• I'm putting this one first because it applies to non-bloggers as well: Google Alerts. What are those? First of all they're free. Basically they are alerts you set to find out who's talking about you. I know someone who had a job interview in a couple weeks time and set the alert up for that company so that she was sent information whenever there was any news about that company. She was very prepared for the interview. Same thing for any topic of interest to you, whether relating to allergies or a political candidate. If something new comes out on-line (blog, on-line paper etc.) you will receive an email telling you about it. Also, if you wanted to only search blogs for something, you can go to Google.com, select more from the top of the screen and then select blogs. This will allow you to do a blog search. This is what I did when writing for Just Cause.
• Post frequently. Hmm...I seem to be falling short on this one lately
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• Comment frequently. See above. Someone recommended commenting on three new blogs every day while you trying to build a blogging community.
• Respond to the comments either by leaving a comment on your own blog or emailing the commenter back. At the rate I'm going I'm not going to have any readers left!
• Encourage conversation in your comments section. This can be either by responding to comments or asking your readers questions that they would answer in your comments.
• Blog template should be easy to read and not too cluttered. I actually was already planning on doing a complete makeover of FF&FP. Now, if I could just find a way to invent a time machine and stop time, this might actually happen!
• It's important to catergorize and tag your blog posts. This increases your Google hits. If you're finding that people get a huge number of pages on your blog when searching for a term that you frequently use in your blog posts then try breaking that term into a more specific catergory. Confused? The example was carrot from a recipe blogger. Because she uses carrots in lots of recipes, a search for carrot cake would bring up all her recipes with carrots as an ingredient. Instead of using the category cake for the recipe for carrot cake she was advised to create a specific carrot cake category.
• To find a blog community, look for a blogger you like who has a blogroll. Read those blogs and comment away. Another way is to click on the profile of someone who has left a comment on a blog you like and then follow that person to their blog, comment on their blog, etc. Just like in real life society, bloggers have a tendancy to move in circles.
• Use Google Reader or Bloglines to read blogs. It's more efficient than clicking over to each individual blog you read. It also allows you to see when a blog has been updated so you don't have to waste time checking on blogs to see if there are new posts. My problem is that I need to update my Google Reader, as I am currently using Firefox bookmarks. Bloglines is supposed to be easier for newbies, but Google Reader is more convienent for Blogger bloggers since you have to have a Google account for Blogger anyhow.
• Designate specific times when you're going to be on your computer. That way you know that if you read an email, you will have the time to respond to it. If you find that you lose track of time when you're on the computer, then set a timer to limit how long you can be on it. Apparently time-out timers are good for this.
• You can set your email up to automatically put messages into different folders based on certain criteria thus making it easier to manage your inbox.

Labels: Blogging Flexibly