Show Me The Awesome: Finding My Voice

For Show Me The Awesome, I wanted to write about one of the things I do really well: preschool visits. I have to say that I absolutely love this age group and find their enthusiasm infectious.I can remember being so nervous to do any kind of visits when I first started out. The fear of a group of strangers was terrifying to me (even if those strangers only came up to my knees).

 It took a while before I realized that the trick to a successful group visit was to share my absolute favorite material, and nothing less and then my natural enthusiasm for those stories would shine through. Realizing that was my "lightbulb moment" and I have looked forward to having preK classes come in to my library ever since.

Being a great youth services librarian means finding your own voice. It means I'm constantly discovering books that fit with my personal voice and style. What are your favorites? Please share them in the comments. Here are mine:

Silly Sally by Audrey Wood
Red Sled by Lita Judge
Can You Make a Scary Face? by Jan Thomas
Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett
BINGO draw and tell story by Dr. Jean
Little Mouse, Little Mouse felt board story (traditional) 

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Tween Book Club: Unsinkable by Gordon Korman

May's selection for the tween book club was Gordon Korman's Unsinkable. I've been a fan of Korman since I was a teenager myself and I knew the kids would love to read the first book in his Titanic series. They even noticed right away that the three cover photographs together show a complete image of the Titanic!

As far as what we did, we talked about some general book discussion questions. I followed Abby the Librarian's suggestion to use the book 882 1/2 Amazing Answers About the Titanic to share some trivia. We also did a Titanic crossword puzzle I found. I pulled a lot of our Titanic books and let the attendees go through them and share anything they found interesting.

Unfortunately this program was held during that big storm on Monday evening, so we had a small turnout and most of the girls who came were not able to finish the book. But we spent a lot of time just talking and I think it was still a fun time for them. I am really enjoying getting to know these young ladies! This was our last meeting until September, but luckily they will all be joining me again in the fall. If you have any ideas for a book that would be fun for us to read in the next school year, please suggest it in the comments! We usually read paperbacks and the program is open to kids in grades 4-6. 

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There's a First Time for Everything: Booktalking

I have been in youth services for more than 6 years in public libraries and this is the first year I've ever been asked to go to schools and booktalk! I will admit to completely panicking at first, but then-- like any good librarian would-- I started doing some research. Now I am sharing some of the resources I discovered along the way.

A search in my library's catalog for "booktalk" turned up an awesome book from 2003: The Booktalker's Bible: How to Talk About the Books You Love to Any Audience by Chapple Langemack. I found Chapple to be very reassuring to me even while most of the recommended titles given as sample booktalks are actually adult books. The advice is solid no matter your audience.

I also found Silly Books to Read Aloud by Rob Reid to be a great source of short book talks. I will be the first person to admit that my personal reading tastes tend towards the macabre so I thought this was a great way of balancing the mood and throwing some funny titles in the mix as well.

Before I started writing my talks, I found it really helpful to listen to some of the audio ones that Multnomah County Library has on their podcast for Kids and Teen Booktalks. It gave me a sense of what to include since I hadn't done any booktalking as a professional but did write some in my YA literature class in library school. I also looked at some book reviews aimed at a tween/teenage (not professional librarian) audience to see how the books' plots and appeal were being described.

Book Speed Dating Rating Card

Here are the titles I booktalked* to the 5th graders: 
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
The Twits by Roald Dahl
Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf by Jennifer Holm

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen

Smile by Raina Telgemeier

Weird But True! 2: 300 Outrageous Facts by National Geographic

BOMB: The Race to Build--And Steal--The World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin

I also did a "book speed dating" part of the program where I pulled some of the titles that we have used as book discussion group books at my library in the past (and thus had lots of copies). The kids had a few minutes to "sample" the book by reading the blurb and possibly a few pages and then I gave them a sheet to mark done whether they wanted to read it or not and included a space for them to jot notes down. I saw this idea on a blog months ago--can't remember which, so sorry!--and loved it. My fellow Michigander and someday-best-friend-but-doesn't-know-it-Colby Sharp just posted about how he does book speed dating in his classroom. I like that it gives kids permission to say "NO, THAT BOOK IS NOT FOR ME." Summer reading is all about choice, right?

The books the kids got a chance to "date"** were: 
The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

If anyone has any advice for fun ways to spice up booktalking, or any advice at all, I'd love if you'd leave a comment below. Or recommend your favorite books to do at this type of occasion!


