How to promote your blog?

[Jaakko Wallenius]

Every writer needs readers. I would personally like to know what avenues have members of this group taken to make known that their atheist blog even exists in the vast universe of the internet.
I would also like to know if you have had specific audiences in mind when writing your blogs?

[Beast]

My tips:

1. Write well.

2. Think before you write.

3. Vet through your work.

4. Join interest groups that will broaden your network.

[Jaakko Wallenius]

Sadly I am afraid that even if one is the best writer in the world that is of no use if nobody ever sees your work. I myself am interested in what avanues have bloggers of this group taken to tell others that their blog even exists.

[Sandworm]

Posting or commenting to other sites is your best way to make others aware of what your writing Jaako. It's also less intrusive and any traffic you get is from someone interested in your comment or response to an article.

My stuff is not 'specifically' for the 'atheist' set, but I am an Atheist so there is some of my belief spread liberally throughout my writing... I mean if you read it your gonna realize at some point, "Hey this guy does not believe in gods"...

I'm mostly writing to work on material for stand up, so I will make comments on comedy sites like 'The Daily Show'. If I have a specific joke that relates to the topic I'm commenting on I will post the http link. But you only want to do this if the link is RELATED.

That's really tip #2, make sure your not posting or commenting on something not related to what you've written or what you may be trying to draw them to your site to see. That's the quickest way to get a 'bad reputation' or even get 'black listed' from a site, if people start complaining about you they'll ban you so just use good judgment.

Just make sure you use your blog address as your contact information or the url info when you sign up to make comments and if you make someone laugh or think they'll probably click a link to come to your site.

Hope it helps. I haven't been blogging that long but I've been working with computers and online since 1992 and if your just polite and make sure you're not 're-posting' a topic that's already been done you shouldn't have any problems.

Good luck,
Ed.

[Jaakko Wallenius]

Really glad to have you here, Sandworm!

I also believe these words of wisdom don't go to waste on this group of intelligent and inquisitive people.

[Richard Collins]

http://dbzer0.com/blog/resources-for-atheist-bloggers

I found the tips on this web site might be useful. I do follow some of the advice, for example leaving comments. But, I cannot seem to work out how the trackback feature works. Blogspot doesn't support trackbacks per se that I can see. They have another feature (Link) that is supposed to accomplish the same thing.

It appears to me that writing a specific blog entry to link to another persons blog entry is a lot of work. If that is what is meant by trackback. I have not found a decent explanation of how this is supposed to work, and I don't have the time or energy to experiment.

I just discovered that Blogger has a new release in beta that offers a way for readers to sign up to get posts automatically. I suppose this is a reaction to the fact that ordinary people don't understand RSS or how to use it. I'll try the new gadget out. You can see my implementation of two gadgets here (top of right column):

http://endhereditaryreligion.blogspot.com

[Sandworm]

Yeah, the choice of where you blog is kind of an issue. Personally I use wordpress.com because it's features are really simple and it's something if others I know want to use it they can with little or no internet design experience.

I know html though as I'm an IT guy in 'the real world' and have been since the early 90's, and it's also got the availability to work that way as well. Also, you can eventually transition it over to wordpress.org and move you blog off the free ware version, which is what the .com version is, with the .org version you can set up your own servers to maintain your blog and begin to sell advertising if it becomes that popular... and set up a ip forward to send your wordpress address over to a private domain address if you can get your blog name as a .com or .net address for example...

The problem most people don't see when they get into any 'computerized' endeavor is the possibility and need for future expansion... I mean it happens in the business world to a frightening extent actually, but that's why they have confidentiality agreements...

I'm not sure about blogspot's expandability that much as I don't use it personally, when I was researching before I started I just didn't care for the interface and the expandability options I researched to a point and then moved on to research others...

Hope I'm helping and not just babbling stuff your already aware of here.

[Jaakko Wallenius]

The A Division by Zer0 -page you mention Richard is a really a good one.
I did a bit of reseach on the trackback as I have been wondering about it myself as it is in use in the German owned blogs.fi -system I use for my blogs.
The Irony of Ironies is that I found a good explanation for it at Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs -site! They say:
"What is trackback about?
Sometimes when you see a post on somebody's blog that you like, it's enough just to leave a comment on the other blog about that issue. But what if you've got something to say about the issue that you'd like to share with readers of your own blog? If you do post to your blog, you have to go and leave a comment in the other blog if you want the people there to know about your own blog entry.
This is where trackback comes in. Using trackback, you can automatically notify another blog about your new entry and a link to your entry will appear in that blog's list of trackback pings. Now visitors to the other blog will be able to come to your blog.

