Tips Tuesday – Ultimate GA4 Course for Bloggers, WP 6.1.1 Release, Email Marketing

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• The Ultimate Google Analytics 4 Course for Bloggers is on sale
• Why my email setup has to change for my course sites
• WP 6.1.1 is rolling out today with bug fixes
• Where to get my special WP update instructions
• What is your Reusable Block alternative? See why we need one
• 6 reasons why email marketing is important for content creators

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BlogAid Course Happenings

Google Analytics 4 Course on Sale

The GA4 course is on sale for the holidays with $100 off.

No coupon needed.

Now, while this sale lasts through the first week in January, you want to get it right away so you can get that GA4 tracking code on your site immediately.

That way you can catch all of this great year-end traffic data so you can compare year-over-year.

Keep in mind that Universal Analytics ends capturing data on July 1, 2023.

So, getting GA4 setup as early as you can is important, now that it is finally viable.

And I’m adding tutorials every day or so.

The Setup All Accounts section is complete. And I’m adding the Report Essentials tutorials all through this week.

Course members have raved about the bite-sized tutorials making this fast and easy for them.

So, if you get in now, it’s easy to get caught up and then take the rest of it like a drip course in just a few minutes every other day.

BlogAid Happenings

Lots of GA4 Posts and Videos in the Works

Now that the GA4 course is open to the public, it’s time for me to crank up the online visibility for it. 

I’ve been a post writing and short form video making manic lately.

There’s so much to cover and it’s so easy to get into a groove and batch make these things.

I’ll be collecting up the post links for you in Tips Tuesday.

But I encourage you to follow me on at least YouTube and TikTok to see the quick videos.

And I hope to get established better on all the Facebook family of platforms this week too.

Site Services Update

The waitlist for any site service is running into late December and early January.

If you’re ready for a site audit or checkup, please see the Site Audit page. 

And if you’re ready to move to better hosting and want to combine that with your audit, please see the Migration/Audit combo service and fill out that request form.

And yes, we’ll be working around everyone’s holiday vacation schedules for the next few weeks.

Changes to My Member Site Email Setup

In the next few weeks I’ll be making a change to the way my member site emails are set up.

I use Google Workspace for my domain-related email and it is not fond of sending transactional emails from the site. Even with the WP Mail SMTP plugin setup using the Workspace API, it keeps disconnecting. And that means that membership-related emails don’t go out, like subscription renewal reminders and purchase confirmations and such.

We can’t have that!!!

So, I’ve been researching other setups that may be more stable, like switching over to the Fluent SMTP plugin because it can integrate with other send vendors, like Amazon SES, SendGrid, and more.

I’ve also heard some clients state that emails from me end up in their spam or other folders, even though they have set it to always be approved into their inbox. I guarantee I’ve done all I can to shore up the deliverability of my emails. 

But I can’t help what the different email clients that folks use do with the subject line filter or such. Once a week I go through all of my email folders to ensure I didn’t miss something. I’m guessing most other folks don’t do that.

Now, Workspace doesn’t want to be used for bulk emails. That’s why they have daily send limits. And that’s also a great way to keep spammers from using Workspace or even Gmail for that purpose.

But, using Workspace does help with verification, and that helps with deliverability.

I am greatly concerned about moving over to another service that does allow bulk emailing, and whether that is going to do any harm as far as verification, and send even more of my emails to something other than your inbox.

So, I would appreciate you letting me know if you have any trouble receiving emails from me now. Please do leave a comment on this blog post instead of emailing me a private reply, as I would get deluged with 100s of them.

And thank you for letting me know if you are having issues with receiving them as much of the info I send out is time sensitive and I want to ensure you’re getting that notification in a timely manner.

That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.1.1 May Roll Out Today

The minor release of WP 6.1.1 is scheduled to roll out today.

It contains the bug fixes for 6.1 and is what we have been waiting for.

I had updated my test sites to 6.1 last week without issue.

But there were a few bugs that may have affected my money sites, so I wanted to wait for this bug fix release.

I’ll be updating my sites this week and testing.

Get Your WP Update Instructions

BlogAid News subscribers will get my special update instructions, including what to test when I deem it safe for everyone to update.

I’m hoping that will be later this week.

So make sure you are subscribed.

If you get Tips Tuesday in your inbox, then you are subscribed.

Plugin Tips

What is Your Reusable Block Alternative?

Reusable Blocks were THE best new feature in Gutenberg.

And I’m super sad that they became so unstable a couple of years ago that we have not been able to use them anymore.

Now, I have found that RBs created prior to 2 years ago seem to be stable. It’s just the new ones that disappear, or goof up or such and we have stopped holding out hope that they will be fixed.

If you don’t know what a Reusable Block is, it is sort of like a shortcode in that you can add it anywhere on your site. And when you change the original block, it changes it all over your site.

So, I’m looking for a good alternative.

There are Reusable Block plugins that are far more stable than the native WP ones.

I’ve been using the Content Blocks shortcode plugin on my member sites for years. That’s how I am able to post the list of tutorials to the course info pages as well as to the course dashboard pages without having to update them individually.

And now the Content Blocks plugin supports Gutenberg blocks too.

But, it does have some quirks that I’ve learned to work around.

So, it’s my fallback contender for now.

However, let’s put the power of the village to work and ask everyone to leave a comment with the native Reusable Block alternative you’re using. And let’s see what is working best for everyone.

Marketing Tips

6 Reasons Why Email Marketing is Important for Content Creators

I hear a LOT of new site owners say, “I don’t have an optin because I have no idea what to send folks.”

And then I hear a LOT of experienced site owners say, “I wish I had started a newsletter sooner.”

Experienced site owners know that their money is in their list.

But, it’s more than that.

Denise Wakeman, at Adventures in Visibility, has an outstanding post with 6 solid reasons as to why email marketing is so important to content creators too.

And one of those reasons is repurposing that content.

Denise is a big-time fan of repurposing content.

In fact she and I had a live chat on it back in the days of Blab on 13 ways you can reach more people so you can watch on what she had to say about it then. And see her post with all 13 ways.

And yes, there have been plenty of platforms come and go since that recording. 

But the post still stands and so do the recommendations, even if it’s for a similar platform.

And I can tell you, I’m keeping all of these repurposing tips in mind as I batch create my GA4 posts and tutorials!!!!!!

I can also vouch for 2 of the tips that Denise gives in both of these articles that have a positive impact on your bottom line, and those are why your list is so important, and repurposing content into a webinar.

I’m also currently retaking her masterclass on creating a lead magnet because when I took it the first time I had my secret project in mind, and I could not act on what I learned right away. Plus the marketing was a little vague at that point.

But, with the GA4 course, I was able to get to work on the steps with very specific ideas and intent.

In fact, that first workshop is what gave me 56 solid ideas for the blog posts and short form videos that I’m currently producing. And you better believe I’ll be repurposing them everywhere I can.

So, go read the 2 posts linked here.

Better still, get on Denise’s email list. One of my favorite features of being on her list is that she is a big believer in tools that make your online life easier and she tries new things all the time too. You’ll appreciate hearing about them as much as I do.

Wrap Up

That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.

Thanks for sharing this podcast and post with your blogging buddies, and for leaving comments and reviews too.

Subscribe to all BlogAid Posts via email so you never miss anything!

Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.