NOTE: Contest Results posting at 10AM MY time--I gotta wake up first!
Surfing the web has amalgamated into couch potato over the past 5 days. That’s how long I gave myself to recover from my foot surgery. And now I’m recovering from Web Potato Anonymous.
And since husband is back to work and all the kids are staring at me, I think my recovery is over. Foot be damned.
Anyway. I am dying to share with other mom-bloggers all my new web-potato information. Because that’s pretty much all I did during my long extended weekend. I researched blogs, blogging, and how the heck do I get any better at any of this??
And boy oh boy do I have a long list for you. (Long posts? THE number one no-no. But I just broke it).
What I’ve learned during my 5 days of luxury on the couch:
How to make Swell and Throb get along. (Give them lots of time-outs).
How to use a Random Number Generator for a contest. (This site is the one I used).
Why you shouldn’t pull names out of a hat. (At least not when your pre-teen is watching.) MadMad also taught me that people don’t actually want to claim their prize. –What? You don’t want me to have your home address? Sweet little me-blink, blink? Also NOT to end a contest at midnight...what was I thinking?
That while Chunky Monkey is still my favorite; Americone Dream is now a serious contender, a close second at least (thanks to my good and close-by friend Ann). (Thanks for the Phish Food suggestion OHMommy, and to Andi for making me drool.).
I learned that running a contest is great for finding new bloggy friends, but not especially great at drumming up new business. Except for Jamie. And when I get her amazing bag made up, you will so totally want one, and it will be so great I don’t know if she will allow me to make one for you. You’ll have to ask her. One hint though. GIRAFFE.
I now know what PRChecker is. But I don’t really see why anyone would care? 10 is good. 0 is bad. And mine? Came back N/A. Does that mean needs improvement?
Adding my site to blog catalogs. Does this even work? So far out of 5 or 6 I’ve attempted to join, the only one that is showing any real traffic referrals is:
Allmediocre.com (go look it up and add your own site).
I think I learned to twitter? I’ve directly twittered Moosh, ThreeUnderTwo, and VelveteenMind. All fairly famous folks, so that makes me cool, right? Oh and you need to figure out TinyURL to be really twitterlicious. I might have sent you an invite to join Twitter, sorry if that was annoying for you. You can follow me by clicking here. Set up your own and there you go.
Things I did not figure out: (5 days on the couch is still only 5 days after all?)
Technorati? Techno-who? Here’s what Angie told me: (she has a cool new blog doo, go see it).“As far as technorati.......I'm too lazy to add all the blogs I read as favorites. One gets authority by others hyperlinking to your site. But, it only counts once. So, you can hyperlink about me everyday but I'll only go up one authority point.”
Oh well. I added the button to my site, but don’t think it will matter. If you know more, please share.
DOES ANYONE KNOW how to tell how many good folks subscribe to your blog in a reader???
StumbleUpon. I stumble you, you stumble me, makes the world go round, right? Or not. I’m just following Jennifer’s weekend advice, don’t believe me, she’s the Guru. IF you like-a my post, hit the thumbs up button at the bottom. If not, I can’ t really come over and make you now can I?
And one last something I’d like to try:
You already know about my love of all things MEME. I haven’t said much about carnivals. (I didn’t even know what to call them until this weekend!) I was calling them ‘the weird days of the week thingys’. Now I know. They are carnivals. And while I can (and likely will) still make fun of them. I have a few of my own ideas. I guess I want to get made fun of, too. Because it still seems to me the whole point of MEMEs and wacky Wednesday carnivals are to get OTHERS to READ your blog?? And I’m down with that.
So keep posted. Maybe if we can get enough of us mom-bloggers in the trenches together, we could host our own carnival? But please oh please help me name it SOMETHING else. I would just love to see a place that was EASY to link a URL (yours or preferably someone else’s) of a funny/touching/interesting post from the previous week. Pretty much: if you link it, they will come? Mr. Linky can’t be too hard to figure out, eh? There’s so much to read out there, and I want to sit down once a week and be able to read about 15 of the best posts of the week (in addition to all my friend’s posts of courses). So contact me, and let's do this THANG.
8 comments:
Feedburner will check your subscribers, but it takes a few weeks to catch up on how many you actually have. It's kind of frustrating.
It's easy to set it up at feedburner.com (if you can twitter and SU you can FB)
SU is fun and can generate so much traffic...hope it does for you!
I started using feedburner a couple of days ago. Yet another way to obsess about my traffic. Like I needed that.
I don't understand StumbleUpon either.
I've resisted memes, but I started doing my own Haiku Wednesdays. Then I found a bunch o' bloggers are doing a Haiku Friday. Maybe I should join the herd to generate more traffic.
I pre-schedule my posts for 6 am and I see mine is already about 8th on your list. I'm going to have to schedule them for 6:01 I guess, if I want to outwit the blogroll sorters.
Twitter is one of the best resources for connecting with other bloggers. Now, if I only had time to visit all of the blogs of the people I am friendly with on there. It is a weird conundrum.
Let's see... Technorati. I used to care about my "authority," until it was mysteriously and accidentally cut by 3/4 (not just my authority, which expires after 6 months, but also my blog reactions, which never expire), so now I know it's useless. For me. Other people in a hurry to decide who is "important" still respect it.
Page Rank? I don't care about that, either.
Memes and carnivals still elude me, but I know they can bring a lot of traffic if you do them sincerely, so okay. They are particularly helpful when you are first starting out.
StumbleUpon does have my vote, though. I helped teach Miss Jennifer how to use it and I know it has finally done right by her. I have fallen off of the SU wagon, but mean to get back to it.
Finally, feedburner. I try my best to ignore my stats and subscriber numbers now. It just causes me grief. However, if you want to know, feedburner is the one to use.
And hey, thanks for calling me "fairly famous." When I reach "totally mind-numbingly and outrageously famous," let me know. I'm waiting on that one.
Oh, last thing (I think writing blog posts in comments is a no-no, too, but eh), Matthew Fox is awesomely hot. You are stupid.
"Cute enough I guess?" What the hell is that?!!!
So much to learn.......:) What does the PR rank mean anyway? Mines' a 3 by the way. It even said I could put a button on my blog. Sounds like a great idea. Advertise that I'm ranked a 3 out of 10........whatever that means. I still have to check out Twitter, and I think your new signature is very unique....I saw keep it.
Oh, adding linky's. Figuring that out is my new goal.
Holy cow! You're getting all technically crazy! I don't have a clue about any of this!
Except for the TinyURL- I always use that and love it!
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