Checklist: Are you READY for the BIG DAY? #atozchallenge 4/1/2014

You've signed up on the list.  You've maybe written some posts.  Maybe you have a theme, but are you REALLY ready for Tuesday, April 1, 2014 when the biggest blogging event of the year will begin?  Here's a checklist so you can be sure.

1) You might have heard this before, but you HAVE TO TURN OFF CAPTCHA, aka WORD VERIFICATION aka PROVE YOU'RE NOT A ROBOT.  You really don't need that "keep out" sign. (If you're worried about spam, disabling anonymous comments is the best defense, and you can also you use comment moderation.)

If you don't know how to turn it off, there's a video in the FAQ to help you.

2) Do you have a way for visitors to follow your blog? 
You can use Google Friend Connect (GFC), follow by email, follow by RSS feed, or all three.  We recommend that you have at least one if not all three options available for guests to be able to come read more, or look at your great photos, or listen to your creative songs, or learn your awesome craft ideas.  You do want more followers, right?

3) Have you cleaned up your sidebar?  (I need to...egads, it's cluttered...) What I mean is, do you have your sidebar in a logical order?  How to follow you (see #2) should be near the top, if not THE top item. Arrange the rest of your items in the order of importance ~ what do you want people to know about you and your blog.  Some may not scroll all the way to the bottom, so put the important "stuff" at the top.

4) Do you have your participant badge displayed?  I'm talking about this one, found in the banners/badges tab above:

I know some of you have very legitimate reasons for not displaying it, and we're not forcing anyone to have it up. However, here are some reasons why it's to YOUR advantage to have it in your sidebar, and I suggest placing it right under your follower widget of choice.

* visitors know right away that you're participating

* if you put it up NOW it's advertising and we get more participants

* you avoid a reminder email from one of the co-hosts or one of the minions to please display your badge (which saves us work and we'd really appreciate that)

5) Do you know where the sign-up list is?  I suggest having it open in your browser all day so that it's easy to visit someone when you have just a few minutes.  All of those add up, and pretty soon you've been to more than the suggested 5 blogs immediately following your number on the list.  That will bring you more visitors!  This is the sign-up list.

6) Do you know what to do once you've put your first post up?  A lot of people have been asking.  The quick answer is: you've already signed up on the list I linked in #5, you don't have to link up each day.  However, here's what you should do to insure success:

* advertise your post using your other social media outlets of choice

* if Twitter is one of those, include the #atozchallenge hashtag

* for those of you on facebook, get active with the A-Z facebook page by visiting it daily to see what's going on, liking comments, adding your own.  Doing so will bring more visibility to your blog, and more visitors.

* if you include an image, others can pin your post on Pinterest

* make sure you're visiting others.  If you visit, they will come.  If you sit there, they will not.  Your success, your connections with others, your increase in friends and exposure all depends on YOU.  If you invest the time to make the first move, it WILL pay off.

* the more you get yourself out there, the more you will get out of this adventure

Yes, most of this has been said before.  It's worth repeating though.  The A to Z Team's goal is for this be a rewarding experience for you, and we really do care about you.  We may not be able to read all of your posts...but we want you to succeed.

Questions?  Contact Us tab is right up there.

~Tina, on behalf of the A to Z Team

P.S Got some new info this morning.  Be sure to read Ida's comment below. It has other following suggestions and shows you how to fix GFC if you're having problems with it.  Thanks, Ida!

What's up with these #atozchallenge Category Codes?

Happy A-Z Theme Reveal Day! Stop on by to see the list of folks who are participating!

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In the 2013 Challenge, we introduced a new feature to the sign-up process called Category Codes. These are codes which allow you to identify the general topics of your blog, to give other participants a bit more information about what they might see on your blog, before they click your link. In case you missed it, here are the instructions and the list of Codes from the sign-up page: 

There are categories for those looking for like-minded blogs. Select ONE category code and enter it after your blog’s title/name. The code applies to your blog, not your theme for the Challenge and is purely optional. However, if your blog has adult content, you MUST mark it (AC) or it will be removed from the list. Codes are as follows: 

