook page!
• Stumble Upon: See above!

 The Official B2S/B2B information about Networking can be found HERE. If you want more information for New Bloggers (less than 100 followers) click HERE]. If you want information for Growing Bloggers (100-300 followers) click HERE and if you want more information for Established Bloggers (300+ followers) click HERE.

 

Okay, I know that was a lot of information for one blog post!

 
If you want to check out the ENTIRE Back To School, Back To Blogging Challenge, you can check it out on Kludgy Mom's blog. If you are curious what I had to say about the challenge, you can check out my posts for the challenge HERE!

 

Happy Blogging Everyone!

 

 

A statistical nightmare

Today's guest post is courtesy of Lanita Moss. Here is a brief bio:


She is married with two adopted girls.  She is a lawyer & business woman.  She and her husband have cattle interests in Texas and New Mexico.



She is also a breast cancer survivor and in 1998 co-founded the Young Survival Coalition, an organization for young women affected by breast cancer.
Her first husband was killed in 1998 in the Swissair 111 plane crash off the coast of Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia. This sparked a concern with aviation safety, including sitting on the board of directors of the National Air Disaster Alliance.
She always been fascinated by the different roles that today’s woman plays. For example, wife, mother, lawyer, business woman, nurse, chef, chauffeur, wanna-be artist, breast cancer survivor, etc., etc., etc.


Without further fanfare, "A Statistical Nightmare" ...


I am not a math person. Really. So when Tammy put out an SOS that she was taking a Multivariate Statistics class this summer, my heart went out to her. I felt her pain, but better her than me.


Let me say it again…I AM NOT A MATH PERSON. When I was in high school I took Algebra I because I was on the college track. I did OK, but it is something that doesn’t come very naturally. My plan for the class was to have a high enough average because when we hit the story problem section, my grade was going to take a nosedive. If I had a high enough average, then I could somewhat recover by the end of the semester.


My foolproof plan didn’t work as well with Geometry. Almost flunked that class. However, I did graduate with a GPA that would get me into college. The University of Illinois. (Go Illini!) I started out my college career as a psychology major. Each college within the university had their own graduation requirements. Psychology fell within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The College of LAS required multiple years of a foreign language and statistics. There was no way I was ever going to mumble my way through multiple years of French and I was SO afraid of the 5 hour Stats requirement that I changed my major. Yep…changed it. I didn’t want to really be a psychologist anyway. I wanted to be a sports psychologist…you know, study the psyche of athletes…or the physiques of athletes. I found out that I could change majors, study athletes (!) and avoid French and statistics. What a deal!


I eventually went on to get my BS in Kinesiology, which wasn’t a whole lot of help when I went to law school. The joke in law school is that lawyers don’t do math…that’s why they go to law school. The only law school classes that have anything to do with math are Federal Taxation and Business Organizations. Surprisingly, Fed Tax was my first A in law school…I think because I was SO afraid of the math…or the government. When we got to the part in Bus. Org that had to do with equations…you could hear the entire class hold their breath in fear and start to pop out in sweat…that’s how bad lawyers hate math…except on how to figure out their fees.


So, now I am highly educated. I have many degrees hanging on my wall, but not one of them…NOT ONE OF THEM required statistics. I should get a degree for statistical avoidance!


So my hat is off to Tammy for tackling a degree that requires Multivariate Statistics. She clearly is smarter than me. Good luck Tammy.


Please visit Lanita @ http://amothershood.com/