I am a member of a lot of Social Networking sites, although my degree of participation varies a great deal. It tends to be based on which sites I enjoy, especially the social aspects, although these are also communities where readers are more likely to result. I know that I could be much more systematic and organized in how I expend my efforts online, rather than fluttering from place to place without prior planning or without following the planning. There are just too many sites to be successful as an online social butterfly – the wings are just not large enough, being a social Albatross would be preferable.

I know the theory behind SEO and increasing visitors but tend to lack in the implementation of it. Being a bit of a net junkie the time and effort requirements do get fulfilled but matters such as keyword analysis take a back seat I find this tedious, although I do tend to use openings that are hopefully Google Getters. This has become more automatic rather than thought out, although on writing the first sentence here I did have this in mind and reworked it.

To the stats themselves – I compared 2008 annual figures from Awe Stats and Google Analytics. Although there was a lot of variations in the two sets of figures, when I grouped the numbers and looked at them both in percentage terms there was much less variation. I split the figures into groupings based on the type of networking involved.

Entrecard (+ related sites) 15% – I expected these to represent a fairly large proportion although I don’t think they necessarily translate to readers and bring few comments. After initial enthusiasm I no longer spend much time with Entrecard.

Lists and Blogrolls – The vast majority of this 4% is made up of lists I have qualified for rather than blog submission sites – Top 100 and top 50 women Australian Bloggers, a Do Follow list. Sitehopping has brought a small but steady stream of traffic too. The the blog directory sites were not doing anything at all and by mid year I had removed all of these buttons. I had joined these sites when I first started blogging and before Social Networking sites had taken off.

The amount of visitors arriving from Social Networking sites surprised me, especially how many referrals Stumbleupon had sent, as you can see below:

Stumbleupon sent me 23,500 visitors last year even though none of the submitted posts received huge amounts of thumbs up – no “Digg” effects are apparent. Although I do send my posts to contacts via the SU toolbar occasionally, many more were reviewed and given thumbs up without this. I do not enjoy Digg and have not had any enthusiasm for doing what is needed to get a post rated highly there.

As SU took up such a large proportion I have analyzed the other Social Networking Sites on their own without SU.

Although I expected Twitter to do well, I was surprised to see Blog Catalog in second place and Technorati in third. Considering I have not participated in Blog Soldiers and the Good Blogs for months, and no longer have the widgets installed, they performed quite highly. I do not use Mixx a great deal so that figure is not a true reflection on how well it could do for others. Nuffnang Australia has so far proved excellent considering the short period of time I have been a member, although that could be initial enthusiasm that comes along with something new. It will be interesting to see what results arise being featured blogger of the month on Nuffnang. I am pleased that diigo did so well as it is my favorite bookmarking site, with good social networking features thrown in.

Zimbio, which is not included above as I did not consider it a networking site as such, brought me 9674 referrals over a short period of time for just one contribution; my Best Sites For Good Free Stock Images post.

I also had a closer look at which posts were the most popular. (Publishing links to older popular posts is always a good strategy, not only for newer readers who may have missed them the first time round but to increase the number of links within your site.

• New Rules for Domain Names
• Add Borders to Images
• Excellent Free Online Image Editing Tools
• Add Widget Ready Sidebars to WordPress Footers
• Best Sites For Good Free Stock Images
• Adding a Favicon to your Blog

These vary from the Most Popular Posts listed in the sidebar because of different time periods used but both show how popular the image posts were. I believe I managed to get in quickly with the Domain Name post and it was a subject that attracted a lot of interest… The fact that the Favicon tutorial did so well is related to the nature of blogs. There are many posts and static website articles on this topic but this was much more recent than the others. It would be an interesting exercise to write another post on the same subject perhaps later this year, I suspect this too would do well..

So what does all this mean for the year ahead? I will concentrate my social networking efforts on the sites that have been the most useful in terms of visitors and most satisfying in terms of connecting with people. I will make an effort to participate more in Mixx. The Scoutle widget will reluctantly be removed from my footer. The concept is good but it has not proved effective visitor wise and the widget often causes very slow page loading times. I am going to continue giving Google Friend Connect a try – the poor lonely contact widget, which I recently installed, will have to be moved – again because of page loading issues. Nuffnang has yet to produce any ads and the widget’s intrusive size still bugs me.

