It’s Saturday, I have a busy weekend ahead so let’s see about a more leisurely post and one that perhaps gets you thinking and sharing. Up for a conversation?

There are no shortage of posts around the blogosphere telling you how to make money, earn a full time income, and in some cases “become rich” with blogging. While I utilize a lot of concepts and put them to work for myself, I don’t often blog about income. I don’t see it serving a huge purpose at the moment because there are many other places to fill the need to learn this.

Additionally, constantly blogging about earning an income on my own blog means that I would be putting aside my own goals for this blog as well as generating “me too” concepts that have been said by other bloggers.

Now, having said that, I do have income goals and monetization strategies that I have put into place for myself (most of them are not on this blog). But because of the income I do and can generate I have extreme goals to create my own since of notoriety within the blogosphere.

Previously I’ve talked about brainstorming goals that will enable you to reach the level of success that you choose to have. But mostly the goals I suggested in that post were how you would reach the next level of blogging, again, not monetization.

But I have a dream that I’m working towards with monetization because of my blogging and here’s where this post is going.

When you look at your blogging goals, where are they taking you in your real life?

Do you want to quit your day job? Do you want to earn a specific dollar amount per month? Are you waiting to afford your dream vacation or get-away? Is your blog just an outlet with no monetization strategy?

Today, I’ll give you a glimpse of my own offline goal of where blogging will take me and I invite you to share your own goal(s) as well…

If you have read my about page, you may know that I live in Las Vegas. You’ll also know that I’m absolutely in love with my city and have no real intention of leaving but recently, this changed.

For some unknown reason I started doing a lot of research and day dreaming about Europe and have decided that I want more than a visit, I’d love to live there and more specifically, I’d like to move to Paris.

A conversation with Joanne that she’d indeed love to live in Paris and we’ve now got an official time line to move. It’s not tomorrow, it’s not even next year, in fact it’s 5 years away! But the goals that I have created for my online work practices is exactly what will move us to our ultimate destination.

Why am I sharing?

After having this goal for a bit, it recently occurred to me that only my closest friends know of my plan. Why am I hiding it? Especially when it’s something I’m very excited about (we’re already started to learn French, just to prepare). By creating this post and express to all of you what my goal is suddenly, it makes the goal more concrete.

By having my own goal known to the world, perhaps I can inspire you to set a goal that you’re sure you can reach, share a goal you’d like to reach, or put into motion the steps you have to take to reach your goal.

What it Takes

Moving to Paris requires several stepping stones. But I’m happy to tell you that after just 2 years of dedicated blogging, I have one third income that I need to generate to put this move into place for us. After all, reaching the goal of moving to Paris means that Joanne (my wife, if you don’t know :o)) will no longer be working and will take an early retirement.

More than that, having a goal this huge generates dedication, determination, and a need to put myself out there. No, I won’t be asking for money (that is, unless you’d like to freely give it) but instead, use the tools that I already have to create the income that is needed to move and sustain our life once moved.

Keeping Focus

I have set myself up to be reminded of my goal on a near constant basis.

My desktop is the image that I have above of Paris. Several times a day I break to check out the Paris Live webcams. And because we have already started to learn French, random words are thrown out in my conversations with Joanne in an effort to not only learn but utilize my new language.

If you have a goal, how do you motivate and inspire yourself to keep going? What’s your reminder to stay on track?

Sit and Ponder

What do you want to create for yourself online? Not everyone will have something as big as moving to another country and not everyone will want to earn an income that can sustain their household. However, that doesn’t mean that you own personal goals for your blog aren’t just as important and just as valuable.

So, have you thought about some important blogging goals and where you’d like blogging to take you? Would you care to share your goals?

As blogs continue to shape and mold themselves from old to new again, and our popular bloggers only become more popular it’s easy to begin to wonder what other’s are doing and try to duplicate success.

Some bloggers just get it and some, frankly, never will. So let’s break down three types of niche blogs to learn more about them, understand some tactics, and create more interest for our own blogs.