*Yes, I read all of these before booktalking them. I tried to come up with books for varying reading, interest, and maturity levels because the kids vary so widely at this age.
**These too

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Tween Book Club: WONDER by R.J. Palacio

At my new job, one of the programs I'm doing is a book club for tweens grades 4-6. April was my first time leading it and the book selection* was Wonder by R.J. Palacio. The kids seemed to like it well enough but no one raved about it.

Here's a little background on how the book club works. We meet once a month, during the school year only, on a Monday evening at 6. The library provides dinner (pizza) and a drink (Capri Sun or pop--NOT SODA). The books (usually paperbacks, but not with Wonder since it was only available in hardcover) are purchased out of the library's programming budget and are only used for book clubs system-wide (often, summer reading prize books are added into this collection). The kids register and there's usually around 5 kids, which is a small program for us but easily managed.

For Wonder, I printed off the book discussion group questions from the author's site. I also made a playlist for the book's trailer and some of the songs quoted in the book on YouTube as I didn't think the kids would be too familiar with some of the lesser known songs. The kids spent most of the time working on the word search I made made  using names from the characters and concepts from the book (like precepts) and getting to know each other. We also talked about the precepts and what ours would be.

*Both April and May (Unsinkable by Gordon Korman) book club selections were made by my predecessor before I came on board. Luckily for me, I'd already read and liked them both before I started but re-read to freshen my memory. I'm a huge Gordon Korman nut (and have been since high school when I read Don't Care High!) so I am looking forward to the end of the month when we talk about that book. I really enjoyed our first book club meeting! 

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Youth Programming Ideas from Spring Institute 2013

On Friday, Sara, Anna, and I presented "The Time-Crunch Librarian: Low-Cost, High-Yield Programming to Save your Sanity" at the Michigan Library Association's Spring Institute Conference. During our presentation, we collected index cards with attendees' favorite current programs from their libraries. We also brought some random junk that we had out to see what kind of programs they might inspire. I promised to collect all of the suggestions into one post, which you are currently reading. I can't really elaborate on any of the ideas, as all I have to go on are what people wrote down, sorry! I added some notes in italics.

Favorite Current Craft or Programs  

• Grab bag crafts (Use up old craft supplies/kits)
• Butcher block paper murals
• Toddler dance party
• Lego Creation Day (drop-in, make something, put up on display within the library)
• Rubber stamps (can use over and over)
• Pet Parade Storytime (March around the library with dressed up pets, prizes, a story, and photo booth. Very low cost and fun. Just need to make sure people are supervising their animals. I'd also add that you might want to restrict very small/easily scared animals like gerbils from attending as I personally librarians who have had pets die at events like this.--Anne)
• Cave Drawings for SRP (Recycle the crinkly brown packing paper from delivered boxes. Lay it out on the table, have kids make their own cave drawings. Display in the library.) 
• LEGO Challenge (Scoop random pieces of Legos into lunch bags. Each builder or team of builders has to try and make something out of the pieces they have and the challenge is to use all of the pieces)
• Scavenger Hunt (Packet of 10 clues that take participants around the entire library. Encouraged to work as a family/small group. Done during the 4th of July week as a passive/stealth program. 
• Shel Silverstein poetry (illustrate "Bear in Fridge" out of poster books. Read poems and books and have kids write poems or illustrate them.) 
• Find community folks with special talent to come in. We've had a lady with an accordion and great singing voice, an alligator rescue farm, a storyteller, the fire department. 
• Luau at storytime. (Decorated area like under the sea. Had grass skirts and leis. Took pictures with big fake fish with the kids.) 

Ideas Inspired by Random Junk
The instructions for this activity said to pretend you had an unlimited supply of the given item. 

• Foam picture frames: Ring Toss, Ocean scene (using ocean themed foam stickers), sun catchers,(frame holds paint within a sandwich bag), use for DIY photo booth at program, decorate with stickers, bean bag toss or target,
• Wand: Walking Tag, cat toys, give as souvenirs,
• Neon glowsticks: firefly craft, lava lamp, glow-in-the dark scavenger hunt, cut eyes out of paper towel tube and insert glow sticks for spooky decorations, blinking alien ships
• Board game spinner: fortune telling game, storytelling, station assignment, make your own board game program, use for actions in storytime (like "hop __3___ times" or give each a number and help them learn to recognize them), use to take turns during Mad Libs/storytelling, life size Clue, 
• Crepe paper strip with star print: mummy, star collage, macrame, scarf activity at toddler storytime, octopus craft, windsocks, headband
• Tiara: Fancy Nancy/Princess Party or Tea Party
• Foam Stickers: Put on craft sticks to make puppets, paper plate aquarium,
• Plastic planter: Gardening craft, Make flowers out of tissue/crepe paper
• Contact paper: Sensory items, sand art, tissue paper art
• All Items: Mermaids & Mummies Party, Under the Sea Princess Party

