People who read various knitting email lists are familiar with an inefficient blog advertising phenomenon, which is:
Knitting bloggers post “I updated my blog” to an email list.
Now, there are likely many reasons why some people might do this and we could all speculate. In fact, people are speculating and complaining over on the yahoo “knitflame” list. Let’s just say the knitflamers theories about why people do this aren’t flattering.
Let’s also note that the knitflamers are suggesting people who post “I updated” get lots of traffic that way. I doubt it. I’ll tell you why.
If someone asks a question about something specific on the knitlist, and I post answer including a link to a specific blog article that discusses the question, I get roughly 8 visits as a result of that message. That’s if I answered the specific question asked. I’m sure saying “I updated” would get me no more than 1 visit. Are 8 visits a lot? Well, I got over 350 visits yesterday; I really don’t think posting “I updated” would make much difference.
Of course, I might be happy to propose my own theories of why people post “I updated”. Mostly, I think it’s just that bloggers are writing stuff they think someone on the list might be interested in, so they post. It’s a knitting list. Chances are, some subscribers are interested; others aren’t. That’s true of every single post appearing on these lists, including those that say “I’m so happy, I finished a hat for my mom yesterday. She loved it.”
Why would I get upset at a few “I updated posts”, unless the whole list contains nothing but “I updated my blog” messages?
The fact is, regardless of motives, there are better ways to tell “the world” that your blog has been updated. You need to ping the various blog directory . If you don’t understand what pinging is, or are completely unaware of blog directories, if you’d like traffic, you should ping them. When useful, send them additional information. (Once you’ve learned of them, you may get the idea to use them to find people’s blogs too! )
So, here’s a little fairly short list of things you should do:
- If your blog software doesn’t ping the directory services, ping services manually by visiting Ping-o-matic. This service permits you to fill out a form and “ping” all the major blogrolling services when you update. Some blog software (like Wordpress and usually Moveable Type) pings these services automatically, but if yours doesn’t, you should visit ping-o-matic every time you update.
- Naturally, because I decided to write this article today, Ping-o-matic is down. This is pretty rare. If you visited, and saw the big “Wordpress can’t find database” page, try King Ping. When I used it, I received a warning to use the “non-ajax” version. Beat me what that means. I found the little link to the “non-ajax” version and pinged. (Don’t use both services; pinging twice is pointless.)
- Technorati is one of the directories Ping-o-matic pings. As long as you are going to ping Technorati, use Technorati Tags. Since I use Wordpress, my posts are automatically tagged with my post category. Notice I always tag them “knitting”, and sometimes other things. If you click here and scroll down, you’ll see Technorati found my post. When you get there, look to the top left hand corner and find information about “tags”. Technorati will explain how to add a ” Technorati knitting” tag to your post. Basically, you add this to the markup in to the HTML in your page:
- Publish a feed. Once again, Wordpress automatically publishes a feed. If you use another software, you’ll have to read their directions, but hunt to find instructions around for “RSS feed”, “XML feed”, “atom feed” or just plain old “feed”. On blogger, you can publish a feed by visiting your control panel, picking “settings”, then click on “site feed”. Set “publish site” to “yes”. Then, look at “description”. If you pick “full feed” your entire post will be in the feed. You may like that, but you probably don’t. I’d advise picking “short”. You don’t need to change anything else; just click “save settings.
- Finally, email me and ask me to add you to one of my aggregator pages for knitting blogs. My aggregators check your feed and post the first few lines of your feed on the page; you can see examples by clicking any of the posts on my knitting site feeds page. If you are added to my feeds page, people can visit my page, see there is something new, then click on over to visit your site. These are new, so traffic is light, but as I add more blogs, I suspect people will use them. I’m noticing some traffic already, so it will probably bring you some.
Of course, to be posted on my aggregator, your blog has to be about knitting. I’ll also ask you to put a link to my page on yours– that way people will eventually find the aggregators.
These directories work. Guess who visits Technorati regularly to find new knitting blogs? Yours truly! And guess who gets a lot more traffic from Technorati than the silly web rings.
Of course, if the email list you subscribe to enjoys reading posts informing them you just your blog, you can keep doing so. But, why not tell the world?
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Lucia Liljegren: Copyright 2005-2007 Rights to all site content including knitting patterns, generators and haikus reserved.
I do see small spikes in traffic when I’m posting more on places like knitters review or various lists, but I get much bigger spikes when I comment a lot on other folks blogs.
Now, I’m a 150 unique visitors a day person (my hits are higher, though), and I know that 30 folks watch my syndication feed via livejournal (I publish a full feed, including images, so I don’t pick those folks up on my stats.)