Personal Blogs

There was a moment in the blogosphere were it seemed as though personal blogs were over-rated. But, highly under estimated. It’s my opinion that those who created blogs, way back when, just for the sake of posting about their personal lives laid the ground work for the types of blogs we see today.

• Monetization
  I believe that personal blogs may have a leg up as they are not tied to a specific niche but can reach advertising endeavor in various niches based on the type of content they choose to post. From the latest house cleaning trends, to taking care of baby, weddings, marriage, and much beyond — opportunities are nearly unlimited for the personal blogger.
• Promotion
  Personal blogs tend to have the “something for everyone” approach and if you’re living life at all, you may just find something to fit your needs. This is especially true when you hit the personal blog of a writer for many niche blogs. They tend to bring more to the table which enables the blogger to promote themselves in a variety of ways across many niches.
• Networking
  More times than not, I’ve seen the personal blogger create larger social networks than any other niche blogger. The exception however is when a niche blogger is popular. I doubt that you’ll find a personal blogger who has a larger network than Darren Rowse or Michael Arrington.

Niche Blogs

Niche blogging may be the most popular types of blogs today. From blogging about blogging to blogging about celebrities, niche blogs create a very specific audience.

If a reader has no interest in our niche of choice, we don’t have an audience. And seeking out those who don’t have a few favorite blogs for the niche of our choice takes a lot of hard work and dedication. This perhaps is where we begin to lose bloggers before their blog reaches 3 months of age.

• Monetization
  Niche bloggers tend to be a bit more specific about the type of advertisements that they’ll take. For example, it wouldn’t make sense for me to promote a house cleaning product to you or tell you about a new Dyson vacuum cleaner. When I don’t cover these topics, my advertisements shouldn’t either. While it appears as though there are many opportunities in the sea for niche bloggers, most of these bloggers tend to become incredibility specific about the type of advertisements that they’ll take.

• Promotion
  Something that tends to be a beast all on it’s own for any blogger, niche bloggers work to find people who are interested in just one specific topic. For example, if I was blogging about coffee, could I capture your attention if you were only interested in drinking tea? Probably not.

• Networking
  At some point, every niche blogger finds a gathering of people who are interested in their niche topic. But creating a valuable relationship between bloggers seems to be a never-ending chore of give and take and frankly, who’s ass you can kiss the best.

Business Blogs

Today, there are no shortage of businesses who are using blogs to promote, advertise, and sell their product. Zappos comes to mind at the moment for a great example of a company who has used social media/networking, and blogging as a way to promote their product. And if you don’t know, their product is shoes (and great ones, at that).

Of course, there is also the company that I started working for, BatteriesInAFlash who has hired me to in an effort to promote their brand and product.

• Monetization
  Should a business blog choose to monetize their blog outside of their own product and niche, it would be obvious that they would want to create buzz for products that promote their own. For example, on the BatteriesInAFlash Blog, it’s beneficial for the company to promote products that require batteries the company has for sale. This creates a dual purpose for blog in both affiliate earnings and selling of their own batteries.
• Promotion
  It may seem as though promotion could be easy for a lot of business blogs, especially with the two companies that I have mentioned. Tell me, who doesn’t need shoes? And take a look around you, start to name everything around you that needs a battery. Truthfully, it wasn’t until after I took the job with BatteriesInAFlash that I realized how many batteries I need just to keep my business afloat! Though this concept won’t be the same for every business, their goal is to reach those who have a need or want for the product or service that they offer.
• Networking
  From my personal experience, some individual bloggers may not be so hot on networking with a business for fear of being constantly sold. But this is not the case for every company and I’m constantly amazed at how many more companies I’ll buy from when they didn’t tell me but truly created a networking experience with me. Suddenly, they’re more memorable.