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Shelf Challenge 2013

Since I started a new job on April 1st, I thought joining the 2013 Shelf Challenge would be a great way to start learning my new collection. If you're not familiar with Shelf Challenge, it's run by Matthew Winner (a 2013 Mover and Shaker, woot!) to celebrate School Library Month. In Matthew's words, here's how it works:

Your mission, if you choose to accept it:

Select a section of your library collection to read throughout the month of April. 

• Make it manageable and appealing. (I'm planning to read the all of the "H" books in our everybody section, which will include Henkes and maybe some other unexpected favorites.)
• Try to read every book in that section over the course of the month. 
• For everybody books, read them cover to cover. For fiction, read the dust jackets or back cover descriptions. For Nonfiction/Informational, choose a section of Dewey and go nuts.
• Share selected gems (and cringes) through a favorite social media outlet, such as Shelfari, GoodReads, or through your blog or Twitter feed (use #shelfchallenge to connect with others).

I had originally planned to do the letter X, but it turns out that we only had one book on the shelf in our everybody section under X and I didn't really fancy reading about the X-Men, so I switched to Z. You're probably thinking I'm really lazy now, but I didn't want to take on too much with my new job as I've got storytimes and summer reading planning and all of that good stuff to take care of as well.

Here are some of the more memorable books I read:

The first one was The Pumpkin Blanket, a story about a little girl who sacrifices her beloved baby quilt to warm some of the pumpkins in her family's garden. It is very reminiscent of The Giving Tree and other stories about sacrifice. These are not favorites of mine, but are worth knowing for those patrons who do enjoy that type of story.

One noteworthy story was Countdown to Grandma's House by Debra Mostow Zakarin, which portrays a girl's HUGE excitement about going to grandma's house. Rather than a stereotypical "Granny," the grandmother in this story is relatively young and enjoys activities like gardening, painting nails, and flashlight games under the covers.

Another in my to-read pile was Baby Shower by Jane Breskin Zalben. This was the third book on the shelf and the first one that I had read previously. As with the first time I read this book, I was left with the distinct impression that it would be quite confusing to young children. Older children (elementary age) who are planning to attend a baby shower will find no information useful but may enjoy the literal "baby shower" that occurs in the story. Speaking of Zalben, the first one of hers I would recommend was Hey, Mama Goose. At my old library, I had many regular patrons who were (aspiring or current) elementary school teachers and I could see passing this one on for fairy tale or nursery rhyme units.

Zalben turned up again in Saturday Night at the Beastro. As a full picture book, I think this one is pretty lacking (2.6 stars average on GoodReads), but there is one section that would make for a fun read-aloud around Halloween. I'd start with the section that begins "This evening's food is, of course,/cuisine prepared without remorse" which leads into a long list of disgusting food. Teachers may enjoy the opportunity to introduce some of the vocabulary words which will be unfamiliar to most children.

A fun discovery was A Zeal of Zebras, an abcedary of collective nouns.  Each spread also includes non-fiction information about the animals. One of my favorites was "an embarrrassment of pandas," which has striking black, white, and red artwork with just a hint of green bamboo. Also appropriate was an "ostentation of peacocks," which suggests you replace your guard dog with a peacock. Fun fact: the staffers of Woop Studio (this book's authors) got started doing graphic design for the Harry Potter movies.

I have been fascinated by books with moving parts since I was a kid, so I thoroughly enjoyed Knick-Knack Paddywhack! as done by Paul Zelinsky. I had the opportunity several years ago to see Zelinsky speak at Western Michigan University during one of the Youth Literature Seminars and it was a fantastic experience. I hope they still do those seminars although I'm now on the other side of the state. Another Zelinsky treat was his version of Rumpelstiltskin, a Caldecott Honor book. Gorgeous!

One that surprised me with its touching words was Our Tree Named Steve by Alan Zewibel. You will recgonize David Catrow's distinctive artwork, but it is very subdued to go with the sad ending of this story. I have a particular fondness for one of the trees in the yard of my childhood home so this resonated with me.