Comment by Gail (15 comments.) — 8/2/2005 @ 2:00 pm
I don’t know how many read my feed, probably not many. Right now I use Wordpress, and think I publish a short feed, I remember looking at it when I set up the aggregators.
The main thing with publishing a long feed is the person needs to be aware someone can view the whole blog article. Tiffany at Princess knits had a problem with someone basically just reposting her posts in their entirety disguised it as their post at their blog. Clearly, that’s not what you want!
Posting at forums does seem to bring more traffic than email lists. It also lasts longer because the forums are organized to let people find information.
Now, I can tell you where I posted and caused traffic to zoom! (Don’t do this, it’s pointless. It wasn’t what I intended!) I like to read the Volokh Conspiracy. One of the bloggers was discussing footwear and traveling on airplanes. So, I commented that I solved the problem of taking my shoes off by wearing flip flops. To be funny, posted the URL to my crocheted fun fur flip flops. I got 80 visits from that site the next hour! I kept getting visits. To date, I’ve gotten 450 visits from that comment. I’m still getting visitors!
Likely very few or none, are knitters. So, it’s pointless to post there as a method of getting long term traffic. Still, it’s amazing. I wonder what would happen if I posted a link at Instapundit?
Crafster is the one knitting forum that does bring in traffic fairly consistently. Crafster lets me post pictures, and people do like to visit free pattern sites.
Comment by lucia — 8/2/2005 @ 2:15 pm
I publish a full feed mainly for the livejournal folks - when I moved my knitting stuff to its own blog, I was concerned that no one would make a special trip to read. That is a good tip to keep a look out - I could actulaly keep a better eye on where I’m getting image hits from as a means of finding out who is using my syndication feed.
I posted in Salon’s TableTalk once a link to an ancient size chart, and got massive amounts of traffic. But none of it stuck.
Comment by Gail (15 comments.) — 8/2/2005 @ 2:39 pm
The Salon TableTalk pattern makes sense. I know I usually don’t set a book mark or blogroll something until I’ve visited several times and a visit again during one of my bookmarking phases. There are lots of good sites I’ve visited, never bookmarked, and don’t visit again.
I am getting more systematic about bookmarking though!
Comment by lucia — 8/2/2005 @ 2:44 pm
I use RSS but there are many knitters who do not, many who do not blog but enjoy reading them. There is a yahoo group list expressly for posting “I’ve updated” and nothing more. I think it’s good for some folks and really don’t see anything wrong with it, if it’s done in the right place. Knitting newsgroups and yahoo groups, I wouldn’t post “I’ve updated”, I’d feel like a fool for one and I’m not into having x amount of hits a day. The main purpose of my journal is just that, to journalize my knitting, for me.
JMHO!
Kitt (the one with 12 kittykats!)
Comment by Kitt (2 comments.) — 8/3/2005 @ 4:57 am
I finally did get to this page. NFT
Comment by Natalie (0 comments.) — 8/4/2005 @ 2:11 pm
Weird! You’re comment arrived in my “in” box with after a 2 day delay. I have no idea what’s up with that. They usually arrive nearly instantly. (I notice only now that it is here at the blog, wedged between two from my mom. I answered my mom and not you.
)
My apologies for not answering!
I agree that many bloggers just use it as a journal. I think even some who post “I updated my blog” do it for that reason and don’t care that much about hits. In fact, I’m *darn* sure the ones at Machine Knitters Yahoo list do it for that reason; the rest of the people on the list like seeing the new articles, and often discuss the aticles on the list instead of at the list subscriber’s blog. As long as the list owner, Roz in the case of “knittingmachines” doesn’t mind, I don’t really understand why the knitters on knit flame go batty. (That said, the knitters on knitflame rarely overlap with those on “knittingmachines”) .
Still, for some reason, people posting “I updated” seems to be lots of knitflamers pet peeve. It’s not really mine. I just think, if someone happens to be motivated to do it to increase traffic, they at least need to know there are other things they should also be doing.
Comment by lucia — 8/6/2005 @ 9:04 am
Full-post feeds are soooooo much better for the time-crunched using RSS feeds to keep up. If you just post a snippet, then I have to leave the feed-reader to read the rest of the post. Oh my, when I’m tired … it just overwhelms me.
Ping-o-matic rocks though!
Comment by Christine (1 comments.) — 9/7/2005 @ 3:57 pm
Hi, my name is Jutta and I have the Brother 260 and the 930E. Also the Linker DL 1000 plus all the extras
you can think of and odles of Yarn. Since I don’t have time anymore to knitt, do you know where Ican sell everything. I hope to hear from you soon, thank you,
Jutta Mestas
Comment by Jutta Mestas (0 comments.) — 7/9/2007 @ 6:35 am