The Challenge

For all bloggers, in whatever area of blogging, the challenge is to create an experience that allows you to expand your reach. To do this, consider the following:

• Tie in new ideas from a different niche and create posts for your blog that deal specific with your niche but use another niche as example. Crossing the lines (in an appropriate manner) will get you attention.
• Provide value for those interested in your niche — just ask yourself before you publish your next post “why will my reader’s care?”
• Networking with a like-niche to again cross borders and create a new interested.
• Make the old interesting with personal commentary and opinions that create conversation.
• Be in depth and don’t provide half-assed information.
• Recognize your niche’s industry leaders and trend-setters and become part of their communities.
• Watch your niche for trends and ideas that will enable you to grow.

Expanding Your Ideas

When you started your blog, did you have a focus in mind? Have you laid out goals to become more well known in your niche and reach the level of success that you’re looking for? And more importantly, what defines your niche and how do you expand your reach?

In the last couple of weeks, I have fallen behind. This is fairly obvious if you’re paying attention to my posting schedule, or lack thereof. And perhaps even more obvious if you have sent me an email.

But after taking a blog consulting job out of my home, we’ve mixed it up so that I will be at home. Today, I’m taking the first steps to putting back together my at home schedule and hindsight is 20/20.

The last few weeks have taught me a few things about staying on top of my responsibilities, even when I’m away, that I’d like to share with you. Remember, what I’m saying I haven’t all done and that’s exactly the problem.

EMail

Instead of sitting down to check and respond to email, I’ve let it go. Most I have read but, I haven’t responded because of one reason or another.

Today I have no shortage of emails to respond to. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200. It’s not a pretty sight and since I’ve let it go, it’s now an overwhelming task. To get back on track:

• Responding to emails takes just a few minutes, sit down and do it.
• Skim emails to respond to the important ones first and the less urgent later.
• Delete notifications. I’m thrilled that I have new “friends” at BlogCatalog or new followers on Twitter. But there’s no reson to keep these emails for days on end.

If I had followed the three ideas above, email would be a significantly less overwhelming task today.

Networking

Losing touch when you’ve been on a roll to be in touch isn’t a good idea. And in some cases can be harmful for one’s reputation. While Twittering and posting to Plurk haven’t been high on the list, I maintained my presence there for quite a few days. Funny thing is, a quick thought and a login to Ping.fm would have had me networking, even in the smallest ways.

Responding to Comments

It’s no secret that I’m typically pretty avid about responding to comments here. But it’s been days. I’m now just as behind on the conversations at my blog as I am with email. Again, an overwhelming task but just 10 minutes from the last few days would have had me up to speed on my own community. And letting this go the past few days has been a little heartbreaking, to say the least.

Posting

Before starting my job out of the house, I had just a few days to gear up and create a post arsenal. While I wrote ahead of time, I didn’t get enough done. Truthfully I could have been more on top of posts had I not been in the middle of 2 custom design projects.

The Lessons

Just a few more minutes from my day and I could have been on top of most of the things I’ve fallen behind on. The exception however is posts. But I would have been able to keep the conversation going without the posts so while this seems like it could have been the biggest down fall, it really isn’t.

Next Time

Plan ahead, plan ahead, plan ahead. I can’t say it too many times. Taking a look at what my new schedule was going to be ahead of time would have allowed me to use time more efficiently, but I didn’t do it.

Your Thoughts

When you have fallen behind, what is your plan of attack for getting back on track and on schedule? What do you do to plan ahead for a change of pace or a change in your schedule?

[Image by Laura Smith]

In the second part of “Finding Blogs to Read,” let’s talk about finding the lesser known blogs — though I’ve titled this Beginner, not everything here is how to find beginner blogs. In fact, most you find won’t be just starting out but they won’t have the huge communities around the blog that the popular bloggers have.

The easiest way to find “the beginner” bloggers is to remember what you do to network and promote and head straight to those hot spots. Those who are not popular are still spending a great deal of their time networking and building an audience so they’re going to be at all the traditional networking places.