Books to try at storytime:
I Swapped My Dog by Harriet Ziefert Could flannelize this one!
Sleepy Book by Charlotte Zolotow
A Little Story about a BIG Turnip retold by Tatiana Zunshine (I have a flannel for this folk tale already!)

Stats
Total Number of books read: 41 (We have about 10,000 titles in our everybody section at my new library.)
Books I Had Read Before: 4
Total Number of pages: I was told there would be no math, but 41*32=1312, so that's an estimate
Mistakes found: 2! 1 book had been fixed with the pages out of order and I noticed that Lights on Broadway had this line in the text: "starred in [title of show], The Full Monty, The Little Mermaid" on the H is for House spread.

At first I was disappointed that there weren't more gems in the collection, but maybe this is an exercise in reminding me of just how difficult a great picture book is to find (and to create, no doubt). 

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The First Day of School

Today is the first day of School Library Month*. It's also my first day at my new job! I wanted to talk about School Library Month because I never would have become a librarian without the librarian at my school. I am from a small town in Michigan and from 4th-12th grade, I had the same librarian, Mrs. Gould. I remember my first day in 4th grade when I walked into the elementary school library. Mrs. Gould read us Lon Po Po and (here goes my street cred) it scared the daylights out of me. From then on, "library" was my favorite class.

In high school, Mrs. Gould picked me to be her aide in the junior/senior high library, where I learned how to use a typewriter for the first time to fix spine labels. I used an ILS program to check out materials to my friends and classmates. I shelved some books, possibly some even correctly. It was a great way to spend a few hours each week. Mrs. Gould retired shortly after my graduation.

In college, I remembered how much I had liked working in the library environment and decided to try and get a job at the local public library system.  After I graduated, they hired me part-time to work in circulation. I loved it and started library school. While studying for my MLS, my branch manager promoted me to work in youth services as a paraprofessional. Not long after that, I graduated and starting looking for a full-time job as a librarian. After a few months on the market, I officially became a youth services librarian on January 6, 2009.

Just over a year later, my mother sent me the link to an online obituary. Mrs. Gould had passed away. I wish I had called her before then to tell her that I became a librarian. I think she would have been thrilled. She had a true love of literature and it shone brightest when she would read us books. When I'm having a bad day, I try to emulate her. When I'm distracted by my love of technology and shiny things in general, I remember that it's really about the kids and the stories they need. Thank you for your example, Mrs. Gould.

As a parent, I'm so happy that there are still school librarians like Mrs. Gould sharing their love of literature with kids. While my daughter unfortunately cannot have Mrs. Gould as her school librarian, I hope she will have someone like Travis Jonker, John Schu, or Matthew Winner, just some of the many wonderful school librarians in America, working in her school library.

Today is my first day at my new job. I'm going to be working in the kids' department of a much bigger public library system than my most recent one. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm hoping that my hair looks OK and that the other kids will be nice and let me sit at their table (assuming I can even FIND the lunch room again--seriously, this building is huge!). I'm taking deep breaths. And, I know that, the most important thing is to remember that what I do is for the kids. And everything is going to be just fine.

*Speaking of School Library Month, some of us bloggers are going to be celebrating by participating in Shelf Challenge 2013! We'll be trying to "deep read" through a segment of our collections (say, the H section of your picture books) to Better Know Them, as Stephen Colbert might say. You still have time to join us! 

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Roll a Storytime!

Here's an idea that lots of librarians already do and that I know at least one person has posted for Flannel Friday before (sorry, can't remember who!). I've heard it called "Roll-a-Rhyme" most frequently. Basically, you make a big die (singular of dice!) and roll it. Whatever comes up, is the nursery rhyme that you sing/say.You can build a box out of cardboard. I actually bought mine from Discount School Supply. I'm pretty sure I didn't pay $36, and I don't think I got number cards with them, but it was a few years ago. I made the nursery rhyme cards in Publisher. The dice have vinyl pockets so you can change the contents really easily.

Another idea is to put different movements on there. You can use animal movements. DSS's come with kids pretending to be different letters of the alphabet like this:

Other ideas for these dice: Put different colors and whoever is wearing that color has to stand up. Or touch their nose or lick their elbow. Whatever. Use different shapes and have the kids practice making those shapes with their bodies.With letters--if your name starts with the letter or contains it, for older kids. Or at home with your own little one, you could practice drawing the shapes, letters, etc.

