This post isn’t really aimed at the hardcore experienced blogger, its more aimed at those just starting out, people like me in fact. I’m fairly knew to all this and tend to blog from a search centric POV. Whilst its generally true that its search engines that will give most bloggers their traffic, there are nonetheless a variety of other  ways you can drive traffic and build the conversation within your sphere.

Blogging is popular for many reasons. Be it a tool for self expression, a tool for self promotion or just a general communication medium, its a fantastic way to reach out and have a conversation with people with similar interests.

Most of us are aware of the fantastic tools and platforms out there that enable us to see who is referencing us and in what context.

Trackbacks the process of ‘pinging’ a blog automatically is one such way. Checking your technorati stats is another. Using other 3rd party plugins or embed code is another still; Feedburner, Google anlaytics, Webtrends, Clicktracks to name but a few.Not to forget of course, the old trusty web server log files. Oh and lets not forget the ever increasing number of social media blogging communities that have sprang up recently. MBL, BumpZee, SpicyPage and my current favorite of course, BlogCatalog.

The really great thing about these is that they enable you to put a human face to your readership, letting you see who recently visited you, seeing new faces, clicking through to their sites or pages at their community and seeing what they have to say about whatever it is they do. Ive found some great blogs this way, that I otherwise may simply have missed.

I started blogging as ‘robwatts’ in January 2007. Yep, thats not so long ago at all. If you want to read my figures and stats here they are.

I currently have a little over 110 subscribers -  a technorati authority score of 208 with a rank of 19,424 and an alexa rank of  102,721 My Google PR is 4.

In comparison to other sites these numbers are very small beer, yet to be frank, I didn’t start blogging to win any popularity contest or acquire willy waving look at how big I am type scores, yet it is nice to know that people are interested in some of the things I have to say, and that these are beginning to be reflected in the various metrics fore-shown.

Its funny, but when you initially start out talking about whatever it is you discuss, you realize that, by and large you have a very small audience indeed. You might well write the most fantastic of stuff, yet if you don’t have the readership or eyeballs on your content, then not many people are going to be able to see or comment upon it. can you do anything about this? Sure you can…Ive already touched on one such automated way, but for the benefit of those who may have missed it, I’ll cover it again.

Catch your Tumbleweed

If your blogposts are blowing about in the wind, wailing away crying for a little attention then maybe you just have to let people know they are there.

I guess this was one of the thoughts that swam around in the depths of my subconscious which with a prompt or 2 pushed me in the right direction.The creative process is one of those things that can just sneak up and bite you on the behind. I was thinking about some of my posts that hadn’t received comments, and half jokingly blogged on it back in April.

I challenged the blog community (or my tiny growing readership at the time)  to calculate what their ‘tumbleweed’ score was for their blog and added as an afterthought, that I might even develop a plugin to help people automagically display their scores. Some bloggers like Andy responded, and made me realise that actually, this could well be a handy little addition to the blogging productivity box. The idea was that by having a visible metric, you could see how your posts were being responded to over a given timeframe, as well as show old posts that your newly aquired readers may have missed. So was born the tumbleweed plugin for wordpress.

Its nothing incredible of course, it just uses a little SQL and some basic maths. It may not work on all WP setups either, but it should work on most.

As for people using other blogging platforms, the short response at the moment is that it just will not work on your set ups. Blogger is kinda restrictive in terms of how it enables you to interact with the back end so my hands are a little tied. If I get enough interest or requests I may well look at creating something similar for platforms like Typepad,Drupal etc.

If youv’e written stuff that you think was good and think that people might benefit from seeing/reading again and want a little prompter to help you see how you are performing in a fun light hearted way, then tumbleweed could well be the thing for you.

Meantime, whatever it is you are doing or writing about, enjoy it!

A recent splash on the blog scene following in the footsteps of the now Y! acquired mybloglog is Blogcatalog.

