Until I started spending more time on social networking and on doing product reviews, I got maybe one or two emails a day. Now, I get hundreds, and there are days when I open up Outlook and just about fall off the couch looking at all the emails there are for me to go through. And that’s just one email account! I also have three Gmail accounts. I’ve had to devise a strategy to help me manage not only the emails themselves but the information they contain. Here is what is working for me right now:

1. Performing some kind of action on each email as I open it. I used to just skim through, opening and reading, and then I would have 800 opened emails in my inbox. Not only is that inefficient, but it makes it more likely that I will forget something important in one of the emails.

Now, I open each one and deal with it immediately, either by deleting it if it’s not information I need to keep (more on that in a minute), performing an immediate action such as returning a friend request or replying to a blog comment, or by moving the email.

2. Moving email to somewhere other than the inbox. I’ve created a system of my own and you’ll have to choose one that works for you, mine is to move emails to either a pending folder, the Outlook Calendar, or into a blog post.

a. Emails that I receive that are to request advertising or a product review go into a folder labeled with the name of the advertiser or product. Each subsequent email I get as we correspond goes into that same folder. That makes it easier to manage what information we have shared, the details of the transaction, as well as the names and contact information for each person involved.

b. Emails reminding me of an upcoming deadline get copied and pasted directly into Outlook Calendar. It’s proven to be one of my most valuable organizational tools. I can see at a glance what I have coming up, and I can use the TaskPad to remind me of reviews that don’t have a specific date to be completed. After I finish an assignment, I delete it from the calendar.

c. This final organizational tip took me WAY too long to think up, and that’s using the Drafts feature of Wordpress to store email information. Once all the details of a review have been worked out, I create a new blog post containing all the information I will need for the review, including the name and email address of the person to whom I will be sending the link once the review is completed. Why do that? Because that way I don’t have to go back and forth between the blog post and my Inbox to find all the pertinent information.

3. Finally, the best advice I have for managing email is to UNSUBSCRIBE from anything you don’t absolutely need. I will sometimes come across a website that just seems so interesting that I sign up for it’s newsletter, and then after a few of those, I realize that it’s just one more email to open. I don’t mean blog feed subscriptions, I mean like the Web M.D. daily health report newsletter, stuff like that. If you aren’t really using the information, scroll down to the bottom and click the unsubscribe link.

Everyone handles email differently, so if you have a tip for me that I haven’t thought of, please leave it in your comment! I’ve resigned myself to the fact that email isn’t going away any time soon, so it has to be managed and incorporated into daily life.

If you are looking for tips on how to be a bigger/better/more successful blogger, reading blogs about blogging can be a great source of information. Those of us who have been at this for a while generally feel like others can benefit from our experiences. One such blog is Zero and Up, with the tagline “Learn to grow your earnings while watching me grow mine”, written by Alan. On just the main page alone, there are articles on the importance of setting goals for your blog, why bold fonts help your post content stand out, why you should be using Entrecard (which reminds me, I need one for this blog), and my favorite post which happens to be his most recent one, titled “Don’t Forget: Even Big Blogs Started Out Small“. It is nice to know that even Problogger and John Chow started out with small blogs that got few comments

Sharing our expertise and experiences as bloggers helps all of us. Everyone has their own perspective on what has and hasn’t worked for them as a blogger, and it’s good to find blogs to read that can offer a different look at the “science” of blogging. I recommend you check out Zero and Up for Alan’s take on how to be a successful blogger!

Now that I have learned to make simple 125 x 125 banners, I tackled my next challenge-creating blog headers. I did some googling and found a VERY easy, step-by-step tutorial from Paul Stamatiou. I followed his directions and made this (except bigger to fit across the top of a blog page):

I then used the new, FREE, and very cool editing features on Photobucket to add some cute stickers:

And there you have it, a very easy and fun blog header, which you can see on my cooking blog MomCooks.

The eighth annual Weblog Awards winners were announced on March 10th at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. I was happy to see that many of the blogs I voted for won. Because the award site is non-profit, the “big prize” was $20.08. Hah! For a complete list of the winners, visit the Weblog Awards site, here are a few of my favorites:

• Best Canadian Weblog: Attack of the Redneck Mommy
• Best American Weblog,Best Designed Weblog, Weblog of the Year, and Lifetime Achievment: Dooce

GO, Dooce!

• Best Photography of a Weblog and Best Topical Weblog: I Can Has Cheezburger
• Best Art or Craft Weblog and Best Community Blog: PostSecret
• Best Food Weblog: The Pioneer Woman Cooks
• Best Writing of a Weblog: Confessions of a Pioneer Woman

-GO, Ree!

I was sorry to see that my sweeties Mrs. Fussy Fussypants and Sarcastic Mom didn’t win Best New Blog, but they deserved it! I especially think you should check out Ree’s blogs Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and The Pioneer Woman Cooks, her writing is fantastic, her recipes will make you gain weight just looking at them, and her photos are fabulous. And no picking on Heather from Dooce, she works very hard and deserves her success and recognition. IMHO, of course.

So apparently, it’s not enough to just create a new account on MyBlogLog, you have to actually, you know, verify that you own the site. DUH. You’d think I’d know that since this blog is my fourth one.

Therefore, I need to post this lovely piece of code:
Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

Once I’ve done that, I’m going to start testing out the new MBL widget, have you seen it? For each person listed as a Recent Reader, hovering over their name makes a box “pop out” with a list of all of the blogs that person has listed on MBL, plus a link to add them as a contact. Way cool!

And thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting on my 10 Blogging Tips posts, I’m so glad you like it. Happy Valentine’s Day!