So I have started looking at the Yakezie challenge a lot closer and there does seem to be some merits in participating in that group, as well as the other group I have of fellow bloggers.
The numbers seem to be doing OK, although my number of RSS readers has stalled and seems to be dropping. My Alexa ranking is now well below 200K, which was the initial goal. However, my Compete numbers continue to stink and don’t look to be getting any better any time soon.
A few interesting tidbits I have learned or seen this week:
- You shouldn’t post your own content to StumbleUpon, or you might be banned. I hadn’t known that and was merrily posting everything there, so I have stopped doing that.
- Sub.Diggerplus.com is an interesting idea, but there seem to be a lot of bugs in retrieving articles from Digg, and you end up with empty articles you are allegedly reviewing.
- I have created a Facebook ID Theo B. CajunMan, since they wouldn’t let me go with TheBig Cajunman, oh well, I am running a lot of content through there, and luckily HootSuite can post in a timed fashion on FaceBook as well.
- The biggest post of the week was That is One Big Mortgage about the fact that Canadian now owe more than a Trillion Dollars in Mortgage debt. Written as an afterthought, but lots of folks picked it up, so it has been stuffed into many different Carnivals as well.
- I found an AutoTwitterLetter creation engine, so it sends one out for me every day around 8:00 PM. I’m not even sure what criteria it uses, and it doesn’t make me any money, so is it worth it?
- I found an interesting way to promote the site on Twitter. Every Sunday, I put out a list of links to my articles for the week, and it increases my ReTweet numbers, too (yes, that’s a little stinky, but all is fair).
Slowing down a little in the Social Media Blitz, but attempting to make more specific work directly with other bloggers attempting to create Buzz in different ways. Might look into my HubPages page too and see if it is worth keeping up or not.
BJM, don’t sweat Compete scores. One of their major sources of traffic data is from American ISP providers. Since a majority of our visitors are in Canada, we’ll always look low compared to similar sites.
Tom, very true, very true.