I will also find time to do the full blog redesign that I have intended to do for a year, which I subequently planned to complete by today; to be installed in replacement of my Christmas theme. Instead I just quickly changed the colors and removed the Christmas images.

I hope these figures give you some indication of the worth of sites in relation to bringing in readers as, having read what others recommend, I do not think they are particularly out of the ordinary. If your experiences differ I would be interested in hearing about them.

Benefits of receiving comments:

Communication Needs

• Comments are a concrete way of showing that your blog has readers, particularly interested in your blog, rather than just passing trade. The passing trade do comment too but you can distinguish these from your regulars. A hello and thank you to my regulars.
• Satisfaction – Stating the obvious – no one wants to run a blog that is not read by others, for whatever reason we blog. – stats may indicate visitors and readers but figures do not provide the same sort of personal satisfaction.
• Motivation – to keep writing posts and to keep going with the blog itself – many blogs are abandoned (probably too early) because of receiving few or no comments.
• Egos are stroked – a natural human need to one extent or another (not because bloggers in general need ego strokes more than anyone else)
• Social advantages/Social Networking – we get to know others, we develop contacts outside of the blog itself, we can develop friendships, contacts can lead to more contacts and more friends who also come to comment on our blogs – the Blog Loop.
• Networking – again to develop contacts but done for business, professional or money making reasons rather to satisfy strictly personal needs.
• Networking + Social Networking – those who start blogging for the above reasons often find it is the social aspects that motivate them to keep on going.

The Blog Loop and how it goes wrong

This post is not just an off the top of my head type now – it has really got me thinking and I even created an image. Do some of your blog posts develop along these lines?

Feedback

• This includes the pat on the back type comments that help with the motivational and ego stroking needs mentioned above. We know deep down that some of these type are not sincere but how many of us ignore this and choose to appreciate them anyway? This does not include the "nice post", "well done", "I am not adding saying anything else because I just want you to visit my blog" type. These are just a drag and for delete or the spam folder. I notice some of these have snuck into some of my older posts – they will be ex-comments soon.
• Learning which of our posts are popular with our readers. It does not necessarily mean posts that draw the most comments but also those which elicit the more valuable comments – what is valuable depends of course on your own particular blog and your own blogging needs. Being aware of which posts fit these criteria is an enormous help in showing us how to improve and meet the needs of our readers. By aware I mean not just knowing which posts they are but thinking about why they are popular and how to reproduce the success again. Looking at our unpopular posts can be similarly helpful.

Research and learning

• Finding other blogs in our own niche areas can advance our learning of the particular subject we cover. Blogs tend to beget contact from similar blogs. Following your comments and the comments left on their author’s blog can be a source of valuable knowledge.
• Even if you blog on a particular topic by following comments you can find wonderful blogs to interest and entertain you; to satisfy leisure and personal learning needs.
• Comments that give us information, add to the topic, or add things we may have missed are a valuable learning tool (the latter is only of positive use for perfectionist types who do not beat themselves up about missing something.). And to prove that I am not a perfectionist I am going to end here and ask you to add any other positive things you can think of – (Ok the truth – I don’t particularly like missing things but I ran out of steam and ideas and I even like getting comments that tell me what I have missed, as well as ego stroking ones.)

Benefits of Leaving Comments

Simple – just take account of the benefits you gain from receiving comments and bestow these on others – not only will you feel good about yourself you will receive backlinks, kudos, recognition for your own blog, more visitors, readers, increased page rank and all the other stuff you can read one of the many blog posts already written on the subject.

I started this post only intending to tell you some news relating commenting tools but not wanting to lose your attention I will write about these next. I have a real talent for (problem with!) getting completely sidetracked.

Scoutle considers itself to be “Automated Social Networking” where there is no need for communication in order to connect and no real life obligations. I think they must be talking only about the initial method of connection here as, once you have connected with someone, there must be communication for a blogging relationship to develop and establish.The novelty of Scoutle is that you do not have to search for people to connect with, Scoutle’s search does that for you, filtering out sites that it considers not worthy – eg outdated sites or those just that only exist for advertising purposes. As well as finding contacts via the widget you can discover other members on the Scoutle website itself, – via contacts of contacts and through networks based on interest areas.

