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Friday, 26 June 2015

Add a Pinterest Pin It Mouseover Button on Blogger Images

Images have always played a prominent role in attracting new visitors through search engines like Google and Bing. But when Pinterest decided to enter the social media mix, it upped the ante in a big way.

Pinterest lets blog owners use their service to add a 'pin' to photos or content images on the site. When visitors of that site see a photo they like, they can choose to click on the red Pinterest button for Blogger, and add it to their Pinterest account.

The person who pressed your Pinterest button for Blogger can now see your photo on their dashboard, and share it with friends or followers on the service. They can also come across this photo when users add keywords or category tags to the image. More importantly, that photo links to your site when clicked on and will contain a description title of your blog name or post.

Therefore, adding the Pinterest button for Blogger will help you to benefit from tons of new traffic coming from Pinterest and people who had found your photos and post links using the service. Here are some steps to add your very own Pinterest button.

1. Access your Blogger Template

The first thing to do is to edit the code of your template so that it knows when to display this Pinterest Button for Blogger with the content. You can do this by logging into your Blogger Dashboard and finding your way to "Template" > "Edit HTML".

When the editor opens up, it may look a bit foreign to you if you don't have much experience using HTML. Click anywhere inside the code area and search by pressing the CTRL + F keys for the </body> tag - hit Enter to find it:

</body>

The body tags makes up the general content in your webpage. Think of it like the settings panel of a website. If you were to delete everything in this section your site would turn into a blank white page.

2. Add The Pinterest Pin it Script

Once you found the </body> tag, insert the following script just above it:

<script>
//<![CDATA[
var custom_pinit_button = "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7uJeUa0St3OXFs84uOI19EiCtyYqO0gCHmlJArCuYx21mfZvY8ssWM6GKe5A7eY12_ssp9mkoc8XzqmvPda0HgcDUbRQMe55GQW2vC76MVcqUGU_ltHqCecAfcEpZjh1z_t40cpmIsvfe/s1600/pinit-button.png";
var pinit_button_position = "center";
var pinit_button_before = "";
var pinit_button_after = "";
//]]>
</script>
<script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.2/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'></script>
<script id='pinit-img-button' src='http://helplogger.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pinterest-button1.js' type='text/javascript'>
// Visit helplogger.blogspot.com for more widgets and tricks.
</script>

3. Changing the Position of the Pin it! button

The cool thing about this code is that you have some freedom over where the Pinterest button for Blogger will go over the image. Take a look at the code that you just copied and pasted into the HTML for the word 'center'.

var pinit_button_position = "center";

To move the pin to a different area of the photo, replace center with one of these texts:

topleft
topright
bottomleft
bottomright

And to change the Pin it! button that appears on mouse over, replace the address in blue from above with your own:

var custom_pinit_button = "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7uJeUa0St3OXFs84uOI19EiCtyYqO0gCHmlJArCuYx21mfZvY8ssWM6GKe5A7eY12_ssp9mkoc8XzqmvPda0HgcDUbRQMe55GQW2vC76MVcqUGU_ltHqCecAfcEpZjh1z_t40cpmIsvfe/s1600/pinit-button.png";

4. Save The Template

Make sure that you added everything correctly, then save the template and navigate to a recent post that you made that contain images. Hover your mouse over the image and you should now see a red Pinterest button for Blogger displayed on the image. Test it out and see it how it works.

If you want to hide the pinit button from a specific image, when you create a post, switch to the HTML tab of your post editor and type class="nopin" right before the closing slash and angle bracket of your image element, like this:

The only downside of this button is that it doesn't take the information from your custom image titles. It's automatically set to take the title of the blog post where the image is located. So, you'll need to pay closer attention to the title of the posts so that it fits closely with the images being shown.

Remember that when you have this code activated, you have to label your titles so that they are relevant to the photos you are posting. This might sound obvious, but sometimes you create a post with an image as a joke that won't make sense in the context of viewing it on Pinterest.

