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Friday, June 16, 2006

Manifest Destiny

I know that I'm not alone when it comes to having the desire to increase blog readership and Web traffic. Part of that is wanting more people to read and enjoy my book, but a large part of it is also that I am really having fun blogging (a self-professed newbie, I've only been blogging since the end of January, this year) and sharing my thoughts with people. As a result, I have been on the lookout for ways to improve my blog, promote it, and get more visitors. I suspect that some of you who read my blog regularly and maintain your own postings are probably interested in the same thing.
So I thought that I would post a few of the resources that I have found online. I have tried to follow most of the advice in these articles, and slowly but surely, I think that they truly are producing results. Maybe someone else can add to this list of resources, if you see fit.
The first article I read on the subject was this one by Greg White on Ezine. This is where I learned all about pinging to get my blog noticed. I also subscribe to a few of these services that he lists, though I don't really think I've gotten too many hits off of them so far.
A couple of days ago, I came across this fantastic article by Paul Stamatiou, a student at Georgia Tech (an ACC comrade!). Per his recommendations, I have now subscribed to technorati and feedburner. If you read this article, be sure to scroll down through the comments as well -- there is some useful information there, too!
I am working my way through the list at Robin Good' s site. But as it has been recommended, I'm going to plow through it as well.
I hope that this helps my fellow bloggers out there who are in the same situation as I am -- having fun, but hoping to increase readership. Like I said, if you have any other sources of information, please don't hesitate to post them here!

5 comments:

HappyChyck said...

Enlightening! Thanks! My purpose for blogging has changed a lot over the year, but I've been a slow starter, too. This is a time consumming hobby! So, anyway, I'm floundering big time on a purpose. Not knowing what I'm doing doesn't help either. Literally, in my circle of friends IRL, nobody knows anything about blogging--not even my techie husband. It takes a lot more time digging around how to do this hobby of mine well.

I think the thing that has brought me more traffic is simply commenting on other sites. (Telling my mom and husband to read was getting me nowhere.) Oh yea, I have surely made myself unappealing at times, but oh well. It's like walking into a party with people you don't know and trying to make friends. Some people turn up their noses while others find you a kindred spirit right away. It's like freakin' high school and I'm a lowly freshman.

Someday I'll order your book, but I'm still bitter about the last educator book I read. It so mirrored by own experiences that I was POed that I hadn't written it and that I wasn't making some extra bucks off my apparently typical teacher adventures.

Keep on keepin' on!

olhares futuros said...

i read alllll but the english ins´t easy to understand to me ... ; ((

Mister Teacher said...

Hi happy, you and I are definitely in the same situation. I too started getting some real traffic to this site by commenting on other blogs, such as First-Year Teacher, Education Wonks, and even some of the message boards over at teachers.net.
Well let me go ahead and thank you in advance for WHENEVER you buy Learn Me Good -- I think you'll enjoy it, and hopefully it won't PO you TOO much...
And Santa, WELCOME to the site! As I said in an earlier post, it is always nice to have international visitors! Please feel free to leave your perspectives from Brazil, and we will forgive you for any mistakes in language that you make. :)

Mrs. T said...

Thank you for this wonderful resource!
For me, the blogging fills a void that was left after participating in the National Writing Project- (Eastern Iowa Writing Project, actually). We had the chance to post some of our writings and people would respond- and it got kind of addictive.
My techie husband doesn't know from blog stuff either. He's happy to help me figure it out, though.
I love the stories people have about what kinky Google searches people do to get them to their sites. Cah razy.
Anyway, thank you so much for sharing the info!

Mister Teacher said...

You are most certainly welcome!