Scoutle is premised on the idea that it is the quality of connections that is important not the quantity. This appeals to me considering the masses of people I do not know that connect to me on sites such as MyBlogLog; many who have likely never visited this blog. Scoutle allows your Scout to walk twice for every time you have a visitor to your site – the more your Scout gets to walk the more it will appear on the sites of other Scoutle members. You make contact with other users by requesting to make a “Connection” with them via the Scoutle website. You score points based on your site visitor numbers and the number of Connections you make. The higher your point value the higher your place in the Scoutle Guide, which in turn should lead to more visitors.

This service has been available for a good few months now and, although as usual I joined as soon as I heard about it, I felt that I already took part in too many social networking activities and these were beginning to take time away from blogging: becoming counterproductive. I have since narrowed these down to networks I find the most use and enjoy using the most so I have some leeway to explore others.

I will report on Scoutle once I have had more opportunity to find out if it is working for me, although I suspect it is not attracting as many members as it deserves because of general social networking fatigue as well as the desire not to have too many widgets. I have already discovered a few very informative blogs that I had not come across before – one you may be interested in is Social Web Tools by ChaCha Fance – it sent me off in discovery of various new, interesting applications.

If you are a Scoutle member please leave a comment letting us know what you think of it.

(I placed the Scoutle widget in my footer because this reduces the impact of any increase in page load time it causes – the footer loads last so the rest of the page is visible even though the social networking widgets may not have fully loaded)

Although I have not ventured into online money making I have joined the 30 Day Challenge for the second time. I was newer to blogging the first time round and learned a lot about blog promotion, social networking, blogging tools and search engine optimization. Knowing that new content is produced for each Challenge and that the tools available to us rapidly increase and change, I felt that I would again benefit from participating. There is no pressure to follow each step rigidly and if you cannot find time to view the daily offerings you can catch up another time.

The Challenge actually starts/started on 1st August but it is not too late to join in. There are some recommended “pre-season” preparation activities which are useful in their own right. Not being patient enough to watch videos I read the transcripts of these so that I could pick out areas that I thought may be new to me. This time round the use of the Flock browser is being recommended and there are guides to help you get started with it. I am close to moving over to Flock from Firefox and will do so once I have configured it with my favorite extensions. At present, I always have it open alongside Firefox for its social networking, Flickr and YouTube tools.

I followed Ed’s example by creating a Google Subscribe Link for Sueblimely. You can subscribe via the “Add my expertise to your Google web searches” in my sidebar. Here are the FAQs for Google Subscribe Links if you are interested in creating your own.

You can join up by via my 30 Day Challenge Refferal Link or via the 30 Day Challenge site directly and find me in Team Lightening There are prizes to be won for those with the most referrals. I don’t expect to be anywhere in the running for these but it would be good not to have a referral point value of zero

Entrecard has been a great way of bringing visitors to blogs and creating a means for members to get known but it has fallen short in producing significantly extra comments and expanding individual blog’s reader communities. Entrecard has always had higher aims, with goals of bringing not only traffic but also audiences, readership and community participation. I agree with Graeme, the mastermind behind Entrecard, when he says that “Commenting is the second most important thing for you to do after writing quality posts. It was due to his aim to use “The same credits that power our culture responsible for millions of blogger-to-blogger visits each week … to help power a culture that comments on posts as well” that has resulted in the partnership with SezWho.

Now on to SezWho itself:

SezWho is a commenting/comment rating tool, which calls itself a profiling service and engagement platform. It creates a ‘profile’ for your commenters; hovering over their profile image or “check me out” link brings up a box which shows you the latest comments they have made and their SezWho ratings. It allows you to rate posts and the the comments and follow comments via RSS. If you are not registered or logged in when rating then the rating will be processed as anonymous but this has much less impact on member reputation scores. You do not have to have your own site to register with SezWho.

The Profile that pops up for Colin Campbell’s comments.

Its use is aimed at giving highly rated members “web-wide recognition for their insights and expertise”, “thought leadership”, and an increase in traffic. The theory is that the number and quality of comments on your blog will grow.

