Jul 13
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Schmooze
Everyone knows, (or should know), that interacting with fellow bloggers on the web is crucial to your blog’s success. Some of these things are probably common sense, but at one of them are relatively new revelations in the blogosphere that you should be aware of. If you ever want more visitors coming to your site, or you want to keep the ones you have, these 5 techniques should definitely be in your blogger’s repertoire.
1. Reply to Your Comments
If people are leaving you comments that you let flap in the breeze, you might as well be taking them by the hand to the big door marked exit. People participate in blogging because they want to be heard. If you’re not acknowledging someone’s comments, you’re not fulfilling their need and you shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t come back. Think I’m wrong? A bunch of dedicated bloggers have actually gotten together to combat such unsociable behavior and have gathered themselves under the iReply banner!
2. Engage Your New Readers
When new readers come to your site and drop a content or a pic on MyBlogLog (MBL), you need to be beating down the doos trying to welcome them. Leave them a comment on their blog, leave them a message on MBL, or probably best of all – Send them a private e-mail. Trust me, they’ll appreciate the effort of you sitting down and taking some time to welcome them.
3. Participate in Forums
Forums are a great source to find new friends, especially in your niche. It’s also a great place for you to drop a link for your site in your signature. Don’t think that forums are a place to spam though, (even though some seem to lean that way), try and forge meaningful relationships. With some effort, you can meet some really special people.
4. Use Sage To Check RSS Feeds from Browser
Never heard of Sage? My friend Brad at Do the Justice.com clued me in on it. In a short summary, it shows up like your bookmarks do in your browser, allowing you to keep track of your RSS feeds on the fly (and consequently when any of your favorite blogs update)! So whenever you feel like it, hit the refresh button and you can see if any of your favorite sites have changed, and w/o interrupting your current Internet experience since it’s all in the browser! Feel free to download it here: http://sage.mozdev.org/
5. Use coComment to Check Your Comments All Over the Web
Simply one of the coolest new services to us bloggers is coComment! (Thanks Mike!) If you’re doing your due dilligence in the ’sphere, you have comments all over the place. Up ’till now, it’s been difficult to keep track of all the places we’ve commented so we can find our way back and keep the conversation going. No longer! With coComment, every time you make a comment, it gets saved to your personal page at their site.
And when someone responds to a thread you’ve commented in, a nice little icon appears in your browser telling you so. Hit the icon, jump to your personal coComment page, and keep your discussions alive! Again-In the comfort of your very own browser.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Dang Bush! Excellent post. I’m Digging it. You had me on the floor with
July 13th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
You should think about adding one of the Sociable buttons if a person likes your post they will be able to social bookmark it very quickly.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
@Opal – Thank you!, Good recommendation and done. (#):)
July 13th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Nicely said. See I told you you were good buddy
July 13th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
@Brown – Ha ha. Thanks dude. (#):)
July 13th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Hey Bush,
I’ve been meaning to sign up for CoComment and download Sage, this has just reminded me that I need to get off my tail and do it.
Looks like something for the weekend!
July 13th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
The Digital Point forums gives you quite a lot of incoming links if you post a lot.
I think I do all of those things except tracking my comments.
July 13th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
@Scot – Yeah, I had to get off my butt too lately and get some stuff done. As they say, “Nothin’ to it but to do it!”
@Grace – ! I meant to put Digital Point in the post. ARGHHHH! But thanks for pickin’ up my slack. (#):) And let me tell ya, tracking the comments is changing my blogging life.
July 13th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Great list, Bush. You’ll probably find yourself in my next link love post in a couple days
July 13th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
@Mike – Thanks dude! I feel it’s one of the better posts I’ve written so far.
Oh-And if you guys really “Digg it”, let other people know so they can “StumbleUpon” it too. …Was that subtle enough? (#);D
July 13th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Good points there buddy . I am going to try out cocomment . Seems good .
July 13th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
@Madhur – Yeah, I like it a lot. It’s really a neat little service.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Bush, this is a great idea. I think it’s very important to converse with the people that are leaving comments. I try my best to comment to everyone. I am going to put this up on my site and help spread the word.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
[...] To thank you for commenting and hopefully starting up a conversation or two. I was reading over at Bush Mackel’s site about the new in thing. It’s the You Comment I Reply [...]