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Tweaking the Children's Department

One of the things I love to do is make small little tweaks in my kids' department. It's amazing to me how moving even a small collection can have a big impact. It shakes the patrons out of their comfort zones and let's them see the department with new eyes. Here's an example of one we did earlier this month: moving the J Kits from the back wall of the picture book area to front and center right, where we used to have the BIG books.

Before, the kits were sort of fading into the wall, which you can kind of see in this extremely grainy photo (sorry, I forgot to take a before photo and had to crop some kids out of an older one).

After switching the Kits with the Big Books, we're looking like this:

The wall behind the big books is looking pretty empty, so I ordered a Pete the Cat poster from ALA. It's here and framed, just waiting for my boss to hang it. 

And here's a close up of the new-to-us (our other branch is now interfiling picture books with CDs in with the regular picture books and offered it to us) kit rack: 

I am hoping the kits will get a lot more use here, now that they are in a much more visible location. If they don't start circulating more during the rest of the year, my plan is to to remove them from the bags and interfile them with the rest of the picture books, as our other branch is already doing. We do have a large number of teachers and homeschooling families that I think would like to use these with their students, if only they knew we had them! By the way, I am still crazy about the turtle sandbox we use for board book storage. 

P.S. As some of you know already, I've taken a new job with a county system here in Michigan. I'm going to be working in the children's department at their main branch starting next week! I'm really excited about my new library and looking forward to working with my new co-workers (if any of them are reading this, HI!!). I will certainly miss my the staff and patrons at my current library though. As far as the blog goes, it might be quiet around here until I get settled in at my new library. I'm looking forward to sharing the great things my new system's youth staff are up to with all of you.

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Bringing Your Blog to the Next Level

Over in the Flannel Friday Facebook group, we've been discussing how to spruce up a blog in Blogger. I've been using Blogger for about 6.5 years (started as a student in library school), so I feel pretty confident in it. I've considered moving my blog over to Wordpress but everything is already set up using Google products and at this point I'm not interested in switching things up.

Anyway, a member was looking for some ideas to improve to function and appearance of her blog, so I thought I would share my suggestions to her (and some more for when she feels comfortable) with everyone. A lot of people have started blogs because of Flannel Friday, so I'm hoping some of these ideas will be helpful for anyone who is interested in upgrading their blog. Lisa wrote a really great post about some of the more beginning things you can do to enhance your blog, but I want to talk about some of the more advanced options.

If you're just getting started...
The most important thing from a reader's perspective is good content. Before you start promoting your blog, take the time to write a few posts so that once people stumble upon your blog there will be some things for them to read. Then they can evaluate whether they want to continue to hear what you have to say by subscribing via email or RSS. (By the way, since Google announced it's shutting down Google Reader, I've switched to Feedly and really like it so far. Feedly reminds me a lot of Pinterest in design. I'm a visual person and can get through the content a lot faster. I've gone and added a bunch more feeds since I can read them faster.)

Another recommendation I make a lot is to consider scheduling posts. I write a lot of blog posts in one sitting  (especially Flannel Friday ones) and then I sit down and change the dates so that when they're published, they will be spread-out. You can find out what your post's URL will be by clicking on the Permalink section of the post settings on the right when you're writing a post. I just copy and paste that and give it to that week's host. I often write 5 or more Flannel Friday posts in one day, since everything (felt board, iPhone for pictures, etc.) is out and ready. Then I will change the dates so that the posts will last a whole month.

Help your readers find the content they want easily
Also, think of what would make good categories for what you are writing about. You might decide to break posts into storytime age groups (baby, toddler, preschool, school-age, etc.), or into themes (apples, winter, penguins). There are a lot of possibilities and only you know what will work best for your blog. Look at what other bloggers with similar content are using. In Blogger, you can assign labels (also known as tags) to posts to make it easier to find similar things. Here's Google's help page for that.

Another way to display similar items is to install the LinkWithin widget on your blog. You will have to copy and paste some HTML code into your Blogger site to do this, but it is really worth it. It will take a few hours to go through your site, so don't worry if it doesn't display properly immediately. This is free, requires no registration, and walks you through the steps.

Lastly, don't forget to link to previous posts when you are writing new ones! This will help readers who are new find older posts that they may be interested in and remind readers who've been with you a long time to check out some older content.