What else can trackback be used for?
The implementation of trackback that I described above is basically one-to-one, a way of linking between two individual blog posts. In that sense, it's like a remote commenting system.

Trackback can also be used to create content repositories, for instance a collection of recipes or book reviews from many different bloggers. MT can be set up to allow trackback pings to categories in a blog as well as to individual entries. If you wish to ping somebody else's category there are two ways of doing it:
1. If you just want to post an occasional entry on that topic, you can find the category trackback URL from the target page and enter it into the "URLs to ping" field like you would with an individual entry's trackback URL
2. If you expect to post frequently on this topic and wish all your entries to show up in the repository, you can configure one of your categories so that any time an entry is posted to that category, it pings a trackback URL. Grab the category trackback URL for the target site and enter it in your category configuration page. This is the easier of the two methods since once you've set it up, you don't need to think about it again."
That the Muslim version of the thing anyway...

[Richard Collins]

thanks so much for this information. The pain of learning something new can often offer great rewards. I can see this tool has great possibilities. I may see if I can find a link in one of our bloggers blogs and try it out. The only way you really learn something is by doing.

Cheers,
Rich

Jaakko Wallenius said:

The A Division by Zer0 -page you mention Richard is a really a good one.
I did a bit of reseach on the trackback as I have been wondering about it myself as it is in use in the German owned blogs.fi -system I use for my blogs.
The Irony of Ironies is that I found a good explanation for it at Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs -site! They say:
"What is trackback about?
Sometimes when you see a post on somebody's blog that you like, it's enough just to leave a comment on the other blog about that issue. But what if you've got something to say about the issue that you'd like to share with readers of your own blog? If you do post to your blog, you have to go and leave a comment in the other blog if you want the people there to know about your own blog entry.
This is where trackback comes in. Using trackback, you can automatically notify another blog about your new entry and a link to your entry will appear in that blog's list of trackback pings. Now visitors to the other blog will be able to come to your blog.

What else can trackback be used for?
The implementation of trackback that I described above is basically one-to-one, a way of linking between two individual blog posts. In that sense, it's like a remote commenting system.

Trackback can also be used to create content repositories, for instance a collection of recipes or book reviews from many different bloggers. MT can be set up to allow trackback pings to categories in a blog as well as to individual entries. If you wish to ping somebody else's category there are two ways of doing it:
1. If you just want to post an occasional entry on that topic, you can find the category trackback URL from the target page and enter it into the "URLs to ping" field like you would with an individual entry's trackback URL
2. If you expect to post frequently on this topic and wish all your entries to show up in the repository, you can configure one of your categories so that any time an entry is posted to that category, it pings a trackback URL. Grab the category trackback URL for the target site and enter it in your category configuration page. This is the easier of the two methods since once you've set it up, you don't need to think about it again."
That the Muslim version of the thing anyway...

[Richard Collins]

Sometimes when I am at another cite and have tried to leave a URL to my blog I find it gets blocked. The commercial sites like the The Mail (UK) and Amazon.com don't like you leaving URLs. Some personal blogs don't like this either. I guess it is a reaction to SPAM, but there must be a better response than to just ban all URLs on the assumption they are spam.

Rich

Sandworm said:

Posting or commenting to other sites is your best way to make others aware of what your writing Jaako. It's also less intrusive and any traffic you get is from someone interested in your comment or response to an article.


Good luck,
Ed.

[Sandworm]

Certainly, it depends on the site and the set up. Some blogs screen all for spam, I set mine for 2 or more links and it goes to moderation first. It just depends on public site administrator, it depends on how much he want's to lock down his site's comment options.

With public sites, if you can't leave a url, when you register to comment you need to use your blog url as part of the contact info and they usually link your blog url to your user name in the comment. At least for the most part that's what they do on public sites in regards to comments over here.

[Trent Eady]

My audience is myself. If I'm satisfied with my blog, that's a success. If someone else actually reads it, that exceeds my goal. If they actually enjoy reading it, then I'm thrilled.

[Richard J. Collins]

Trent Eady said:

My audience is myself. If I'm satisfied with my blog, that's a success. If someone else actually reads it, that exceeds my goal. If they actually enjoy reading it, then I'm thrilled.

I think your posts are always knowledgeable and well written. I heartily endorse your blog to everyone.