Blog Catalog

If you haven’t become part of this community, you’re behind the times. Small, medium, and large bloggers alike have flocked to Blog Catalog. And there’s a reason for that… it works.

To find the bloggers here, browse the directory for those in your niche, join some groups and create discussions. You’ll be amazed at how many people you will find by taking part and how much traffic you’ll gain just by being part of a conversation.

Forums

More on the conversation aspect, forums are another great place to find those you never knew exsisted. And to boot, you’ll get a feel for their writing style just by how they present themselves in the forum.

Here’s some suggestions:

• Blogger Forum
• Bloggeries
• Blogger Talk
• Blogging Tips
• Authority Blogger
• Performancing Hive

Don’t just register, that won’t do you any good. Participate and talk to other bloggers to discover their blogs.

Guest Posts

When your popular blogger features a guest post, pay attention to who wrote the post if you enjoyed reading it and then check out their blog. If you miss clicking through to the guest poster’s site you may pass up something awesome.

Google Blog Search

Not only useful for finding the popular bloggers, blog search will pull up anyone that matches your search criteria so it’s important to check here to find all types of bloggers. Hit it up again and check for those popular keywords that fit your niche. You just might find someone new to network with.

Why smaller bloggers?

It’s over rated that if you comment on the popular blogger posts that you’ll get traffic. Indeed you will but you’ll be one comment in the sea of many. Networking and reading blogs from those less known will enable you to become part of the community from the beginning, build a networking relationship, and still will provide you with great information.

Your Turn

So, how are you finding blogs to read? What’s your method for subscribing and searching for blogs?

It recently occurred to me that I wanted more feeds to read. And not just anything to read but niche specific blogs where I could get into the content that was being offered and become part of their blog community.

On my quest in searching for my newest blogs to read, I wondered how others search for niche specific blogs and wanted to share my tips and hear yours. So today, in a two part series, I’ll share with you how I find blogs to read.

Today we’ll focus on the big timers and reading blogs of the industry leaders in your niche.

Google

This may seem obvious but on numerous occasions I have heard of people over looking Google in their search for more blogs to read. Not only do I check out Google search for highly ranked blogs for my keywords of choice but I also use Google Blog Search which provides me with different results.

Check it out Google. If you’re not always researching the keywords that you use on your blog you may be surprised by the results that you’ll find.

Technorati

During my Race for Rank series, I talked about different ways to use Technorati for finding inspiration and using tags for networking. But I also use Technorati to locate blogs within my niche that are highly ranked. This search is easy by hitting up Technorati’s list of the Top 100 Blogs.

Bloglines

My feed reader, Bloglines offers their Top 1,000 feeds which is another awesome place to check out. Sure, you’re going to find duplicates on these lists but there may be a diamond in the rough that you haven’t seen before or have previously overlooked.

Alltop

Recently I discovered Alltop which features some of the best of the best. They even have them separated out by niche so finding the blogs that you’re most interested in reading is easy.

Social Networking

Not all the sites on the important pages of social networking sites are going to be big time bloggers, but they’re getting a lot of attention and exposure at the moment and there’s a reason for that!

Hit up the buzz page on StumbleUpon, the front page of digg, and check out what’s popular on Reddit and Mixx. You’re sure to find someone new to browse, read, and subscribe to.

Conferences

A lot of the industry leaders for my niche attend conferences. So I check out the conference sites to see who’s speaking where and ensure that I’ve subscribed to their blogs. Not only for the information that they provide but if I plan to attend the same conference, reading their blog enables me to start conversations with them. My two biggest conference sites are BlogWorldExpo and BlogHer.

Why the popular?

Each of us, regardless of size, has something to learn from another blogger. It was months and months into blogging before I knew who Darren Rowse, Chris Garrett, and Ryan Caldwell were. Now that I do know who these guys are, I read their blogs and their latest posts before I read anyone else. And these are just 3 of the many who I catch up with first…

Networking

If you’re aspiring to be on a different level with blogging than you currently are, those who have gotten name recognition are great places to start. Look at how they got there, the style they choose to write in, how many RSS subscribers they have, and what they’re doing to create a community with their blog. You can learn from more than just their excellent posts. Pay attention to all aspects of their blog and really learn from the success story.

