Category: MetaBlogging

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MetaBlogging

MamaBlogga’s Top 10

Whether you’re just visiting MamaBlogga for the first time or are an old friend, you may have missed some of the fun things that have been going on here. Here are the top ten most popular posts on MamaBlogga from June.

rockin' girl bloggerAnd more news: I want to thank Michelle of Scribbit and MommyZabs for nominating me as a Rockin’ Girl Blogger! Thank you both, ladies!

Now I’m supposed to nominate five more rockin’ girl bloggers (I hope that being nominated twice doesn’t mean I have to make it 10!). Man, that’s tough (especially since Michelle and Elizabeth both would have been on my list if they hadn’t nominated me!).

  1. Kasie Sallee, ~the art of life~. She’s on a mission to connect with other Artist Moms and offer support and encouragement. As a blogger with a mission, I love other bloggers with a mission!
  2. Shawn of Letters to my Daughters, in large part because I stopped by today and loved what I read of her interview with Karen Maezen Miller. And Shawn—zen to me is pausing to think while tickling your children, “This is it.” (I’m actually posting on something similar this week, so check in again!)
  3. Karen Andrews of Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum. I’m excited for your redesign! I just unveiled a new design on MamaBlogga today (okay, so I just changed it to a three column layout), so I know how you feel!
  4. Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home, even though I’m sure she already knows she is!
  5. And of course, my perennial favorites: like a clear blue sky by a good friend of mine 😉 and Leezy Lindsey, by another good friend of mine. (You should both post A LOT more. What? You have lives? Pfft.)

Thank you again!!

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Random MetaBlogging

Connect with MamaBlogga!

I am so glad to have you here on MamaBlogga! I’d love to see you around again, here or anywhere. So let’s be friends! Here are thirteen ways you can connect with MamaBlogga:

  1. Subscribe: You can have updates delivered to your feed reader—and always full feeds!. (Of course, we want to thank everyone who’s already subscribed!) New to RSS? Learn more about using RSS to get updates from your favorite sites at your convenience, or:
  2. Subscribe to the e-mail newsletter: Just like subscribing to the RSS feed (#1), only updates are delivered daily to your inbox.
  3. Add MamaBlogga to your bookmarks/favorites so you can come back again soon.
  4. Add MamaBlogga to your Technorati favorites. And you can connect with me personally: I’m Jordee on Technorati.
  5. StumbleUpon: I’m JordeeBec on StumbleUpon. Add me as your friend and I’ll return the favor. (See my post on StumbleUpon to learn more about one of my favorite web services.)
  6. CafeMom: I’m MamaBlogga on CafeMom. Again, add me as a friend and I’ll return the favor.
  7. MyBlogLog: Join the MamaBlogga community on MyBlogLog! Feel free to add me as a contact, too.
  8. BlogCatalog: Join the MamaBlogga neighborhood.
  9. Digg: Are you a member of Digg? I don’t use it very often (can’t stand the comments!), but it’s been helpful for work once in a while. I’d be glad to be your friend!
  10. kirtsy (née sk*rt): I’m MamaBlogga here. I heard such good things about them that I just had to join. I haven’t really used it yet, but you can add me as your friend and I’ll return the favor! Looks like they’ve given up on the friending feature…
  11. del.icio.us: I’m JordeeBec here. I used to use it a lot (it was how I got categories on my old Blogger), but I haven’t really done anything there in months. Still, I’d be happy to be in your network if you’re on there!
  12. E-mail: If you really need my attention, feel free to e-mail me: blog (at) mamablogga.com.
  13. My contact form can save you the trouble of firing up your mail program, though.
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MetaBlogging

Increase Your Blog’s Stickiness

Table of contents for Blogging success

“Stickiness” on a blog (or website) is getting visitors to stay longer, read more, subscribe and leave comments. Now, isn’t that something we all want?

So today, three tips that I’ve heard only about a billion times to help increase your blog’s stickiness:

  1. Link to related posts. I know with WordPress there’s a way to do this automatically (with a plugin), but even if you have to do it manually, it’s worth it. Before posting, brainstorm posts on similar topics. You can also look through labels or categories in your archives to see if there’s something related. At the end of your post, list a few (three is a good number) of these related posts. If someone has read that far, chances are they’ll want to read more stuff just like it!
  2. Make it easy to find similar posts. As with above, if someone is reading your site, chances are they’re interested in what you’re saying. Use some sort of categorization and/or tagging system (categories, tags, labels, etc.) to help them find similar posts on your blog. If applicable, list your categories/tags/labels in the sidebar to help people explore your blog.
  3. Tell visitors what to do. You want your visitors to subscribe to your blog or comment? Tell them! At the end of every entry, invite readers to subscribe to your feed (code the invitation into your template!). Ask for comments; put a subscribe button in a prominent place on your blog. If someone arrives at your site and doesn’t know what to do next, they’ll probably leave instead of hunting for something to do on your site.

Would you like to know more about developing your blog’s stickiness? I’ve written a free guide to increasing your blog’s stickiness, “Get Your Visitors to Stick!”

Also be sure to submit your entries for our Group Writing Project this week!

Next in series
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Random MetaBlogging

What’s for dinner? (And a blogging tip)

I just made a Rachael Ray recipe for dinner tonight, and now I have 3/4 of a bottle of curry paste leftover—and nothing to use it in (unless I want to roast 8 cups of vegetables to make this again).

What to do?

Hooray, I get to save like an entire minute with this little gadget:

ingredient search

That’s my built in search engine box in Firefox (highly recommended browser, by the way!). Want an ingredient search? Look at this page. The ingredient search is the second one listed; the plain AllRecipes search is first. I use both.

