RSS Feed
12 Days Of Traffic -- Day 11: Roundup
I am going to use this post to comment on a few useful sites and services. Having recently moved back to Texas, I am obliged to use at least one Western term--hence the "Roundup".
Technorati
If you are a blogger, know any blogger or can spell the word "blogger", you will run across the name "Technorati" and hear about get a top Technorati ranking. Ironically, despite it's importance to bloggers, it is not easy to find a good definition of what it is. If you think of it as a blog search engine crossed with a social bookmarking site, that is probably as good a definition as any. For their own perspective, check the
Here is a good post on Guy Kawasaki's blog: Ten Questions with David Sifry (founder of Technorati) which helps explain what it is about.
There are a few things you can do with Technorati as a blogger:
1. First sign up for an account and "claim" your blog at Technorati:
Sign up for Technorati account
Then set up your blog to ping Technorati when you update your blog.
However,
2. Make use of Technorati tags with your posts. Technorati tags are like those keywords you put in or on your web pages (to assist readers and SEO); however these tags are like keywords on steroids which get your posts linked and categorized in the Technoratisphere.
Here is the Technorati page on tags.
To add Technorati tags to your posts, you can use a tag generator such as this.
For alternative or more automated ways of tagging your posts, google it for your particular blog software.
3. Add a social bookmark link with your post to allow people to mark your content as noteworthy. To do that, add a link with the following format:
http://technorati.com/faves?add=http://www.yourwebsite.com
Of course, substitute "www.yourwebsite.com" with the url name for your blog.
Social Bookmarks
That last bit on Technorati will allow me to segue into Social Bookmarks in general. Social Bookmarks are a way to allow readers to easily mark or tag their favorite content for social networking sites. Or more to the point: they are a way for website owners to increase their traffic by allowing readers to easily mark or tag their favorite content for social networking sites.
Social bookmarks are typically implemented as a collection of little icons that appear at the bottom of a page or blog post. For example on my blogs, they look like this:
Here is a nice, readable-by-normal-humans article on Using Social Bookmarks To Promote Your Blog.
To get URLs for various bookmarklets, here is a page on how to add 30 way-more-than-30 social bookmarkets to footer for you blog posts. On behalf of myself and readers everywhere, I strongly urge you not to add anywhere near this many bookmarkets, but this page will have a link to any social site you may be interested in.
MyBlogLog
I mentioned MyBlogLog briefly before, but I will elaborate a bit more here. In addition to being another place to register your blog(s) MyBlogLog organizes blogs and blog readers into "communities".
You can find a good introduction to MyBlogLog by Danny Sullivan here. To quote Danny:
"Probably the coolest thing about MyBlogLog is that when you go to a blog running the code -- and if you're a member -- then you'll see yourself show up in the "widget" or member box that people typically run."
As that article also mentions, MyBlogLog is now affiliated with Yahoo!, so you will signup or get a Yahoo! id.
The way to get a widget for your site is to first add a site/blog you author. Then you click on "Get Widgets" to go through the process of generating the appropriate widget to insert into your web pages.
Other Social Networking Sites
I'll finish the roundup with a few other social networking sites. You have no doubt heard of some these already, but I'm throwing them in to round out your social networking traffic strategy:
Facebook: A general social "identity" site, oriented toward people who might be a little old or otherwise have an aversion to MySpace.
LinkedIn: Is a business-oriented social networking site.
Spoke: A lesser-knonw but still interesting business social networking site.
de.icio.us:The premier social bookmarking site. It never really resonated with me--perhaps the spelling of the name is too tedious. Regardless, it is popular service.
Flickr: Speaking of spelling, I get this one wrong frequently. It seems like if it's cool to drop the "e", the "c" should be omitted too. Flickr is, of course, the photo sharing site and is hooked into many blogs. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and, if it is appropriate for your site (and the images are not inappropriate :) ), it is a powerful way to attract readers and stay in their memories.
That's it for this post. I'll spare you any corny puns on "socializing".
rk
