Newbie’s Guide to Social Networking Part One

Set up a blog. The easiest and cheapest (free) to do is to set up a blogger account. Go to www.blogger.com

After you set up your blog, which should only take a few minutes, you want to add a follow button to your blog. This is very simple to do. On your blogger dashboard will be several different items you can add to your blog. First, click on layout, and then click on gadgets. Here is a screen shot of some of the items you will see:

Look for the option “followers.”  Click on that. Plug it into one of the places where it gives you an option to add a gadget. Now you will be able to capture followers to your blog as people visit your blog. Also, be sure and click on followers for the John 3:16 blog at http://john316mn.blogspot.com and follow us.

Now that you have your “follow” button set up, you want to add a couple of the John 3:16 widgets to your site. Here is a screen shot for the John 3:16 Marketing Network Blog widget.

You will notice under the widget on the right side the words “get widget.” Click on that and it will bring up an .HTML code. You take that code and copy and paste that into the option for .HTML/Java Script after going to layout and clicking on “add a gadget.” It will take you to a screen shot like below (you might have to click down the page a little bit).

Again, you click on .HTML/Java Script, and then you cut and paste in the code from the John 3:16 Marketing Network Blog widget. Click save, use your mouse to move around your new gadget if you don’t like where it’s appearing, save your blog again, and then you will now have the John 3:16 Marketing Network Blog widget on your blog. Since we created the widget, the widget has appeared over 100,000 times all over the Internet on various member blogs. That’s what networking does, and that is the power of networking.

You will notice we have other widgets on the John 3:16Marketing Network Blog, including the “countdown to launch” widget. Please feel free to share as many of the John 3:16 Marketing Network widgets on your site as you wish.

Please notice on the top left-hand side of your new blog a “share button.” If you click on that, you will have an option to share the page on Facebook or Twitter. If you want to share a specific blog and not the page, click on the title of the blog article and it will only share that specific article.

Be sure and post your first blog. I would recommend that you post at least every other week. Don’t know what to post? Think about who your target audience is. If you write Christian romance, perhaps you might write a book review about a Christian romance book. You might like to feature one of our John 3:16 Marketing Network romance authors on your blog. Just think about what you could post to attract followers, remembering content is king.

You can also announce your new blog on the John 3:16 Marketing Network forum. Many of the authors in the network will visit your site and start to follow you, and you will be well on your way to building a social networking platform.