Today’s post is from Guest Blogger Tammy Doriot. Tammy is a highly motivated businesswoman who has jumped headfirst into learning the best practices for promoting her inn’s internet presence, and we are happy to have her on our blog today:

Hi I’m Tammy Doriot, Innkeeper of the White Oak Manor bed and breakfast in Jefferson Texas. I have been a customer of Acorn Internet Services, Inc for a few years now and I cannot say enough everyday how much value I have received from Acorn University. I encourage everyone to sign up for the University, you will become empowered and confident with your marketing. Once Acorn decided to create the group called Club 60, I just had to join. In Club 60 we learn all about new changes in the web presence and how we can adjust to these changes ourselves if we want to. I admit I am a bit of a tech geek and I do like to learn how to do these changes and what effect the Google changes can have on our marketing today and in the future. This knowledge gives me the courage to try to make changes not only to our website myself but also anything Google related.

So yesterday when I went to Google Blogger, I was surprised to see it was different. I wasn’t aware that Google had made some changes to Blogger lately.  So when I went to my blog to add a post I was asked if I wanted to do the change now. As I usually do once I read the Google Instructions I jumped right in with both feet.

What Google wants with this change is to connect your Google+ profile to your blog. I suspect this is just one more way for Google to understand who you are and that your accounts are linked together and a bit more cohesive for the search engines.
The biggest bonus in all of this change is that I can now share my blog posts on my Google+ page with ease. This share is not automatic so I have some screenshots to show how to do this after you have published your new blog post.

This is what I saw the first time I went to my blog this week to post a new article:

Once you have published your article, go back into blogger and click on the button that shows posts. Once you are seeing all of your posts hover over the last one and you will see the options buttons clearly. Here you’ll click on the “Share” button and this will bring up the next screen:

Once this screen comes up you have the option of choosing which circles you’d like to share this blog post with. Before you share, make sure to use the photo arrows to change the picture to the one that goes with the Blog post you just wrote.

Now back to what changes this made to my blog once I accepted it. Which by the way you do have the option to go back to the old way for 30 days but with Google once they change something it usually is going to become permanent, so why not just accept it and get used to the new format now. You’ll be ahead of the game when everyone has to do this or later be forced to change and have to catch up.

What my Bio looked like when I first set up the blog. About your Innkeepers……

After I accepted the change it is now much more descriptive of who we really are. This Bio still needed a little adjusting though. You’ll notice above the Bio it left the title of About your Innkeepers, so I changed that title to something more personal since the description is more now informational for us. Depending on what your introduction in your Google+ account already has on it, yours may be different.

Since we’re talking about Google+ I’d like to share with you how I finally figured out how to get my post to also show up on my business page. While on my regular Google+ site I went to my Business Google+ page in another window and added it to my circles and then accepted it on my regular page. Now it posts on both so everyone in my business circles can now see it. If there is a better way to do this I have not been able to find it.

Tammy Doriot
White Oak Manor bed and breakfast
Acorn Club 60 Member