Sebbie on the Webbie

Posts Tagged ‘blogging’

Most bloggers are hoping to receive comments to their posts. That is pretty much the reason they keep posting. If there isn’t any posts to their topics, they think nobody cares what they said and very likely stop. It’s still tolerable if you can tell nobody knows about your blog, but when you see in your stats that people read it but  nobody says anything, it can really drive you on the walls. I certainly don’t post as much as I would if there was comments on my posts, even though I have come to think the following:

The reasons I post a comment:

1) I read a blog post that is a fairly good one, but could be better. I have something to add or point out.

2) What the blogger said was so god damned idiotic, that I just have to tell them how things REALLY are.

Then there’s two reasons for not commenting:

1) The post was so pointless that it would be waste of my time to say anything.

2) The post was SO GOOD, that it would be pointless to say anything, because the only thing to add would be: “Hey, great post” and that reeks of someone after your Google Juice.

Now, the thing for you to do is to decide whether your posts are god damned pointless or simply amazing, and figure out which is the more likely reason for the lack of comments.

If you are a blogger, you would probably like people to read your blog posts. Maybe you have several blogs you would like people to read. You most likely have a Facebook account too, with people who are interested about what you’re up to on your friends list. Why not offer them your blog feed without having to teach them how to use a news reader?

And the How To:

If you have one blog

Facebook allows you to directly import one blog into your notes. Every time you update, a note is automatically created including your post in whole, notifying your friends. Your friends can then comment directly on Facebook or click a link to your blog (which you would probably prefer, but you shouldn’t get too demanding here.) Your friends are a lot more likely to comment than a random reader.

1 Go to Notes Import a blog -settings. (The link here should take you automatically there, but if not, you can find it on Notes-page on the side bar. Import settings.)

2. Find your blog feed and enter it into the entry box. (To find your feed, go to your blog, then look for the feed icon in the browser address bar or your side bar. If you’re on WordPress it is formed as www.yoururl.com/feed/ on Blogger it is formed as http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/)

3. Confirm

If you have more than one blog you want to import, here’s one way to do it:

1. Start an account with FriendFeed for blog entries only.

2. Enter the blog feed urls on the Custom RSS/Atom (Check above how to find your blog feeds.) Select the option “Include entry description as a comment”

3. Take that feed and follow the instructions on how to import one blog to Facebook. Unfortunately, FriendFeed will only import the headline and a link to your blog, but at least that forces people to actually visit your blog and is more likely they comment directly on it.

There are other ways to import blogs through Facebook applications, but unfortunately most of them import them only onto your profile and the updates are not included on the update time line on the Facebook front page. Because notes are Facebook standard apps, the updates will show up on the time line. In addition, some of the importers I’ve tried only update the feed if you manually tell it to update. To me that’s way too much trouble! :p

I am currently experimenting few ad networks, even EntreCard is back on the menu as they recently did some changes I wanted to check out. CMF ads visited my sidebar again, but as there still was no advertisers I took it down again. – I don’t think you should ask for advertisers on the ad networks forum to get people advertising, especially as it seems we’re supposed to buy ads of each other which makes little sense to me.

Project Wonderful has been hanging on for a while, even though the few pennies I earn doesn’t really ad up, but it has a good ad campaigning system so everything that I earn I’ll pretty much put back in.

The network I’m now going for is Adgitize. The reason for this is that the network, that seems to be in early days and quite amateurish in look still, is run by a guy who seems very dedicated to his thing and who is making eager effort to make his network flourish. The sad thing is that since the network is lacking in looks, I think it is hard to take seriously. It attracts second grade… Or shall we even say third grade blogs as publishers, often beginners and those who will add any gadget out there on their blog just because they learned the art of “copy paste”. Not only that, they are the ones who will add 3×3 -ad code to their site. In my opinion it shouldn’t even be offered. 3 ad boxes is more than enough and often that is too much on the same network (lowers the price paid for each ad box as there’s more room).

Anyway, Adgitize is good for small and medium sized blogs because you can earn in multiple ways on their system. It’s not only how many ads you show, or how many is clicked, it also has to do with you clicking on others adds, how many ads you show (this shouldn’t be rewarded imho), it even rewards you for posting content onto your own blog! There are a lot of things this network could do to improve, but it has such a flying start that I wish more serious bloggers who have more self control on advertising and understanding of quality would get into it as well.