Your Search

How do you locate and subscribe to popular bloggers in your niche? Have you checked out any searches or simply subscribed when you heard of someone? Who’s the big time blogger for your niche in your feed reader right now?

For some bloggers, their blog is not their source of income but a way to promote their source of income. We’re not all cut out to ride the waves of a six figure blogging income. But instead many of us will add to our additional income source because of our blogging skills and experience.

If you follow me on Twitter or Plurk, you may know that last week I obtained a “real” job and am now working away from my home part time. And while typically I wouldn’t be jumping up and down about a new job, it’s the first time that I have been hired by a company (instead of an individual person) for blog consulting. Thus, I’m now headed out of my home every morning and going to work at a local web start-up company, Batteries In A Flash.

Because of this new experience for me, let’s talk about adding blogging to your resume and what you should include with the additional knowledge you have obtained.

My Experience

If you’ve never read my about page, here’s a breif overview. My “real world” job experience does not at all entitle me to be a blog consultant. Years ago I was a Jr. Broker for Salmon Smith Barney. From there I moved on to be an funding assistant for a mortgage company in California. When I moved to Nevada, I picked up another job as an assistant. None of this experience led me to learning anything, even slightly, about blogging.

When my daughter, Zadey was born I became a work at home Mom developing websites in the Work at Home Mom community and a full-time Wife and Mom. However, having Zadey is exactly what pushed me into blogging… nearly 3 years ago.

Finding My Job

My partner, Joanne is a big on surfing Craigslist. She often hunts down writing and designing jobs for me. In her search, she found the ad for the job that I applied for at Batteries In A Flash. Though the job did not ask for a blogging consultant, I was well qualified and decided to apply. I interviewed the day after applying and was hired for the job the next day. My interview lasted a whopping 90 minutes where we spent the entire time talking about blogging and social media.

My Resume

The resume I sent to Batteries In A Flash wasn’t anything overly special. Because it had been more than 3 years since I had been in an actual work setting, there wasn’t a lot of recent experience to put on a resume. Except for a few tid bits and herein lies the point of this post.

My work experience for the last 3 years consists of building my own work at home business, web designing, designing for WordPress, social networking, blogging, and earning an income with blogging.

Because this is what I have done for the last 3 years, this is all I included on my resume. No mention of being a Jr. Stock Broker or working for a couple of mortgage companies. Instead, I displayed only my knowledge that I had taught myself (with the exception of working with my business partner, Mindy, who’s proven to be quite a valuable source for me).

Adding Blogging to Your Resume

Consider the work that you have put into your blog and all the things you have learned along the way. If you started another blog tomorrow, would it be better and more sucessfully faster than your first blog? Chances are, if you have learned anything from blogging you could launch a second blog with more momentum than you did your first. As a blog consultant, I’m helping Batteries In A Flash do just that — but it’ll be their blog, not mine.

Your knowledge may cover writing to capture attention, promoting your posts with social networking, increasing RSS subscribers, and how to create a community with your blog.

All of these lessons, trials, and errors teach you something about the world of blogging that can easily be passed on to someone looking to do better with an existing blog or starting a new blog.

This information should be included on your resume as the lessons are valuable skills to individuals or companies looking to break into the blogosphere.

When you decide to add this information to your own resume, consider even more possibilities for experience. The next tid bit I added to my resume was the rank that my blog holds. My Alexa rank (70,008) and my PageRank (4 on index). These certainly aren’t the best ranks in the blogosphere but it shows my ability to create a community large enough to establish some authority in my niche. You may want to add the same information.