The other search engines are available from addons.mozilla.org and mycroft.mozdev.org.

Blogging Tip
Do you have a recipe blog? You can submit your recipe blog feed to Google Base (with some formatting) and get a pretty decent likelihood of being ranked for relevant recipe searches.

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MetaBlogging Fulfillment

A hug, metaphorically speaking

When I came across the blogging metaphor group writing project on Successful-Blog.com, it didn’t take me very long to figure out the correct metaphor for my blog. Really, what I want to accomplish with this blog is to not only focus my search for fulfillment, find fulfillment daily and stop overanalyzing everything and just enjoy the moment, but to be able to help others do all those things. I want other mothers to realize that it’s okay to be a mom—not “just a mom,” but a mother.

It’s okay to stay home with your children. The work you do within the walls of your home is more important than anything you can do outside of them. Even the million dollars in future earnings that you’re supposedly giving up by “putting your career on hold.”

But just knowing it’s important isn’t enough. I want mothers to feel appreciated and to know that what they do is important and worthwhile—and fulfilling. I want them to know that motherhood isn’t just drudgery. It’s not just boring, horrible work and endless laundry and diapers and stupid games and wrangling toddlers away from outlets.

I want to tell mothers this because it is so easy to forget that something as mundane as motherhood can be, it is the most important thing you can do with your life. And if you try (or if you let it), it can also be the most worthwhile and fulfilling venture you’ll ever undertake.

That’s what I want my blog to be. I’m thinking about lots of other projects that might help with this—another group writing project (next month, ladies!), maybe a podcast (would you be interested in this?), etc. But to choose a metaphor for what my blog means or what I want it to mean to others is very easy. Because if I could, I would take every mother in the world one-on-one, and tell her how I feel—and give her a hug.

But since I can’t do that, I’ll reach out and put my words around you to reassure you that you matter and that what you do matters and that your work is appreciated.

*squeeze*!

On a related note, see also The Mitchell Group’s entry, Blogging is Like a Mommy[tags] blogging metaphor [/tags]

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MetaBlogging

Finding fun websites: StumbleUpon from start to finish

Google is so passé. (Not really; Google, don’t hate me!)

Ahem, anyway, as I was saying, Google isn’t the only way to find fun websites anymore. In fact, I dare say it’s not the best or even a good way to find a fun website. StumbleUpon is better (much better!). So, here’s StumbleUpon from start to finish!

Using StumbleUpon
Using StumbleUpon is very easy. You do have to go to their site, StumbleUpon.com to join and download their toolbar. They have toolbars for IE and Firefox browsers.

Once you’ve entered your identification info, you get to choose your topics to browse. These include everything from blogs to marketing to parenting to religion to writing to politics and back. Choose well; this will impact how satisfied you are with the results.

Using the Toolbar

su tool bar

Now you’re all ready to go. Click the “Stumble!” button to be taken to a random website recommended in one of your topic areas. If you like the site that comes up, click the thumbs up “I like it!” If you don’t like it, click the thumbs down. If you’re indifferent, feel free to click “Stumble!” again.

The “Send to” button lets you e-mail your favorite pages to StumbleUpon friends (I’ll be your StumbleUpon friend) or other friends. The talk bubble lets you see comments on the current page and make your own.

The Channel options are: (globe) see a page from any of your topics (like the “Stumble!” button), (people) see a page from my friends, (newspaper) show a news item, (pictures) show an image, (movie reel) show a movie (there’s also StumbleVideo for this). The All option at the end lets you choose a single topic of yours to stumble in (ie, if I clicked “All” and chose “Knitting” when I hit “Stumble!” it will show me only knitting pages). You can also search, or visit other stumblers or wikis from the All menu.

Favorites takes you to a “blog” with all of the pages you’ve ‘thumbed’ or rated. Friends shows you your SU friends. Tools lets you sign in or out, change your password, update your options or topics, etc.

Getting onto StumbleUpon
There are two ways to get into SU: natural and paid. You can sign up for the StumbleUpon Paid Inclusion program, buying a certain number of visitors for $0.05 a piece, or you can get added by a StumbleUpon user. Yes, you can add yourself, and as far as I can tell, it’s not shunned as it is on sites like Digg.

To submit a page, click the thumbs up button. If the page has already been submitted, your vote will count as a thumbs up vote. If it hasn’t already been submitted, you get this popup:

SU popup

Fill in the data and voilá . You are on StumbleUpon.

Doing Well on StumbleUpon
Doing well personally: To “succeed” on StumbleUpon, one of the most important things you can do is to Stumble. A lot. Whenever you come across a site you like, “thumb.” The more sites you rate and submit, the more power and influence you wield. I’ve rated 186 sites, about half of which were original “discoveries” (I accidentally submitted the first 30 something posts from my blog at one point, that’s included in those numbers.) Because I”ve submitted and thumbed plenty of stories, I also have 8 “fans” now, or Stumblers who like the same things as I do. Having a bigger network of friends and fans on StumbleUpon ensures that your sites are seen by more people.

Getting your site to do well: A page’s success depends on several factors. It must be labeled in the best topic and tagged well. My most successful pages on StumbleUpon have brought hundreds of visitors in a day because the people visiting my site gave it a thumbs up. The more thumbs up a page gets, the more people get to see it.

I’ve also written about StumbleUpon at work: Is Your Site StumbleUponAble? and Should You Use Paid Inclusion for StumbleUpon?

Enjoy!

This post is a part of the eMoms To Do Wishlist Group Research Project and Works-for-Me Wednesday.Don’t forget: Monday will open the Group Writing Project!!