The Entrecard connection is that credits are awarded to members who comment on SezWho enabled sites. The amount of credits given is based on how highly the comment is rated by those who vote on it – ranging from 1 to 10 Entrecard credits. The idea is that quality comments gain the most, quick meaningless comments left merely for backlinks and spam comments will luck out.

will give SezWho users who receive ratings of 4 stars or more with credits to advertise on its network of blogs. This is an interesting approach, as it connects reputation with a direct reward.

How to integrate SezWho with your site (currently supported platforms are WordPress versions up to 2.6 (2.6 is beta still), Movable Type, Blogger, Drupal and phpBB):

• Create an account with SezWho
• WordPress – download and intall the SezWho plugin by upload to your plugin folder, activate it. Then enter the blog id sent to you with your registration confirmation email in the SezWho plugin’s setup.
• Blogger – add the provided code to a HTML/Javascript page element.

You can view your own profile on your SezWho page:

Colin must lead thoughts to better places than I do

As I have only just installed the plugin I do not have any ratings, I do have ‘Star Power’ of 2.5 as this “community ranking” is not purely based on ratings?

Advantages

• If this new system takes off and more Entrecarders do comment, rather than merely dropping on you, your blogs bounce rate will improve.
• SezWho does not host any site content. All published and user-supplied content remains on – and is controlled by – the original site. It does not make off with your comments like some similar programs do.
• Backlinks are created for yourself and commenters.
• If you are an extraordinary commenter, a thought leader among bloggers, then your reputation will spread far and wide. If you are average then it may not make any difference to you, although I am sure the word will get round if particular blogs have generous comment ratings. I am open to that word . In my case I am sure I will not want to favor one regular commenter over another so will rate them all well, just because I am pleased to see them here. If you are new then I should imagine that I will vary my ratings although I love my comments so much that no doubt I will be generous – it will most likely depend on the mood I am in and if you are using a name that includes such words as casino. (my jury is still out with regards to the keyword luv plugin but I will save that for another post)

Disadvantages

• Receiving low ratings could lead you to have less confidence in your writing, even though it may be that your particular commenters do not want to use the system.
• It could be looked upon as bribing people to comment *
• If you write quality posts you are going to get plenty of comments anyway (I do not believe this always to be the case as it depends on your type of blog and readership)
• Adding to your workload by commenting on blogs just for your ratings is yet another way to divert you from writing and concentrating on your own readers.

Reading:

• On Entrecard’s blog Announcing the Partnership of Entrecard and SezWho
• Entrecard fan Joe Tech’s Top 10 reasons why the Entrecard – SezWho partnership is Important for Bloggers gives a positive review. The 70+ comments on the post show agreement with this view.
• * Entrecard + SezWho = Meh on Monkey Fables and Tales which talks less favorably about SezWho and not wanting to “bribe” people to comment. The 50+ comments on the post show agreement with this view.
• SezWho in operation on a phpBB forum on the SezWho Support Forum

To give you an opportunity to try out SezWho on this site I am will pose some questions.

• Based on this post or on your usage of SezWho are you in favor or against?
• Do you think this partnership is a positive or negative step for Entrecard.
• Are the multitude of peripheral blogging activities available to us now having a general effect of

• reducing blog posting frequency and quality or:
• taking us away from commenting on blogs? Is blog conversation moving to social media sites instead?

PhotoCrank allows the addition of word bubbles, graphics, comments and tags to any photo on any website. Those who have installed the browser extension can use the feature on any photo of any website.. In addition to the actual cranks, comments can made relating to those cranks.

If you add the Photocrank engine to your blog then any reader can use the feature on the images you have enabled for its use. You retain control over the comments and can delete those you do not think suitable. You can of course add your own annotations too. A widget is available for websites which shows the Cranks you have created yourself. PhotoCrank has been out for a while but a new version has recently been implemented with extra features.

An example is probably the best way to explain the concept: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, by the fake Steve Jobs, uses Photocrank and I think his blog is a prime example of good usage. Some of the comments are hilarious. You can see an example of the PhotoCrank widget in his sidebar too: Here is an example from his post entitled:

Confession: I have a really hard time deciding what to order in restaurants

Image before pressing the play button:

Image combining three of the comments

Total Diatribe is running regular “photo caption contests” using PhotoCrank

There are hundreds of images and blank bubbles to chose from. When you find those you like you can add them to favorites to find them again easily. Here is an example from one page of my favorites library:

The “Cranked” photos are displayed on the PhotoCrank website and your crank’d photos get syndicated throughout the PhotoCrank network of blogs, providing some extra link love for your site. Members can “follow” others I can see some blogs would find this a useful plugin to create a conversation around their published images in general or as a feature to use on designated posts only. Personal bloggers could write posts specifically for publishing images to be cranked. One blog I think would be ideal for the plugin is MagnetoBoldToo – little to her knowledge I have added cranks to a couple of her recent posts.