If you use Google Analytics, you can start to see traffic flooding into your site from Pinterest. You should also create your own Pinterest account so that you can manage the content and track how it's being shared. That's it. Enjoy and happy blogging!

The Basics of Google Analytics for Beginners

If you're a business owner or a member of a marketing team, you probably know that businesses depend upon data. Tracking trends and patterns is what allows you to get ahead of the dips in the market, and make informed decisions on the direction of your company.

Those same rules that apply to business apply to owning a website. In order to deliver the best possible experience and ensure that customers from around the world are able to access your site, you need to understand from where traffic is coming from and how to leverage that information to your benefit.

Setting Your Site Up With A Tracking ID

Google analytics won't start collecting data from your website until you've implemented a tracking code into your website's files. The tracking code is basically a block of JavaScript code that will collect data about the html that visitor used to get to your site, any cookies that the visitors has collected during their browsing history, and information about what type of browser the person is using.

The importance of this information provides you with information on how to conform your web-site to the target audience, especially in terms of design. If customers are visiting your website from an eCommerce directory, you may want to modify those links so that the customers arrive at a landing page instead of a home page. If more customers are using smartphones and tablets instead of laptop browsers, you may have to redesign the site so that it is responsive and can be easily read from a small screen.

In order to track each individual page on the website, you will need to add a tracking code before the </head> code of your template. If you are using a site like WordPress or Joomla! that depends on templates, you may just have to add the tracking code on the main HTML index file. Keep in mind that it can take upwards of 24-hours for Google to begin collecting information and importing that data to your dashboard, so don't expect to see measurable results right away.

Tutorial: How to Add Google Analytics to Blogger

Researching the Data

Once you insert the code into your site, it will begin tracking data from anyone who visits your site. This data is then sent back to the Google servers and stored in your Google Analytics profile. From there, you can determine what type of information that you want to look at.

The two features of Google Analytics that are often most useful to new users is the ability to track where customers are coming from, and the ability to see keywords that have been effective in drawing in audiences.

Traffic Origins

Open up your Google Analytics dashboard and click on 'Acquisition'. You should see a few options, but you want to pull 'All Referrals' so that you can the entire list of visitors.

Next to the referral path will show a few links with a number of how many people visited your site from that link. From here you can click on the link and find out the reason for the traffic. Maybe someone has written a review on the service, you can check to see if the advertisement campaign you are operating is producing results.

Keywords

Within the same 'Acquisition' directory is another option called 'Search Engine Optimization'. Click on this link and then click on 'Queries' to look up a list of keywords being used to describe your site. The dashboard will display an overview of up to 1,000 words or phrases used on Google that brought new visitors to your site. You can use this information to modify your posts and producing content to increase the results of certain key phrases that you feel would benefit your customer outreach.

Demographics

Underneath the audience tab, you can also track demographics. This little option will allow you to view the age, gender, and interests of individual users and segments of your visiting population. Say for example you run a senior care facility for the retired and want to put together a A/B split test to determine which advertising campaign works best. After adding the campaign to a landing page or section of your site, you can look back and find out if retired citizens are the ones responding to your ads, or if you are just bringing in traffic from younger generations who may not be interested in your services.

Custom Campaign Tagging

Custom campaign tagging is more of an advanced feature, but once you get used to the Google Analytics interface, you can use this to separate your campaigns and easily filter through data. Maybe you just want to find out who is coming to your site from your email newsletters, and not from the general site. Google Analytics will allow you to post special links to your content on those channels of communication and then view these results under the acquisition tab and then campaigns.

Determining What Works, and What Doesn't

Using the tools that Google Analytics provides at your disposal allows you to really determine what type of experience you want to provide your customers. Within the first month of use, if start to see trends or patterns in data that you feel you feel you can improve upon, you can use this information as a guide to edit your sites design and layout.

Getting used to the program might seem overwhelming at first, but once you jump right in and start playing around all the features, you'll get the hang of it in no time. Google Analytics really is an important tool that every website owner should have.

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