How to (and how not to) market to bloggers

Hi all,

I'm gathering ideas for an upcoming conference panel (see BlogHer Business 07) on blogger relations, specifically how business should talk to and market to bloggers, and how NOT to. I certainly have my list of ridiculous emails from companies wanting my attention, as well as effective approaches. I would love to get your input on this subject.

What are some examples of what you would consider effective approaches that companies have made to you, trying to promote a product?

Conversely, what are some examples of what you would consider ineffective approaches?

The conference isn't until March, so over the next couple of months if you get approached and the promotion falls into either "effective" or "what were they thinking?" please feel free to pass those on to me (elise AT elise {dot] com).

Thanks in advance!

This Post was written by Elise from Simply Recipes

Non-Latin Fonts in New Blogger

Has anyone had any experience using non-Latin fonts in the new Blogger? Can it now work with right-to-left texts?
Also, are you able to edit your post HTML and template HTML in new Blogger , or are you confined to the "easier" drop-and-drag editing?


This Post was written by The Chocolate Lady from In Mol Araan

[Event] Are you a Bay Area food or wine blogger?

Please excuse this interruption of our normal curriculum.

If you are a Bay Area food blogger and did NOT receive an invitation to the Summer Picnic you probably were not on the email list. Please send me your email so I can include you in an event that Sam and I are planning for February. (see the calendar for more details)

This Post was written by Amy from Cooking with Amy.

[New Blogger] Blogger Won't Let Me Switch To The New Version

Because I have been unable to upload photos to my old blogger blogs for the past several days (using Blogger Add An Image button on the create/edit page or the Picasa BlogThis! button on Picasa) I decided to bite the bullet and switch to the new blogger today using the link invite that has been appearing on my dashboard--hoping this would solve the uploading problems.

It wouldn't let me switch to the new version. I got the same message someone else wrote about a few weeks back saying my blog might be too big--they mentioned blogs with a couple thousand or more posts.

I've read through past posts here and see that apparently the problem isn't my fbs membership which is what I thought at first as others did.

I do have two personal blogs with about 1000 posts each, as well as another one with about 200. One of the larger ones only holds photos I uploaded one at a time using Picasa Hello and Blog This!

Is anyone else getting this message when they try to switch to the new Blogger? Do you think the combined number of my blog posts is the problem? They're all on one account.

Thanks!

This Post was written by farmgirl from Farmgirl Fare.

[Blogger] [Uploading Photos] Alternative ways to upload photos to Blogger?

Can anyone suggest a way to upload photos to my OLD blogger blog besides:

1) the ADD AN IMAGE button on the blogger edit/create a post page? (Not working at all for me anymore.)

2) Picasa BlogThis! (Also not working at all for me anymore.)

3) Flickr

I am in the US

use Windows XP

and IE6 (I just switched back from IE7 thinking that might have been the cause of the uploading problems--it wasn't)

I am on DIAL-UP.

I am very HTML/computer challenged.

Thanks so much!


This Post was written by farmgirl from Farmgirl Fare.

Reporting an Adsense Violation

I've found a website that I believe is scrapping rss feed content and using generic searches to post a couple lines of content to their site. And seemingly from their source, they have a Google Ad up. This site seems to carry no original content.

Is this in violation of Google's Adsense? If so, where do I find that text to include in my email to Google?

Should I just drop it given that three clicks away is my actual site?

thanks for helping educate me on this process.

This Post was written by McAuliflower from Brownie Points Blog.

Blogger comment emails

I think somebody may have asked about this before. For the longest time I couldn't figure out what post a comment might have been added to, especially if it was an older one, because the email notification from Blogger didn't specify the original post. Well, I just clicked on the link in the email that only lists my blog name, and it was actually a link to the specific post with the comments. Am I the only person who didn't know this? Surely Blogger could have given the post name in the link--feedblitz manages that for my subscribers.


This Post was written by Peter Cherches from Word of Mouth

(Blogger) Border Help

If you scroll to the very, very bottom of my website, there is a smidge of a piece of border that is repeated. Anyone know how to remove this? Help! Thanks in advance.

Written by Cate from Sweetnicks.

(WordPress) Adding Captcha or Something Similar

Does anyone know how to add captcha or other security image to WordPress? Ever since I switched Well Fed over to WordPress, the spam has been a little much. Help!

Written by Cate from Well Fed and Sweetnicks.

Hello, all,

Can anyone please advise why my updated post does not show up shortly after it has been published?

Just curious if the NEW Blogger has anything to do with it. As with other Food Bloggers, I'm still waiting to see if I want to do the switch until I have to, eventually.

Thanks, in advance, for your input!

This Post was written by Anni from Life is a Banquet.

BETA FEAR

Has anyone switched over and had any issues? I've customized my sidebar and header quite a bit, so i fear it getting all mucked up. Has anyone had any successful / bad experiences with the switch thus far, and how is your situation now?


This Post was written by Garrett from Vanilla Garlic

[Blogger][Publishing Blog]Error message in new blogger

I switched to the new blogger last night, and I thought everything looked fine. Then I tried to publish a new post this morning and got this message:

login failed for user: aminglin with reason: 200 TYPE is now 8-bit binary

On the blogger help group (see here: http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-publishing/browse_frm/thread/f499592f4a236a97/#), it appears that other people are seeing this error, but no solution has been found. Also, I am getting comments emailed to my gmail account, but they are not showing up on my blog. I'm so frustrated, but I guess that goes without saying. Has anyone else had this problem, and have you found any way around it? Thank you so much for any help you can offer.