Getting a Job

Just because my blog consulting job is away from my home, doesn’t mean that you have or need to apply this same principal to working in an office. In fact, there are many successful bloggers offering blog consulting services right from their own blogs and from the comfort of their own home. But each of these people get business blog consulting because they are able to demonstrate their knowledge based on the efforts of their own blog and help others achieve similar results.

Additionally, blog consulting doesn’t have to be just about how to setup a blog, earn an income from it, and gain attention. Instead you can incorporate ideas of blogging for businesses and how to help businesses promote their flagship products by blogging (this is the route I’m headed with Batters In A Flash).

What’s on your resume?

So, is adding blogging to your resume something that might work for you or is it something that you have already done? Where do you think a blogger needs to be in order to sell their services as a blog consultant? Have you learned enough from blogging to teach others how to produce the same results?

Keeping tabs on the blogosphere isn’t always an easy task. But when you’re interested in your own brand which includes your blog name, your blog’s URL, and your personal name, it’s quite an important thing to do. Luckily for us, there are several sites out there who monitor the blogosphere for us to ensure that we’re on top of our own brand.

Today, let’s dive into these sites.

Tweet Beep

I previously talked about Tweet Beep in my post How to Market a News Breaking Post but we’ll go into it further today.

Tweet Beep monitors Twitter for specific keywords that you setup alerts for. When they find that your keywords have been talked about on Twitter, you’ll get an email from Tweet Beep telling you what they found and where they found it. You’ll be able to head directly to the source of the tweet.

There’s no limit to what you can setup alerts for so make sure you include your URL, blog name, and personal name. Anything you’d like to keep tabs on with Twitter, make sure to create an alert for that.

Here’s a snapshot of my alerts:

The system is incredibly simple to use and setting up alerts takes no time at all.

Social Alerter

I’m not sure that Social Alerter will server a purpose for everyone. However, should you have a blog post that is about to go popular on digg, del.icio.us, Propeller, or Mixx you can setup alerts with Social Alerter to send you an email about it for your selected domains.

Recently they’ve added Reddit to the alerts as well but alert emails are not yet being sent for Reddit.

Your need to use Social Alerter will simply depend on the social networking sites you choose to use and that may mean for now this site won’t be useful to you. However, if you don’t target one the sites they send alerts for keep an eye on this site. I think they have the potential to really grow and could include more sites soon.

With Social Alerter, it’s again incredibly easy to setup alerts with. And here instead of choosing keywords, you’ll simply select domains that you want alerts emailed for. Here’s my alert:

Google Alerts

I think that Google Alerts is probably one of the most talked about of the alert systems. But just like the other two alert systems, you can setup Google Alerts to track your brand. Just a bit of information and you’re off and running with Google alerts and setup to receive an email when your keywords are discovered.

More than Your Brand

So all of these alert systems are great for tracking your own brand. But you don’t have to limit what you use these alert systems for. Here’s some ideas of more uses to setup alerts:

• Track your target keywords.
• Monitor news stories.
• Research a niche by watching what people are saying.
• Stay on top of the latest trends.

Alerts, by all of these systems, allow you to stay on top of the latest and greatest within your niche.

Your Alerts

Have you setup alerts for your brand or keywords? How do you use alerts systems? And if you haven’t setup alerts yet, do you think it might be worth your while to do so?

Social bookmarking, social media, social networking, microblogging, lifestreaming… everywhere you look the blogosphere is telling you that you have to get out there and soak it all up. But indeed this can be an overwhelming task and maybe even more so if you have limited time!

Really, who can keep up with all of this? And maybe even more so when there are so many social media websites attempting to capture and keep your attention and focus?

In my post, Discover Niche Social Networking, I talked about how to find social networking sites that tailor to niche blog. Today, we’ll expand on that idea by addressing how to keep your focus when you have found your niche social networking websites.

Limit Yourself

While being signed up with every social networking site out there is great, you don’t actually have to use them all. In fact, building a profile and not using a site for networking is quite fine. Registering just for the sake of keeping your brand is also a good idea.