(For anyone already using PhotoCrank on their blogs, a new method of disabling cranks on individual images has just been implemented. In the PhotoCrank Options Menu on published photos (the gray button on the bottom right of the photo) click on Adminstration and uncheck the Allow Image To Be Cranked option)

PS – This is for Kelly who was keen to find out what PhotoCranks I had left on her blog images. The first is on the Mosh post and the second on the Be afwaid. Be vewy afwaid Sweet Potato image. Very corny I know.

My contribution is a 125×125 ad on my site and 2,000 entrecard credits. I would be delighted if they were won by one of you. There are various ways to enter the contest, the simplest being to subscribe to Life is Colorful. Visit the contest post for more details of entry requirements and the long list of prizes available.

I decided to follow the Life is Colorful blog after I read the post “Earnings Crossed $10,000 this year on May 7th” as I would love to learn some of the secrets to making that much money online!

Good luck if you enter

» »$?

Stuart started on 7th May by offering a $3 Diet Coke for trade. He traded this with a workmate for a $13.99 Pack of Golf Balls, which was in turn traded for a $39.95 Microsoft Keyboard and Mouse set.

This is all within the first week of starting. Where will it lead I wonder – will it end up with trades for valuable items? I am going to following the progress closely.

All I have to trade right now is an old queen size bed base with one leg broken and a single mattress which has seen far better days (even The Brotherhood would not take them). A trip to the tip is in order very soon as they are sitting in my hallway and not adding anything to the decor.

What are some of the results of spending too much time on social media activities and not enough time on your blog?

• You may not post so often. Readers who visit expecting a new entry will not return so regularly. Your search engine rankings can suffer.
• The quality of your posts may deteriorate. Less time is taken for research and for writing.
• You have less time to respond to your comments and to visit the blogs of your supporters, some may be offended, some may stop visiting you so often, some may simply forget you.
• Conversations best carried out in your comments take place elsewhere.
• You may miss out on blogging events e.g. carnival submissions, memes, blog in unity days.
• You can miss out on being among the first to post and announce breaking news related to your blog topics.

You could likely add more to this list.
From a personal point of view:

• More important aspects of your life may not get the necessary time and attention they deserve.
• Your offline tasks may be neglected and even the people in your life may start to suffer.
• Trying to keep up with all the tasks you have set for yourself can lead to feelings of being disorganized and overwhelmed; stress, anxiety and depression could result.
• You may start to be short of ideas for topics to blog on.
• Lethargy can set in and you may begin to question why you are blogging and whether it is worth it.

This is not a cheerful post but I wanted you to be aware of what can result if you do over commit yourself to social media activities. There is a stage where, instead of enhancing your blogging and your blog, they become counterproductive for yourself and your blog. If you start thinking you are too busy with your peripheral blogging tasks or begin to feel overloaded then take some action to alleviate the situation straight away; before your enthusiasm for blogging starts to wain or your psychological welfare suffers.

I tend to hit an almost overload point quite regularly. I reign in my activities but in my enthusiasm for trying all that is new I get back to the same busy place again. I have my own methods of coping (writing this just presented me with the topic for my next post!) although, after being less than regular in posting lately, I realize they are not necessarily the most efficient methods. A rethink is needed. My methods may be good for my own state of mind but not so good for the blog.

Have you experienced blogging or social networking overload. If so how did it affect you and did you find any solutions that helped you?

The site has been created by BlooksLLC who are also responsible for, among other things:

• Yearblook – A contest to find the best blog posts of each day
• Million Blog List – another wiki directory where you can list your blog -An experiment to see how long it will take to get 1,000,000 blogs to list themselves on a wiki

You are also able to create your own page on the Wiki Blog Directory site and link to this, in addition to your blog, from your directory listings.

If you post about the directory you are allowed to use bold text for your directory entries  :smile: You now know my motive for writing this post.