July 13th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
These are all great ideas but shouldn’t all of this be done naturally and because you want to rather than just to be popular???
July 13th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
@Sassy – Fantastic! The movement is catching on – I know Mark, Brown and Mike love the support!
@Magus – Good question. I know personally when I started blogging, I really wanted to write to get my thoughts out. But after a couple I started to really feel lonely. Thinking about it now, I guess that’s why I’m a blogger and why I’ve never had a diary. But at the beginning, I didn’t really know HOW to make friends on here or HOW to get people to look at my words and respond in kind.
For you it seems, it comes naturally. I see you schmoozing it up with just about every single person who comes to your site and that’s awesome! But for me, it’s not like in the real world where I can just shoot a smile, and make a friend over a drink…And I’d like to think I’m pretty comfortable on a computer too…A good friend of mine just started a blog, and I can see in her what I saw in myself back then. I guess my point is, even though we bloggers want to make friends and want people to read our posts sometimes we don’t know how to do it in the beginning. And even if you have a few comments under your belt, these are good tips to continue to foster your existing relationships.
…
You see Magus, this is why I love to visit your blog. Sometimes your thoughts can make my head spin, but you ALWAYS have something thought provoking to say. (#):)
July 13th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
I won’t lie, I want to be popular. LOL
Seriously though I love seeing people come to my site and let me know that they are there and chime in on what I have to say. And sometimes it takes an icon on your site to let people know that its ok to come out of the lurking closet and that I will respond. Just my opinion
July 13th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
I’m with Sassy, being popular is good.
I used to reply only in my own comments, but then I realized that some people never returned to read my response. That’s when I took up emailing in combination to commenting publicly, it might be a bit overkill but I want people that pay attention to me to know that I’m also paying attention to them.
In bullet #2 you mentioned “leave them a message on MBL” what’s MBL?
July 13th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Great list buddy, cocomment is a nice service.
What is special about sage, i think this functionality is already there in firefox as live bookmarks?
July 13th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
@Sassy – If you wanna know about lurkers – ask Brown Baron. Though I think ol’ Brown has been coming out of the shell lately.
@Wendy – It’s funny you ask what MBL is because I asked the same question like a week ago! -And here I am doing pulling the same stunt. Ha ha! It’s My Blog Log. Sorry about that – I’ll edit the post too. Thanks for the catch. (#):)
@Ram – Honestly, I didn’t know about this Live Bookmarks thing in FF. so I can’t really answer your question. I’ll have to give it a whirl.
July 13th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
great article, I’ve bookmarked your site, do make sure to write some great articles
had to say, your layout design is awesome. you did this on your own? what CMS you are using? wordpress, or others?
July 14th, 2007 at 10:28 am
@Raf – Hey Raf, glad you found me! Wish I could say that I did the layout myself but I did some super searching on Wordpress’ theme site to track this bad boy down. It’s called Dark Effected Reloaded. I’ve done some minor edits here and there but it is largely not my work. If you saw my own, you would laugh.
And not because it was funny.
July 14th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
haha okay, thanks for the info
I’ll give my own hand on that too
July 14th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
[...] 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Schmooze [...]
July 14th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Great post by itself! Now everyone knows why you’re a great Schmoozer
July 14th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
@Benedict – Gadzooks! I didn’t even realize…Now my secrets are out! (#):)
July 16th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Great post man! Something that a lot of people can benefit form. Well done!
Shine on,
Aaron
July 16th, 2007 at 8:52 am
@Aaron – Thanks man. It’s been a couple days since I wrote this post, and it’s still one of my favs!
July 19th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
[...] in no time. Right Brown? (#):D When greeting guests, start with a hug! I went into this a bit in 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Schmooze but in case you missed it here’s the big summary…You have to welcome new readers to [...]
July 26th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Just installed coComment. Thanks for the suggestion. Great article!
July 27th, 2007 at 5:44 am
@Bob – Hey Bob! I’m glad you found my site and that you liked the article! Have fun with cocomment, it really does make tracking your comments easier but I DO hope they release an upgrade at some point. It seems a bit glitchy here and there and doesn’t seem to work with all sites.