The Social Whirlwind of Blogging

4 Apr, 2008 Social Bookmarking

Recently, we’ve been trying to solve our traffic and readership problem here at SAN.com. The problem is…we have very little traffic and readership. So, we’ve been trying to market a little harder to bring some people in to the site. We’re putting ourselves out there a little bit more in the blogging world, trying to make some friends. The results have been relatively positive, so far, but it’s also enough to make your head spin. So, if anyone can offer up some advice on how to deal with this, we would really appreciate it.

Social Bookmarking Sites

I’ve read a lot of posts about social bookmarking sites, I even wrote one myself. Some people love them, some people hate them. Some people say they hate them, but then write about how one of their articles hit the front page of Digg or whatever, and they’re so excited about it because of all the traffic it sent them. That type of situation is hard to understand. That’s like saying you hate hybrid cars, except when you go on long trips because it saves you money.

There are so many bookmarking sites, but they all seem to do the same thing. I can’t distinguish which one is better, or why one could even BE better. A lot of people say that Stumble Upon is much better than Digg or del.icio.us or any of the other hundreds of bookmarking sites. I, personally, don’t know how anyone could tell the difference between them, though. I’m sure there are differences, at least I hope there are. If you can tell me how these sites are different I would appreciate it.

Twitter

So, I signed up for Twitter, I’m “following” 5 people, and I even have 1 “follower,” but honestly…I don’t even know what the hell Twitter is. I know that it’s a way to communicate with other people efficiently. But, I don’t really use it yet, because I’m not that sure how to. I know some of you reading this probably think I’m a moron because I say I don’t know how to use it. I guess I should say that I’m not familiar enough with it. And I don’t want to just dive into it and make myself look foolish. I want to learn about it, though, because I know many bloggers that swear by it.

Twitter

But here’s my situation…on my homepage I can type where it says “What are you doing?” My question is…Who sees what I type in there? Is it my followers? Do people that I’m following see it? Does everyone on Twitter see it? Is it all of the above, none of the above, what?

Also, do people really want to know that I’m eating or sleeping or taking the Browns to the Super Bowl…if you know what I mean? I don’t know, I need some help.

MyBlogLog

I also started using MyBlogLog recently. You can find me here if you’re also a member, and we can be friends. Now, this site seems pretty cool. It’s a very good way to meet other bloggers with similar interests, and you can join communities that you are interested in. I really like it because it gives me access to a ton of blogs on subjects that I’m interested in, all in one place. At first glance, I thought it was kind of a way to centralize all of the things I’m talking about in this post, because you can list all of the social applications that you’re a member of (like Digg and Stumble Upon) in one place. But really, this only enables people from MyBlogLog to go to those other services and contact you there easily. It doesn’t really centralize all of the social aspects of blogging in one place. My mistake.

That’s my biggest problem with blogging, there’s no centralization. I feel like to be successful in blogging, you have to spread yourself thin over all of these applications – Social Bookmarking sites, Social Contact sites (like MyBlogLog, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), forums and discussion boards. Then, you have to find other blogs, and read them and comment. Not to mention writing stuff for your own blog. I just feel like there’s not enough time in the day to check all this stuff, especially with school, work, and other things that take up time.

It’s really a tough task. And the people who are successful at it, more power to you. I guess this post is just about how I’m feeling at this time. I feel like I can’t keep up right now with what I need to do to be successful. I feel like I could spend all day on each of these sites and still be missing something. I could also just be doing it wrong. Whatever the case, if anyone has any advice on what I could do to make this easier, I would certainly appreciate it.

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