Stumbled upon Stumble Upon yet?? Here's how!

Cori's  take on Stumble Upon


I have to be honest with you; I haven’t been fantastic about using Stumble Upon. I love the concept, but am having a hard time remembering to Stumble! However, I see how important it can be to bring new readers and potential followers to your blog!

First off, you need to sign-up for  Stumble Upon and I highly recommend you download their toolbar to your browser!

According to Gigi…

“Stumble Upon is a network of sites (not just blogs). When your site is registered with SU, you have a chance of receiving free traffic from other members (called Stumblers). But like with any other social media tool, you have to BE traffic to get traffic.”

Stumble Upon is very easy (assuming you downloaded the toolbar!) to use! When you visit a blog you enjoy, click the “I like it” icon on your Stumble Upon toolbar - that’s it, you’ve Stumbled!! If you are the FIRST person to like that specific page, you will be brought to Review Box. Type in your review and hit submit…easy!

The more you Stumble onto other sites and “like” them, the more people will Stumble upon your site!

Want a jumpstart to Stumble-Upon? There’s a weekly group on Kludgy Mom's Blogfrog Community], where you can add a post you want stumbled that week, and others will stumble that pages in exchange for you stumbling theirs! It’s a great way to begin climbing the Stumble-Upon chain!

• The Official B2S/B2B information about Stumble Upon can be found here HERE.

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

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!

 

 

How I moved towards becoming a WAHM

Today's guest post is from Aysha Iqbal.  She is a delightful lady I met on www.bloggymoms.com.  She is one of my rescuers as we race to the wire in the stats class. Short Bio:

Aysha has been writing online at various websites like Squidoo. She also manages 2 blogs “Journey of an Online Writer Mum” and a gift blog called “Wonderful Gifts for Wonderful People”. She also has an online store featuring photographic gifts at AddMoreColor.

Having come from an extended family where we provided support to each other when it came to child care and to help everyone balance their career and family effectively, moving to the US and starting a family indeed threw me off balance in the beginning. I wanted to play a good role in the upbringing of my child and not send him to daycare too soon. (Plus they cost an arm and leg here...literarily!)

In the beginning, I felt it was impossible to be both, so I chose to stay home to look after the family and household. But eventually, I started becoming less productive & efficient and more importantly, I constantly felt like my brains were rusting away. There had to be a solution.

So I started searching and these were my criteria to determine what the best way I can work from home was:

1. 1.       It had to be flexible hours. I mean I can’t say my son sleeps exactly at that precise moment every day. He is a boy not a robot. 
2. 2.       I have to be able to give the job my best despite the fact that the home came first. In all, I need to be able to manage them all.
3. 3.       In case of unforeseen circumstances, I should still be alright and not in massive trouble. I can't tell ahead of time when the kid would get sick.

So I searched around and landed on ONLINE WRITING AND BLOGGING. I am very glad to have found this avenue as now I feel like I am doing something with myself. Something more than mundane housework! I learn so much each day and through each blog I visit and each forum group I join. This mode of work at home option has been working out so well for me that I actually started another blog to describe my online writing journey.

Blogging has opened many options for me and I hope to be able to conquer them one by one someday. And also manage that with my family. I am not sure if I am a WAHM yet but I am certainly no longer just a SAHM.

Short Bio

Aysha has been writing online at various websites like Squidoo. She also manages 2 blogs “Journey of an Online Writer Mum” and a gift blog called “Wonderful Gifts for Wonderful People”. She also has an online store featuring photographic gifts at AddMoreColor.

Blogging Blitzkrieg

I joined Blogging Moms (bloggingmoms.com) to get some help in getting this blog off the ground. Great site!! Have found out how to add some things. You can check out my page if you like (http://www.bloggymoms.com/tammypatrick). So, slowly but surely, this blog may be something worth looking at!!

In other news, a mom allowed her 7-8 yr old girl to bring a LIVE RABBIT into a convenience store! This prompted 2 questions: has the woman never heard of health codes & why is her child not in school?? Welcome to SWMO, as my Hoosier DH would say "Rednecks R Us", lol.

My Aspie had a good day, aside from LOTS of touching others (non-aggresive, thank the Lord)!! We started a new reward system using an iPhone app called iReward, so far, so good; stay tuned, I will post a review @ a later date. Speaking of my little Aspie, time for dreamland. Later ...