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Networking For Blog Success

Sometimes it’s not just what you know, who you know (or get to know) can make a big difference. Have you considered networking to promote your blog?

The value of “other people” in your success depends on your own situation but for myself I have to say that communities and certain individuals have been instrumental in whatever success I have had.

You can’t just go up to people (or their blogs) and say “like me like me!”, you need to show your worth and engage people in discussion, perhaps even show you can be valuable to them.

Putting yourself out there and introducing yourself to people can be a scary prospect, plus the idea of “pimping” yourself might send a cold shiver down your spine. Luckily you do not need to go to these lengths!

Other bloggers

Get to know other bloggers. Comment (intelligently) on their own blogs. Link to your favorites regularly. Find out where bloggers hang out. There are conventions for real world rubbing shoulders and there are forums for virtual hob nobbing.

Forums

Forums often allow you to use signatures that contain a line of text and possibly a URL. Just by taking part then you are getting your blog address out there. Better though is to really take part and answer questions, put forward interesting thoughts and get known as someone to turn to for information and interesting dialog. If you do this before you launch, and you are well known and liked you might even have a chance to drop your URL more prominently.

Discussion Lists

Like forums, with discussion lists you can include your URL in your email signature and just like forums it’s even better if you make yourself known and heard.

To really drive traffic link through to posts that might be useful in the discussion. Often frowned upon in forums, dropping links in email discussions is more often allowed or even encouraged.

Summary

I am not talking about using people. People like to do friends favors, make more friends and you will get more favors! Even better if these friends you make are influential in your niche.

Where are the Women?

As the BlogHer dates are announced, I’m wondering where the women are in professional blogging? I see a few in here at Performancing, but not very many. As Scoble just said “Seeing fat white guys talk all the time just gets really boring”.

So, where are you? We know you’re out there…

First 9Rules, Then The World?

I see Scrivs has been blowing kisses about a 9rules ad network to Kevin over at Clickz. “The ad network is currently in development, and is expected to launch in coming months. Scrivens declined to specify a time frame, other than “as soon as possible,” but stressed that the quality of the offering would override a premature release date”, well cool — I asked Paul if he had plans to take this outside of 9rules to the larger blogosphere.

He said “For now the ad Network will be limited to 9rules because I don’t think we would be
prepared for anything large scale. However, if things work out right we would definitely
consider moving it out to the web at large.”

I’ll wait and see how it all works out on 9rules before getting to giddy about yet another ad network, but I’m quietly hopeful we may see some decent things come out of this. It’s kinda cool to see network owners taking matters into their own hands, it must SUCK being so reliant on Adsense.

Hubs and Subs

I was recently part of a forum discussion regarding utilizing subdomains when building a blog network. It is certainly an easy way to manage your network in that you won’t find yourself “ftp-ing” into a dozen different domains.

A point that I brought up during the topic was that About.com has been using subdomains for (probably) as long as they [About] have been around. No one could disagree that it was fairly easy to navigate About and find the topics that interest them.

With the recent introduction of Erati, I find the use of subdomains put to very good use. I wonder if we are starting to see a glimpse of things to come?

Thoughts?

Bloglines Screwing with Our Feed!

Goddamit! Can anyone see any reason why Bloglines should be throwing a hissy fit over our feed? You can reach the raw, unfeedburnt feed at /?q=node/feed

Any help appreciated at this point, as it all looks just fine to me and Chris…

Get A Performancing Blog!

With the advent of PFF, and after some thought, and talks, we’ve decided to do away with the present format of submitting stories for review by Performancing, and have opened up blogs for all members. You can now register or login with the form on the top right menu and post directly to your Performancing blog!

We’ve had the blogging forums for a while, and they remain the place to ask questions and seek help, but if you’d like to blog on the loose subject of professional blogging, then you can now go right ahead.

Using Performancing Firefox to Post

You can of course use Performancing Firefox to post. It’s pretty simple to do.

If you already have blogs in your blogs sidebar, then hit “add”, if not, launch the account wizard and fil in the details as follows:

  • Choose Movable Type Custom
  • The API url you need is http://performancing.com/xmlrpc.php
  • Enter your username and password (you’ll need to register of course)
  • Click categories, then check the box that fits your pro blogging topic
  • You’re all set, blog away!

Blog Directly from the Website

You can post to your blog from here also. Just hit the “create content” link on the right hand menu and choose “blog entry” or alternatively, hit the “my blog” link, then the “post new blog entry” link at the top of your blog.

Your Blog URL and Feed

Blog URL’s are permenant, as they work on your user id number, which is of course unique, and the same goes for your RSS, which you’ll find a nice familiar button for on your blog homepage.

Getting on the Home Page

Not all blog posts will make it to the homepage of course, but the best ones, those that are on topic and make good reading will go direct to the homepage.

A Couple of “donts”

Please don’t use your blog to promote, all entries fall under the normal guidelines and blatant self promo’s will be nuked, and the perpetrator whipped senseless with a knotted rope heh…

You May Need to Restart Firefox

If you’re already signed into your performancing blog (we’ve had the PFF blog available for a while) then restart firefox to see the new categories, and do tell me if I’ve missed any obvious ones.

User Pics

We’ve removed user photos from the posts themselves, though they remain in your profile, for the simple reason that it’s just to hard to enforce that the pics should be of the author, not the authors cat heh.. So though you’ll have to live without the dubious benefit of seeing my ugly mug on the homepage anymore, I should spend less time admin’ing and more time posting (er.. is that a good thing? hah.)

Enjoy!

Have fun, and if you have any questions, just post here.

Del.icio.us Lists are Soooo 2005!

Reading Darren’s 7 ways to get to the top of del.icio.us post im compelled to tell you that I think the “10 ways to stuff a walrus” type posts are history this year. Im not sure why, but personally Im a little bored of them, and I think we’ll see some new trends emerge in the next few months and this little list craze die out.

Darren does cover the HOWTO though, and I think that’s an all rounder, those things will always be a good way to make the del/pop list. What delicious readers want is simple stuff, it’s easy to read, easy to see why it’s useful and people like to spread knowledge.

Being simple is what makes lists work, I just think we’ll see less of them this year, as the low hanging fruit has been done to death now. Really, if I see one more “10 tips for bloggers” post i’ll puke. Seriously.

He did miss out the #1 all time greatest way to get del/pop’d though: Write about del.icio.us! But then that idea is embedded in the title i guess 🙂