This Post was written by Julie from A Mingling of Tastes

Vaporized Blog :(

I went to make a tiny edit in yesterday's post and my blog vaporized!?
I see it on my dashboard and all the 146(!) posts but not when I hit the link.
I'm not sure where to turn.
I am not on Beta.
Is it just me that sees a blank page?
Carolg from http://parisbreakfasts.blogspot.com/

[Blogger] [Picasa] [Uploading Photos] Picasa Blog This No Longer Working For Me

Hi Everybody,

Several weeks ago I started uploading photos to my Blogger blog using the Blog This! button on Picasa. Worked fine as of two days ago. Last night I went to upload a photo, opened Picasa, clicked on my photo, clicked on Blog This! and the Blogger sign in page came up as usual. But then, instead of the photo showing up on an html page, I was redirected to my Blogger dashboard. So it looks like I'm just in Blogger, but the tag at the top of the window says I am really still in Picasa. Only there's no sign of my photo or any way to upload it.

I closed down Picasa and tried again today from the beginning thinking perhaps it was just a fluke. Same thing happened.

I'm still using the "old" version of Blogger. I did notice that the sign-in page once you hit Blot This! now has the option for new and old Blogger users, just like when you sign directly into Blogger. I didn't notice any other changes with the Blog This! feature or Picasa in general.

Is anyone else having this problem? Do you think Blog This! is no longer working for those of us still using the old version of Blogger? I could find no helpful information in the Picasa help pages.

I use Windows XP, Internet Explorer, and I am on dial-up.

I did manage to upload a photo a few minutes ago using the upload images button right in Blogger, but it took 15 minutes. I assume because I am on dial-up. I was just about to give up. At least that option is working.

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks and Happy Holidays to everyone!


This Post was written by Farmgirl from Farmgirl Fare

I moved over a blog to the new blogger and lived to tell about it

I have a small, personal blog under a different blogger sign in and I switched it over just now and I was very pleased. I am not ready to deal with changing over my much larger main blog, mostly because of my many template customizations and my sheer terror of either Blogger or me goofing something up .

Here's what I have to report:

Save your current template as a text file and print it out so it is in front of you. (Blogger also save a copy of the original, but this way it is in front of you if you need to type in or change anything)
Take note of any special colors you might have used
Think ahead of time about what labels you might want to use

When you change over your template appears unchanged and you can use the label function immediately. If you want to have a list of the labels you are using you will have to change to the new page elements format and chose a new format, which are based on the templates previously available. (No new looks, unfortunately.)

You can then add in all sorts of goodies such as links and your list of labels by using the page elements button. When you are done, go to fonts and colors to customize. My test blog had some sidebar colors that seriously needed to be changed after the conversion but it was a simple fix.

A note, think about the style of your labels before you begin. If you type labels, LABELS, LaBels, lables, or whatever, that's what the actual label will look like on your post, any subsequent post you use it in and on your blog home page if you display your label list.

Adding labels to old posts looks relatively painless as long as you can tell from the title what the labels should be. There are check boxes and drop down menu on the edit post page to enable adding labels to published posts. You can add the same labels or label to multiple posts at the same time or add labels post by post.

There are differences in how past posts and blog archives are displayed, but for me they were minor. I'll continue to play with my "test" and will let you know if I uncover any issues.

Blogs Combined

I switched from the old Blogger to the new Blogger out of Beta yesterday. I have 3 blogs, two of which are connected, Christine Cooks and Raven Ridge Gardens, and one that I thought was a separate account, Box Car Odysseys.
Now all three blogs are on the same Blogger account and the user stats on my profile are now from the newest blog that I thought was a separate account, effectively deleting the fact that my cooking blog has been on Blogger since 2005! I don't know how to fix this. Can anyone help?
Thanks!

This Post was written by Christine from Christine Cooks

[Blogger] How did my side bar get resized?

I cannot for the life of me figure out how come the left hand side bar of my home page is suddenly TINY. I didn't make any changes!

Can anyone explain to me how to make the text bigger? In the plainest English possible? (I still really have no clue about any of this html/rss/who-knows-what-all stuff)

THANK YOU!

Happy Holidays!

Rachael

This Post was written by Rachael from Fresh Approach Cooking

YOU Are Time Magazine's Person of the Year

Time magazine has named YOU as person of the year if you're a blogger.


This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

More Innapropriate Appropriations (stealing)

You might want to cruise this person's site for wholesale stealing of your content. I can not give you a better link because I got lost in the crappy navigation on her site. There is a link on the left side for reporting abuse.. if yours was stolen you might wish to let them know.

For those of you who are Flickrites, there is a nifty toy to help search for image stealing.

Flickr Inspector


This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria

Blog Etiquette

I've noticed a non food blogger is using food bloggers photographs on their site without giving credit to the original blogger. I would notify them directly, the etiquette of giving credit where it is due but they do not have an email address on their site. I don't feel comfortable leaving it in the comments section. I'm hoping said blogger will read this and take note.

This Post was written by Barbara from Winos and Foodies