The key though is that you don’t have to use them all. While browsing the blogosphere you may start to find that many bloggers target just a few social networking sites by giving you options to submit their blog post or network with them on a specific site. See what other bloggers in your niche are using by browsing their blogs and ensure that you spend time focusing on these sites. You’ll be able to network with your niche peers on these sites and chances are, they have found them to be effective within the niche.

With microblogging, there are too many to choose from: Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku, just name the more popular choices. What do you have to say multiple times per day on these services that wouldn’t be a repeat of what you just said somewhere else? Targeting all of these sites for traffic and microblogging is an incredible waste of time. Chances are you’re going to just be networking with the same people at all these sites anyway.

Understand Tags

One of the biggest keys for success within social bookmarking is to ensure that you’re properly tagging posts. When a post is miss tagged it’ll often cause the blogger to not reach traffic levels they could have if it had been tagged right. If you’re the first one to submit a post to a site do you want your name associated with a wrong tag for that blogger? Chances are they might think you wouldn’t be a good target to network with.

The point here is that whatever you choose to do with social media you should fully understand. Not only because it’ll benefit you in the long run but others as well which makes you someone more fun and interesting to network with. The more people that choose to network with you the greater exposure that you’ll have.

Seek Friends

If you have half as many feeds in your readers as I do, you’ve got no shortage of a 100 or more bloggers you can spend time networking with. Spend time networking with the people who you can relate to based on what THEY have, not you. You’ll get yourself noticed more if you are focused on what will work for someone else. And while this can be a trial and error process, consider that the more attention you draw to yourself as someone being helpful the more others will want to reciprocate.

When it comes to sites like StumbleUpon that limits the amount of “friends” you can have, choose wisely. You’ll want people who submit content you actually enjoy and who will add you as a friend in return. While being a fan of a few of the popular bloggers is great you’ll want to spend more time consuming yourself with those who are also interested in you and haven’t exceeded the number of friends that they can have.

Explore the New

With a new slew of social media sites opening every day, make sure you take the time to check out all the latest. Give them some of your time for full evaluation of their site and how they increase in popularity. This applies to any social media site. Once you have decided where you stand with any site, jump in and go all the way or pull out and leave it be. You may come back, you may not but don’t waste time on something that isn’t captivating or working for you.

Use What Works

Big time bottom line… if you’re investing time in a site that isn’t doing anything for you or you just don’t enjoy, ditch it! Don’t waste your time with sites that simply won’t help you grow in any way.

Your Method

What are you doing to focus on productive time spent with social media sites? Have you taken the time to discover what works in your niche and who to network with?

It’s almost as though I woke up one morning and everyone I know in the blogosphere was talking about Ping.fm. I heard about it on Twitter, there were conversations happening on Plurk and then I got some emails about it. “Katy… have you heard?”

You almost have to wonder how a single site gains popularity in the blogosphere in just a single night. But, regardless of how it happened, it did. And if you haven’t heard, bloggers are talking about Ping.fm as if it is the new social media darling and no doubt a good way to organize lifestreaming sites in a single place.

What is it?

Ping.fm is an update service for all microblogging platforms. It allows you to make uniform status updates across the board to a lot of the most commonly used sites:

• Bebo
• Blogger
• Brightkite
• Facebook
• hi5
• Identi.ca
• Jaiku
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• Mashable
• MySpace
• Plaxo Pulse
• Plurk
• Pownce
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Xanga

Presuming you’re a member of all 17 of these sites, you could use Ping.fm to update your status or microblog across the board. Of course, if you just belong to a few of these sites you’ll also find great benefits.

Usability

Really, as much as social networking means to me, I am not an early adapter. Typically I’m the one hanging out in the back to see how others like, dislike, or turn results with a service. But this is one that I jumped in with pretty quickly (I think) and I find the site quite easy to use, figure out, and navigate. This isn’t rocket science.

