More on Promotional Tools

Not only do I have a lovely new set of toys from Feedburner, but I discovered Blog Flux today as well. I’ve registered this blog with them. Obviously I cannot live without 42 different kinds of stats from 19 different places. At any rate, if you’re curious you can check out their Directory of Writing/Publishing Blogs and, if all goes well, I’ll be listed soon. Ah, I'm told to put this in here! Now, it doesn't give the the option of choosing writing or publishing as my blog type. I'll have to see how that goes.

Apparently they recently merged with Blog Top Sites and bought out Commentful last month. But what I like about their stated standards, as with blogcatalog, is that they are looking for sites that are not just lists of referral links or shilling for other sites. That’s not a crowd in with which I’d like to get lumped. (How’s that for an awkward grammatical construction?)

While I am getting a fair number of clicks from Technorati and mybloglog, I’d like to target more serious writers and bloggers. Not that I don’t appreciate the interest. I just don’t believe that they much care about the mechanics of writing. It seems that many bloggers are specifically interested only in how to make money. Money's lovely, but to me the act and art of writing are more important.

Getting Your Feed Out There - Step One

So, no sooner do I post about how obsessing over stats is making me unhealthy than I come across two huge piles of “get traffic” information. But these blogs are worth more than just their tips on getting and keeping readers. The important thing is to write well and often, which is certainly covered in John Wesley’s post at pickthebrain.com about 27 lessons he's learned over the last six months.

Meanwhile, Brian Clark over at copyblogger.com not only knows how to get and hold people’s attention but he’s also suave enough to pull of a post called zen and the art of blogging. He’s also got numerous posts about networking and other strategies for getting subscribers.

Probably the most common tip I’ve read is to make your feed readily accessible. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that my “subscribe” text is small and is at the very bottom of this page. I’m investigating feedburner and other sites to see what my options are. I have the widget on my sidebar, but not everyone is going to want something that ostentatious for my feed. And who in the world is going to take the time to go to widgetbox and customize it?

That’s going to be my blog-improvement project for the week. As you can see at the top of my sidebar, I couldn’t even wait to finish this post before I started. I love toys. I'll report back later in the week about the other services they offer.