The Official ActiveRain Guide

I just finished reading Erin Golding's post: How on Earth Do You Blog So Much and in there, she made the following statement:

(I can't figure out how to embed videos into my ActiveRain blog so if anyone can help, that would be great).

I wanted to make sure she got the answer, so the first thing I did was read through the 80 comments thinking for sure someone had left a link to a post on how to do this.  To my surprise there was none.  To my even bigger surprise, when I searched ActiveRain for an post I couldn't seem to come across an updated blog post with information on how to do it.  So, Erin, this tutorial is for you!

If the video is too small to view, try watching in HD.

One of the questions I get asked is, " How do you add the Google maps to your blog posts?"

Here is the tutorial on how to add the Google maps to your articles, website pages, blogs, etc. In just a few steps; you are ready to go.

First set up your own Free Google account. Go to Google.com and set up your Free Google Gmail account. This way you can save all your maps on your igoogle page.

I wrote this post about a small oceanfront community in Manalapan Florida in this post  in which I used a map. You can see what the end result looks like.

Click on Google maps from your Google browser.

Next, add the address or town and zip code or place of interest that you want to map in the search box  and click search maps to the right of the search box.

You will get a map back in your search. There will be a flag pin on your location. You can also zoom in or out to get more of what you want on your map.

Click on the red A flag on your map. You will get a box that looks like this. Click on, 'Save To My Maps'.

There you will get a drop down menu of your saved maps. So if you don't have any yet, just click on 'Create New Map' and click save.

Then you will get a screen that looks like this:

In this box you will add your title and your description. This is going to be a searchable map so you want to make sure you did your keyword research and use your best keywords here in both the title an the description.

On the left side of your screen you will see a box that looks like the one below. Click on the public button. You can add more than one flag with more than one title and description. When you make your map public it becomes a searchable map to Google and if someone does a search with your keywords, your may will show up in the SERPS for maps and many times in regular searches where the maps show up.

Click done! See how simple that is!

Now all you need to do to get it on your post is to click on the link tab up in the right top of the map page. Then copy and paste the html code from the embed field into your html editor on your blog or website.

You can also click on Customize and preview embedded map if you want to customize the size that you want to embed. There are choices of small, medium, large but also you can choose your own dimensions.

Disclaimer: Many people use Google maps on their blogs and websites. This post is in no way permission to post Google maps whether customized or not. Please read the Google Maps terms of use yourself. You assume all risk. This post is for informational purposes only.

How To Add Google Maps To Your Blog and Posts by Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

By TwitterButton

I have been out of town for several days, having attended the RE Barcamp in Houston.  Before I left, I wrote a post about leads that I have garnered from AR along with other social media sites:

How I Managed to Receive Leads from ActiveRain, Twitter and Facebook!

I told my wife jokingly that I need to travel more often, since that post gained me an additional 53 subscribers!  I might need to go to Houston every month.  :)

At any rate, I promised the comments to write a post about how to automatically feed your AR blog to Facebook.  I also later received several emails and phone calls about this. I will do my best to make this easy to follow:

First, log in to Facebook.

Then, go straight to this page: http://www.facebook.com/apps/

In the search box on the Application Directory page, type in "blogcast".  It should bring up this application:

Add the Simplaris Blogcast application and set it up to capture your ActiveRain RSS feed.  Your feed for ActiveRain is easy - mine is http://activerain.com/blogs/jasoncrouch/rss (all of them here follow the same format.

Your Blogcast will show up under your Profile page and each update appears on your Wall.

There is another application there called "My Blogs" that you could use if you prefer.  Both Simplaris Blogcast and My Blogs serve pretty much the same function, the best that I can tell.

TWITTER

I also had some folks ask me how to get your posts to show up on your Twitter stream.  This is very easy to set up now, since the AR staff was kind enough to add this feature awhile back. 

Simply go to your "My Home" page on AR (this is found at the top right of every page):

Then, click on "My Settings":

You will then see this box:

Just fill in your Twitter Username and Password and make sure you click on the Update button to save your settings.  I wouldn't recommend tweeting your "members only" posts, but that's just me.

Please let me know if you have any questions.  I am happy to help!

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jasoncrouch

I have discovered a couple of items here at Active Rain during my time here, and I thought it might be valuable to share this information with my friends. 

I am probably not the first to write about this, but I only recently figured out that it is possible to invite others to any group in which you are a member.  I guess I have spent a lot of my time in the groups where I am a founder and/or moderator (Family Ties, Active Rain Addicts, and Inspired by Song!).  I have invited countless people to my own groups over the past few months, and I thought that this ability was limited to the groups that you help to run, but this is not the case. 

If you are a member of any group that you think would be of interest to one of your AR friends, simply click on the "Invite a Member" link to tell others about it and to invite them to join as well.  The only thing that you have to know is your friend's profile name (e.g. "jasoncrouch", or "rayandpaul", or "coolestdangagentinthevalley").  In any group that you belong to, you should see this on the left ("Invite Member" is highlighted here):

One other Active Rain feature that I find myself using more and more often is the "Search" link at the top of the page:

After clicking on this, you can search by Profiles, Blogs, Blog Comments, or Groups. 

There are many uses for this terrific feature:

• Have you ever wanted to go back and find a comment that you thought was interesting?  You can use a keyword and the name of the commenter to search the Blog Comments. 
• If you are looking for a specific type of group, this is a great place to begin.
• As a prolific blogger, I have had posts of mine mentioned on occasion in posts by other bloggers.  An easy way to find these posts (and perhaps make a new friend in the process) is to search for my own name under the "Blogs" section.  I was surprised not too long ago to find about 20 articles that mentioned my name for one reason or another.  The more you write, the more likely it is that this will happen to you as well. 

EDITED: This comment from Brad Andersohn was compelling enough that I felt I should include it here:

BTW - another great search tool is the tag word search.  Just type in http://activerain.com/blogs/tags/  (then anything you want to search)  this will only pull up specific posts where those keywords were used.  It's a more refined search, but saves you the time weeding through many blogs to find what you want or need. 

Thanks so much for reading this one!  Let me know if you have any questions. 

The ActiveRain Video Tutorial List

Since holding open auditions for suggestions, many have submitted, both in public and private, their requests for tutorial videos.

Here is the list so far:

• How To Make The Most Of Your Profile's Real Estate
• How To Add Widgets And HTML To Your Sidebar
• How To Copy And Paste
  
• How To Add Links To Your Blog
• How To Flow Text Around Images In A Post
• How To Embed Anything In Your Active Rain Posts
• How To Add Your AR Blog Posts To Various Groups
• How To Create Image Links In Your Posts
• How To Create Custom Graphics From Stock Photos
• How To Set Up A Domain Name To Forward/Redirect To An Existing Web Page
• How To Make Great Looking Charts To Add To Your Posts
• How To Add Some Depth To Your AR Posts

This post will be continually updated with the links to posts and videos as they are created. You can also find the ActiveRain Video Tutorials here.