1. WRITING: (WR) 
2. BOOKS: (BO) 
3. FILM: (FM) 
4. PHOTOGRAPHY: (PH) 
5. GARDENING: (GR) 
6. CRAFT: (CR) 
7. ART: (AR) 
8. MUSIC: (MU)   
9. CULINARY: (CU) 
10. LIFESTYLE: (LI ) 
11. FASHION: (FA) 

12. PERSONAL: (PR) 

13. SOCIAL MEDIA: (SO) 

14. GAMING: (GA) 

15. EDUCATION: (ED) 

16. POLITICS: (PO) 

17. HISTORY: (HI) 

18. SCIENCE: (SC) 

19. HUMOR: (HU) 

20. TRAVEL: (TR) 

21. MISCELLANEOUS: (MI) 

22. ADULT CONTENT: (AC) 

The A-Z Team thinks these codes are really awesome, and encourages everyone to use them. Here are a few reasons it's beneficial to use the Category Codes:

• Interested in a certain topic? Look for folks with the appropriate Category Code marking and go visit their blog!
• Hoping to attract others to your blog that are interested in the same topics as you are? Commenting on others' blogs is the best way to drive traffic to your own, so if say, you write about Education and want other educators to find you - go visit them first! Remember, A-Z is all about making connections so use the Codes to help you find your people.
• Is there something that you aren't really interested in? You might skip blogs that are marked with that Code. But! The Challenge can also be a great opportunity to push your boundaries. In our humble opinion, our participants are the best of the 'net, so the Challenge might be the place where you find a really excellent blogger that shows you that a certain topic isn't so bad, after all.

As we are just over a week out from the start of the Challenge, and the sign-ups are just rolling in, we hope that new participants will stake their claim in a category, and hope that folks who are already browsing the list will start to take advantage of the Codes to find their future blogging besties!

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A note on Adult Content blogs - this is the only category for which we have made it mandatory to identify yourself. Many of our participants have families and jobs, and we don't want to risk disruption of harmony in either of those locations if someone were to accidentally end up with explicit material up on their computer. And so we require that AC blogs identify themselves, out of respect for other participants. Any unidentified AC blog that is discovered by the Host Team will be immediately removed from the list. For more information, check out this post from a couple weeks ago. Thanks for your cooperation on this!

How to Be One Step Ahead for #atozchallenge

Hello Alphabet Fans,
I have a quick idea I thought I'd share to make life easier come April. Unlike most of the co-hosts, I haven't written and pre-scheduled all of my posts.  I do have a theme, and I do know what I'm doing for each letter, but that's as far as I've gotten.

Maybe that's where you are, too, or maybe you don't have a theme and are just going to go day by day. That's totally cool, too.  Here's how to make it just a bit quicker each day.

Between now and April 1, go put up a draft of each post.  Here are the steps.

1) Download all of Jeremy's amazingly beautiful letters.  I like to start each post with the letter of the day so that visitors know right away that I'm participating, and on the right letter.  They are under the "banner/badges" tab up at the top.  They look like this.

Pretty, eh?

2) Now go to start to write a post in the compose window.  Insert the correct letter.  Put the letter A as your title, or the real title, if you've picked it out.

3) Pre- schedule the post.  Not sure how to pre-schedule?  I wrote a post about it here.

4) Not sure what day to put each letter on?  Under banners/badges there's a desk top calendar you can use, or in the FAQ, there's a simple list of what letter goes with each day.

5) Be sure to save your post.  It will show up in your post list as a draft.  

6) When you've written the post, even if it's days ahead, be sure to push publish.  It will sit and wait until the proper day and time and then magically, you'll wake up and see your post already up, and with comments!  Because you have turned off the evil CAPTCHA, right?

If it's still on, and you should check your settings under comments to make sure, we have a video in the FAQ about how to disable it.  DO IT NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T.

I hope these tips are helpful.  If you have any questions, we are all ready to answer them.  

infoatoz2014@gmail.com

Be patient though, AJ and I are pretty busy, so it might take a few days.  If you're in a hurry for the answer, you can email me, Tina, directly.  My email is in the contact tab.

~Tina, A to Z Team

P.S Do you see how useful those tabs are?  If you haven't read them, please do so.  The info we've put there for you will help you have a great A-Z Challenge!