Andy blogged on it some time back and made some good observations and insights so no real need to regurgitate those here. I’ll generally echo his sentiments when I say that I too like Blogcatalog, for me it’s one of those places that lately seems to be ‘getting’ the whole conversation thing. It has taken an existing idea and added value and improved on it. I love the way in which it’s a moderated resource too, it doesn’t just take on any old blog or website, trust me I know – which for me is a definite plus. It’s a great quality step to know that every single site that has been added has been given the once over, or at least I assume it has. I couldn’t find any further info on how this is handled. Human moderation obviously helps blogcatalog in building trust and credibilty, so for me is just another winner.

Discussion feature

The recently added new discussion feature could also be a pretty good thing. As it stands its pretty basic. Registered users can start discussions and reply to other conversations began by others.

Discussions seem to show up in ones home page which is a neat little way of spotting any buzz of activity.

It’s a litle unclear as to what drives this at the moment, i.e do they appear because they are just ‘popular’ conversations or do they have to be part of your ‘friend’ or ‘neighbourhood‘ list, or do they have to be a part of your theme even. I should think they are, but a little help link to a FAQ could clear up these and issues related pretty quickly.

I love the little filter option, as this helps you quickly spot posts from your friends, as well as conversations that you started.

It would be good to see an extra link in there of the form discussion Ive partook or something like that. Currently, the My Discussions link doesn’t take me to a grouping of threads Ive participated in. I assume this is because I haven’t started any conversations yet. Perhaps it would be good to have this tiered in someway even.

* Daniel( thegoodknife ) kindly cleared this aspect up for me nicely. I can’t link directly to the comment as they don’t yet seem to have a permalink option for individual comments, but I’m sure it’ll follow.

Whenever you reply to or start a topic, that topic will get added to your favorties automatically. These Favorite posts are what we use to populate the lists on the sidebar of your user profile, and is also a good way to track the threads you’re most interested in.

Expanding upon a good thing..

Community building and neighbourhood interaction is no new thing in the space. Bumpzee recently enabled people to form communities managed by community leaders, members can join the group and follow the conversations that grow from topics generated by user blog posts and issues related to the theme in general.

Blogcatalog would do well to follow this lead and develop the software to enable similar tightly defined conversations to grow. Community leaders would be encouraged by the opportunities it presents to them too, which could help create a virtuous circle of interaction and feedback.

Software considerations

There’s a recognition that as of today April 27th 2007 the software as it stands isn’t the greatest and needs a bit of work to get it to where it needs to be. In my view it should allow for a number of things.

>>Moderation , community leading and anti spam

Neighbourhood leaders should be able to appoint moderators, especially in some of the busier communes.These things can be jumped on by spammers who see them for a linking opportunity they represent, so its a good idea to run a good tight ship as early as possible. Spam generally, shouldn’t be too much of a problem because most of the users are genuine bloggers and site owners. Problems could develop if this aspect was loosened, although, the ‘genuine blog owner’ blogcatlog requirement, is a very useful 1st line of defence.People should be allowed to link out liberally too. Any system designed to limit user ability to link out in context and give juice would be a bad thing. The very idea should be one of trusted users in trusted communities.

>>Formatting and posting

The software should at least provide some basic formatting options and allow for certain html or BB tags too. Users should be trusted sufficiently without recourse to any use of nofollow tags! Abusers will be pretty quickly snagged so I don’t see it as a potential problem. I’d also like to see bigger reply thresh-holds too. Currently, you cannot reply to a response to a response, 2nd level commenting seems to be the limit. Perhaps a BB style or HTML blockquote or snapback system could be useful.

Finally…

I guess the jury is still out on whether people who like to write about their interests and passions on a daily basis will really engage in such a thing over a period of time, much of that will be influenced by the tools and features and benefits offered by the platform, and more importantly the people who choose to interact and engage within the spaces provided.

Blogging is certainly on the up and up, and options like those provided by great sites like blogcatalog will in my view, certainly help link the threads and strands of thought that make blogging the fun communication phenonmenum that its become. The social networking space is certainly one of the most exciting out there today and is constantly evolving offering an ever increasing array of methods and tools for direct communication.

Which reminds me, did I tell you about my latest social networking project?