If you are serious about your online presence or otherwise just everywhere and want people to recognise you outside your normal circles, avatar is the best way to do this. Online world relies heavily on written word and images. Images, I think we all agree, draw our attention more efficiently than text. This means, that when people are reading your words, they won’t necessarily spend time memorising your name but they will probably at least take a glance at your avatar. In addition, your user name might not be always available for every website you want to join, but your avatar will be. That is why you should have a bit of a think about your avatar. What do you want people to remember you by? There are some types of avatars that tend to give a negative impression of you at first glance:

Baby photo on man’s avatar. Probably the last time any woman told him he was cute.

Baby photo on woman’s avatar. A stay at home mother who has nothing else to talk about apart from her kids. (Probably uses a screen name such as “MomOf2″.)

Just the eye. Seeks a deep contact with people while trying to remain anonymous and appear soulful. Kind of works but is quite unoriginal and thus utterly forgettable.

Popular cartoon character – A male who is trying the “boyish charm” angle although it has never worked for anyone. We’ve seen enough of Vinnie the Pooh and friends already! Original cartoon characters by the man/woman behind the avatar, such as Tony’s are encouraged though!

Disproportioned photo - An avatar of a casual Internet user who hasn’t yet found the delights of Photoshopping. (Has uploaded a photo straight from the camera, without shaping it into a square first.)

Logo – impersonal. Is here to sell me something.

The vast majority of people prefer the picture of a person in an avatar over a logo or other graphic. People want to speak to people. If your avatar is listed amongst several others (like recent visitors list), the likelihood that you’ll get a click is higher if it’s your face in there. But, sometimes you need to put that logo up there. Another thing is, that if you’re using your photo, it gets boring after a while, and intolerable to you when you get a better photo of yourself. But the problem arises, that people get confused if you change your avatar. They won’t remember who you are for a while, until you say something really characteristic to yourself. I believe I found a solution to both of these problems. You are not likely to change your logo too often, right? So why not use that together with your photograph?

Here are some of my recent avatars:

See what I mean? There are elements in the avatar that stay constant while I get bored with the rest of it – me. :p This of course requires some Photoshop skills, but nothing too complicated. What do you think? If you decide to give it a go, please post a comment after uploading your new avatar to SezWho, or to Gravatar if you don’t use SezWho. (SezWho will override Gravatar on my blog.)

Are you one of those people who add friends on social networking sites or blog catalogues to improve their exposure / readership / social status? YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME. Have you ever seen any rating for the amount of friends anywhere apart the number that shows how many friends you have? Have you ever considered the fact that having more than a 100 friends (depending on the type of network the number can be larger. Ie. Flickr as pointed out in the comments) on your list will seriously effect your credibility, unless you really ARE famous? Like it’s okay for Britney Spears to have 100000+ friends on her MySpace profile (if she has one) but if you’re more like Sally Nextdoor, having more than a hundred tells people that you are desperate for attention, you don’t have real friends, you don’t know the meaning of friends, and that you are currently spamming a lot of people with your personal crap.

If you think that having your profile picture displayed together with tons of other profiles will bring you traffic, you’re wrong. Do you know ANYONE who browses friends of friends beyond the Top Friends? I certainly don’t. So if you don’t have a real relationship with the person on your friend list, you won’t gain any advantage of it, quite the opposite.

This goes with BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog as well. The more friends you have, the less value YOU have to people you add. Why would anyone want to be one of your thousand friends? They know you don’t care. They know you won’t remember 15 minutes from the time you added them that you did. All you put out is negative vibes, as everyone knows you don’t have time to follow all these blogs even if it was the only thing you did in your life – and that would make you officially pathetic if you did.

The more popular you are in reality, the less you tend to make “add me” requests, because you don’t have to. You don’t have to beg for attention, and you start to clear out the bulk from your friends list to keep only those you really are interested in. That shows your real friends you give value to them, and it shows people you wish to know, that you are not over worked by the number of people you have to socialise with so that they too may have a chance to actually getting to know you.

If anyone has a real good reason to do this, and it being so popular I would imagine someone has some rationale behind it, please do share if you dare!

Some time ago, I rewarded a few blogs with the Kick Ass Blogger Award. Now, my broken link checker flagged two blogs out of the 5. Where did Brutally Honest Blonde Go? She got married, did she turn into a liar now?

Unfortunately I found out what happened to Monkey Fables and Tales. The guy who wrote the content found out about the Monkey Man reposting it as his own. I mean wow. I loved the blog and the writing, and now I find that he’s not a kick-ass-blogger, he’s not a blogger at all! How bloody miserable. The good news is, that I now know who did write the posts, most of them anyway. Here’s his blog http://www.wherethehellwasi.com/ Monkey Fables has been the most popular blog on EntreCard all the time I’ve been a member, and this is what we all found out. What a shame, a shame indeed!