Setting up Ping.fm to “ping” a service you use is as easy as entering your username and password for the given service. To send out status updates or microblogs to your given social networking sites, they couldn’t offer a larger variety of options:

1. Login to Ping.fm
2. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
3. Google Talk
4. Yahoo Instant Messenger
5. iGoogle Gadget
6. Facebook
7. iPhone Web App
8. Moble App

You can also enable a social networking icon (like displayed at the bottom of my posts) though a WordPress plugin that will allow your visitors to use Ping.fm to broadcast your posts. More exposure = more visitors, right? Plus, who doesn’t find those social bookmarking icons useful at one point or another? (I’ll be adding this option to I’m Blogging That this weekend.)

Could be Better

There’s not a lot to complain about. Chances are if you belong to that many social networking websites that handle status updates and microblogging you’re spending a good deal of your day updating all of that. This makes it easy, fast, and streamlined. And the variety of ways to get your updates out there make it even easier and more convenient than visiting each of these sites or downloading app after app to try and get updates completed.

However, the only downfall that I see is that I cannot view the mircoblogs and status updates of others using their service. I still have to head to Twitter to check out what others are saying and check for replies, same goes for Plurk. Perhaps adding in the feeds to our dashboards is something that they’ll add in later but for now, who knows.

My Results

When I have 1,000 things on my plate it’s difficult to factor in time to head to so many sites and publish something worth reading for those who are following me. I’m not always so witty to come up with something in less than 140 characters. But since I started using Ping.fm I’m willing to find more to say that enables me to publish updates more often. As a direct result, I’m now getting more traffic than I ever have to my blog from both Twitter and Plurk.

Private Beta

Ping.fm is still so new, they’re in private beta. This usually means that you need to have an invite or some kind of “in” to actually get your foot through the door. But never fear, you can join the site today using “pingbewithyou.” And when this code changes, I’ll update this post to ensure access to Ping.fm.

What do you think?

I cannot fathom that bringing together microblogging sites is ever a bad thing but, what’s your opinion? Can you see yourself using a service like Ping.fm to update your multiple accounts and do you think that it would save you some time during your day? Better yet, are you already using Ping.fm — what’s your thoughts?

I’ve recently read a couple of posts mentioning a plugin that will enable bloggers to stop pinging their blogs internally when deep linking within their posts.

This means that as they link to their own blog posts, they’re not sending pings to another post that they’ve linked to within the new post.

My question is why would you want to turn off this feature? And you may be asking why it’s important to keep it around.

What’s a ping?

Just in case you might be wondering, a ping is a notification a new blog post will send to an existing blog post when it has been linked to. For example, on my post All In One SEO Pack Finds New Developer, under the comments you’ll see the following which are links to posts that have linked back to my post.

Creating Connections

By having pings sent to previous posts while deep linking, you’re enabling a connection between posts. The pings display relevancy between posts and those who take the time to read and visit archives will notice the connections between posts by ping notifications.

Now having said that, I also believe that this connection is more prominent when pings and trackbacks are separate from comments. But for those with a self-hosted WordPress blog, separating comments and trackbacks is super easy. Check out this tutorial for the do it yourself approach.

Search Engines

Bloggers who utilize do follow will see an added boost in their posts from search engines as they crawl individual posts and follow from one post to the next. And should you be writing your titles with some keyword punch, it’ll be even more helpful.

Are you convinced?

If you’re not convinced that you should be pinging between posts, just stop doing it. Sure, you could install the plugin for this but there’s another way to do this that’s really very simple.

If you’re going to deep link without pinging, simply make your links relative instead of absolute. Here’s an example:

Relative: /2008/07/02/pinging-your-blog

Absolute: http://www.imbloggingthat.com/2008/07/02/pinging-your-blog

By dropping your full website URL, you’ll stop sending ping notices to yourself. Overall, without the weight of another plugin on your blog, this might be the better method.

Your Take

To ping yourself or not, that’s the question. So now I ask, do you allow internal pings on your blog and do you often surf the trackback links within a blog post?