Maximizing Pinterest Potential
I honestly think Pinterest has been the best thing to ever happen to my blog, in terms of adding new readers. Since it started, I have tried to be better about adding a watermark with my blog's name and what the photo is about. Like Lisa, I add my watermarks in Picasa but I only use the web version through Google+. I try to put an image in every post, because while you can pin text-only things to Pinterest, it is much, much harder to do so. So I either whip up something in Microsoft Paint or find something from the free library over at Open Clip Art (where all the images in this post are from).

Another thing I have done is install a button that puts a "pin it" button on any image. This was really easy to install once I found the right spot, although since I have that fancy image slider on the main page I had to ask my brother-in-law for help to adapt the "pin it" code without breaking that code.  section in your HTML code) and I think it's really cool! It even adds the right URL even if people are your main blog page and not the actual post. 

I also keep an eye on what is being pinned from my site by looking at the Pinterest source page for my blog. Then I adapt what I'm posting to what is getting the best response on Pinterest, in the comments, etc. One thing to think about with Pinterest is whether you want to include downloadable patterns. I like to host mine in my Teachers Pay Teachers store because then I can see how many people downloaded them. It's because I'm nosy that I have a TPT store, not because I'm greedy. I've only made one actual sale! Ha.

Looking at Statistics
Blogger incorporates some basic statistics for you to look at. You can see how many people (and from which countries) visited your blog on a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. basic. You can also see which posts are most popular. That will give you an idea of what content people are looking for and then you can customize more posts on that. Most importantly, you will be able to see where most of your traffic is coming from, whether it's Google, Pinterest, or something else entirely. If you participate in Flannel Friday, the odds are good that much of your traffic will be from those 2 sites.

If you are interested in seeing more detailed information about who is reading your blog, I recommend giving Feedburner, another Google product, a try. You will be able to see statistics for how many people subscribe to your blog via RSS and how many get emails when you update. Google walks you through setting Feedburner up here. Every year I set a goal for how many RSS and email subscriptions I want to reach. Last year I doubled my goal!

If Feedburner is not enough, you can get very detailed stats by signing up for Google Analytics, but I think it's overkill for a simple storytime blog. I had it set up for my blog but I never checked it and since I don't run ads on my blog, I don't need it. Feedburner suffices for me.

Pinterest also has an analytics tool, which I just installed, so I can't really talk about it yet. You do need to verify your site, which for those of us running Blogger or Wordpress means you need to insert a meta tag into your HTML. You are given a unique piece of code to edit into your site. I did find that I needed to add after the code Pinterest supplied for Blogger to accept that code. ALWAYS, always, always download a copy of your HTML before you start tinkering with it. That way you can revert back to the prior version easily. As far as I know my analytics can be viewed by anyone, so feel free to check it out.

Promoting Your Blog
I've found that the best ways to promote your blog are as follows (in no particular order):

• Leave thoughtful comments on other blogs. Don't ask them to read your blog, but if you leave the URL in the commentator information section, there's a good chance the blogger (and many of the other commentators) will stop over and check it out. The more people who read the blog, the more likely it is that some of them will stop over. On the other hand, if fewer people read the blog, then your comment won't get lost in pages and pages of comments.
• Set Feedburner up to autotweet when you have a new post. 
• Be active on Pinterest and don't be afraid to pin your own posts. Don't do 40 posts in one day, but add them to relevant categories sparingly. 
• Respond to comments when people write them! You don't have to reply to ones that say something like "Cute!" but if someone takes the time to write a substantive comment, why wouldn't you want to encourage them to do it again? 

Getting more advanced
I've been interested lately in learning how to do more and harder things on my blog. It took a couple of hours and a lot of Googling to install, but I'm really proud of my current blog template. It is a free template from Btemplates. I had to customize the HTML to change the rotating images at the top, remove some of the "widgets" on the side that I didn't want, and personalize the social media buttons so you can email me or find me on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. Btemplates walks you through the installation process but then you have to figure out how to personalize the code on your own. I like Webmonkey's HTML cheat sheet. I do lots of CTRL-F to find the proper lines that need to be changed. And sometimes I call my brother-in-law, a web developer, and beg for help.

I hope this is helpful information for you! I'm starting to follow some blogs for ideas about how to write more engaging content and also for marketing my blog. I'm not interested in trying to make money off this or any other blog, I figure it is also good to read up on best practices for social media as I also do Facebook posts for my library. Plus, I just find it an interesting topic. I would love for companies to stop offering me "opportunities" to advertise their skateboarding shoes (true story) on this blog though. 

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