3 Top Tips for the #AtoZChallenge #WriterlyWednesdays 26

Greetings fellow bloggers. Today I'm going to talk about the AtoZChallenge and 3 tips for a smooth April. If you are looking for my AtoZChallenge Theme Reveal post just click here. FYI these tips are all my own opinion, I'm not one of the organisers, they are just things I think that make life much easier.

3 Top Tips for the AtoZChallenge 

A quick recap for those who don't know what the AtoZChallenge actually is, it's full title is Blogging from A to Z Challenge and it is thousands of bloggers getting together and blogging every day during April, except Sundays, using a letter of the alphabet as a prompt. There is still time to sign up if you want to and it is a great way to meet new friends and get people interested in your blog.

This is my fourth year and it's a lot of fun every time.

We have just had the AtoZChallenge Theme Reveal, which is a smaller blog hop in advance of the main challenge where blogs who have chosen themes reveal them with fanfare and drum rolls :). You don't have to have a theme for all your posts in April, but it can really help.

Over the last two days I have visited 320 blogs (sorry about the 100 I didn't get to - I really tried to do the whole list) and been visited by lots of lovely bloggers too. This has reminded me of a few things that make life a whole lot easier when visiting so many blogs.

Please, please, please, make it obvious where your latest AtoZ blog post is.

Unlike in a one post blog hop, you can't link directly to the post in the list of participants because you have lots of different ones over the month. This means people have to be able to find the post you want them to see on any particular day by clicking on to your main site or a category within it.

In something like the AtoZChallenge, if people can't see where your post is easily, they are very likely not going to bother to hunt around. I hunted around during the theme reveal, but I doubt I will be as patient in the main challenge.

Some of the problems I saw during the theme reveal are as follows:

• the blog had a category/tag for the AtoZ which had been linked to from the list, but the poster had forgotten to add their theme reveal post to that category/tag
• the linked front page didn't show anything to do with the AtoZ and I had to guess where the post might be
• no post title mentioned "Theme Reveal" or "AtoZ" in anyway so I wasn't sure which one was the right one to read.

These are all very easy to issues to deal with and your post is much more likely to be read if it can be found easily.

Your Time-zone is not my Time-zone

Now I know there are optimum times to make posts on various social media, and I fully support fanning out your promotion of your posts to things like Twitter and Facebook, but, for the AtoZChallenge, posting the actual entry early is better IMHO.

The AtoZ is a world wide challenge with people from Australia to Alaska and not everyone is in the same time-zone. Hence, to catch as many people as possible, I find it a good idea to schedule my posts to go live at midnight in my time-zone. This means I have one post a day for the maximum possible time so it can catch the most people.

I can still tell all my Twitter followers and my Facebook peeps that might not be hopping along the list about it at the optimum time of day my Buffer tells me to, like I would with a normal post, but the post is still there for anyone who pops in before that.

For some people this may be impossible, but I find it a good technique when it can be done, especially on day 1.

When Commenting Leave Links/Blog Name

Different commenting systems use different accounts to register who the commenter is. 

For example:

• Blogger might use your G+ account 
• Wordpress might use your Twitter account
• others ask you to put in your own name and link

These links don't necessarily go to where you are doing the AtoZ and may even have a different name on them. Hence it can be hard to track who the commenter is.

I try to use one of the following three options when commenting on other blogs to make it easy to find me should they wish to:

1. my name with clickable links to the 3 blogs I am using during the AtoZ, with the most important first
2. my name with the titles of the 3 blogs underneath and non-active links below
3. my name with the titles of the 3 blogs below

I use them in that order of preference depending on what the comments section can take. Some don't allow html tags so #1 doesn't work and I use #2 and some see any links as spam and refuse to post is so I use #3. I have the three sigs in a txt file and I just paste the one I need on to the end of the comment I leave on the blogs I visit.

Even #3, which is just mentioning the name you used in the main AtoZ list can help if the comment does not allow links, or you don't know how to put them in, because that means I can search the list to find you. Some people use name @ name of blog, which is perfect.

I have to admit there were a couple of lovely commenters for the theme reveal that I just couldn't track back to their own site, so I was forced to believe they weren't taking part. This could be true, but it could also be that Blogger used their G+ account that does not connect to anything so I couldn't find their main blog.

[Edit: and of course someone else has been sensible enough to actually tell you how to do the links :): Creating a signature for the atozchallenge by A Tarkabarka Hölgy]

So there you have it, my 3 Tops Tips for maximum engagement during the AtoZChallenge. I wish everyone taking part lots of luck and hope you have a great April with lots of lovely visitors.

Do you have any other tips for AtoZers that I have missed? Do you think any of my tips are incorrect?