Postcards from the Funny Farm

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In this post I discuss how valuable Twiter and you may have heard of Twitter is you are not already using it. It is an enigma to me still trying to understand it’s huge popularity. It IS popular though so that alone becomes the impetus to join. As you Twitter, you theoretically can gain reader for your site or blog. I might as well change those terms into your “online ego.” Twitter will feed it for sure. That little blue “t” ca do a lot for your online ego. Whether it’s going to build your traffic? Well, the jury is still out on that one.

Twitter is a simple time-line of messages that users assemble from all over the globe intermittently as they feel the inspiration to do so. It reminds me a lot of the way PHPbb forums used to be. I would post in the morning what I was doing that day and when I got home I would check for questions or responses and I would reply. Twitter gives the reply function but it doesn’t alert the writer that her/his Twitter message has been replied to. To be, this is a huge drawback since the only way to find replies is to go back and back and back into the message since your twitter post to find the reply. Many times after all that, you find no one replied.

So what is it good for? Twitter is good for connecting friends who are online. It is also good for posting sites your run across to recommend, like a tumblelog. You can get traffic this way, but for me it hasn’t brought much. The best part of Twittering for me has been seeing what my friends are doing and getting ideas for content from that. I haven’t had much referral traffic for Twitter.

My friend Chris Gray really likes Twitter and he has this to say about it:

1. Online diary — I like to send updates on various milestones that I would have never otherwise written down. For example, I can go back and now recall the date and time my wife and I took our youngest son to get his first haircut or when he took his first steps. It’s also fun to look back at various other moments, goals, frustration points, and see where I’m at right this moment. I use it as a kind of gauge (if that makes any sense).
2. I also use it as a quick way to communicate with my friends (since I have twitter hooked up to my cell phone I can send them tweets wherever I am). I also use Twadget (Vista sidebar gadget) to post/keep up with tweets.
3. Finally, I occasionally use Twitter to advertise new blog posts (while I haven’t had the chance to do this for some time now- since my posts have been sparse

Thanks to Chris for that helpful info!

My conclusion? Twitter is a luxury/fun item that you should play with to keep up with friends as well as make new ones but I don’t see it as a way to improve traffic.

The other service I want to look at in this article is IZEA. Now, IZEA is a larger company that produces several smaller ones. The most well known one is PayPerPost. This is a service you apply to and, once acceoted, may choose from a list of “Opps” from paying advertisers for varying amounts of money (usually at my level I see opps from 7-45 dollars). Izea also has a new PayPerPost social marketing site called “Social Spark.” It is currently in a invite-only beta phase but i have been told that very soon it will launch publicly. There isn’t much to review with regards to traffic but from what I can tell, this will become both a monster way to find paying ad sponsors, but also a way to network and increase your traffic. The one drawback I see is the fact that some people will perceive this as a competition and not linkback etc. I hope that is not the case and that IZEA creates incentives for referrals and links to other members. If that proves impossible with this business model, I hope they will seek out ways to make members friendly with each others and helpful toward one another.

So, those are the two social networking sites I wanted to write about tonight. I’m getting more and more into this online social marketing stuff. So much so that I have already purchased some patch panels for the computer room in our new home. But whatever I recommend and however much hardware you have in your home, you have to see what really works best for your needs. Use these services as much as you can before you take my review as gospel truth. For some, these may work better than for others. Enjoy.

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FuelMyBlog is an awesome service I have been using for blog marketing and networking. They were kind enough to publish my guestblog today about widgets on their site. I have been studying and using widgets for over a year now and have learned a thing or two. I put that knowledge in this guestblog. There are a few widgets out there that everyone needs to have and some that definitely should have never seen the light of day. Then there are those that are custom suited to a particular blog type. It would be nice to get a discussion going about widgets. I know I could still learn a ton myself. If you are interested in reading my guestblog and joining the discussion at FuelMyBlog you can read it at the url below:

blog.fuelmyblog.com/2008/03/do-you-know-where-your...

If you are interested in having me guestblog for your blog for free, read the page explaining the process and contact me.  Thanks!  I hope to hear from you.

I noticed on my incoming links self-made widget* this morning that Fuel my Blog has declared Postcards from the Funny Farm to be their Blog of the Day. This is truly exciting for me since I recently joined their service and have been checking it out. Thank you to Fuel My Blog for saying that my blog is “well-manged” throughout. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated reading that since I am always reorganizing and trying to get it as reader-friendly as possible.

If you, my reader, are interested in their service for your blog, why not use this opportunity to click over there , read what they wrote about my blog, and sign up. You can give Postcards some fuel in the process if you want! I’ll be sure and give you some fuel back.

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*NOTE: Usually when I add or remove widgets, the helpful reasons get left out like pulling down roller shades. I want to record here in the footer of this post that my self-made “incoming links” widget has done more for my blog than several months of using some commonly used blog widgets out there. For example it is how I noticed the mention on Fuel my Blog this morning. Though I have blogged on this a few times already, Please note dear blogger that while they have their place, sometimes you don’t need the big social serv.... Often, they just take up precious space. Analyze whether they are helping you and if not, get rid of them. The simple stuff is often what link building and traffic is all about: You show their stuff off and they mention yours. If you’d like to put an incoming links widget like mine on your blog I recommend this one highly, it is called Kramer.

I’ve been using a new social networking/marketing service called Entrecard and this post is a summary of my findings. By way of introduction, let me just tell you that this is one startup company that if they were handing out logo pens I would be eagerly taking several. This company is valuable and serves a viable purpose, unlike so many internet startups out there.

Entrecard is a service that allows you to drop your virtual card on blogs you visit as they leave theirs on yours. You both get “credits” for doing so and this allows you with time to purchase advertising on other blogs. This is not normal advertising, it is just exposure or advertising for your blog. Above in the screen shot you see the line of cards that were dropped on my site just today. It is good etiquette to visit each one and drop and comment back. In all honesty, I don’t always comment. There are some weak blogs on Entrecard. Besides that, sometimes I have 50 or more dropped on my blog and who has time to read and comment on that many blogs?

You see here one of the size choices for a widget. This is the size I have here on my blog. You can see it’s a simple pic with a link to the site along with a bar down below that allows you to drop your Entrecard.

This is a great day to find new blogs out there. It’s also a great way to get your blog noticed. One drawback is that the established Entrecard blogs are very expensive (in terms of credits, nothing costs anything in terms of dollars and cents) to advertise on and I have noticed this doesn’t necessarily correlate with quality.

At the same time, the “drops inbox” has a feed so you can subscribe to the feed that tells you who dropped at your blog. This makes “dropping back” really easy, well I won’t say easy, but it gets done!

People will request to advertise on your site. Once approved by you, their widget will appear for one day on your site. It’s a cool back to grassroots marketing for blogs.

There is a limited selection of blogs on Entrecard which I don’t know is a blessing or a curse. For example, I was looking for blogs on Fuel my Blog the other day and it was like sifting through hayseed. Entrecard is the opposite, there are only a handful to choose from in each category and that makes it easy to get familiar with the ones you frequent.

To conclude my very short review, I find Entrecard productive. I have gained a few new readers and some traffic as a result of using it. the drawbacks are that it is time consuming and limited in the blogs it exposes you to. If you try it out, make sure you drop on this site!