How Linkable Is Your Weblog Post?
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Back after a re-energising long weekend! As I get busy catching up with some of my RSS newsfeeds, and while I have been playing around with a few changes with elsua that will be taking place during the course of the next couple of weeks, as I transition into a new host, I bumped into an interesting link that I am sure would be of interest to all those folks out there who feel that weblogging is all about linking with other weblogs/webloggers in order to be part of the conversation and share and collaborate with others. Something that I have been much in agreement with all along.
Check out How Linkable Is Your Blog Post? presented by Philipp Lenssen‘s Google Blogoscoped. Over there you would be able to read how Philipp has put together a short test to let you know how linkable your weblog post(s) may be. |
It will not take you more than a couple of minutes to go through it and the good thing is that after getting your results you would also see listed a number of different tips on how you can improve the linkability of your weblog posts. Pretty interesting seeing that most of those tips contain lots of common sense and would take you very little action to get them implemented.
Yes, of course, you guessed it right. I tried it out and got the message that my linkability is on 65%, that although not too bad it could certainly be improved to a higher level. Say to something like 80% or above. Thus I went down the list of tips I got recommended to improve that linkability and I have decided to actually do a little bit of an experiment with this particular tip:
“Sometimes, a small illustrative or explanatory image can go a long way to improve the linkability of your post. It just makes an article feel more fun, and more complete. Naturally not everyone’s an artist or designer, but there are many Creative Commons licensed photos around on Flickr and others.“
Thus from now on, and since I have been maintaining a Flickr account where I have been sharing a number of different pictures already, every single post that I create here in elsua will have one of those explanatory or illustrative images of the pictures that I have taken so far and which are available for a larger image over at Flickr. As I said this is going to be an experiment that I am willing to give it a try and see how it goes. But then again when I come to think about it I feel it may be a good idea as well as it would provide me with a great opportunity to share some of the pictures I have taken so far and which I have been delaying weblogging about them for a couple of weeks now. That way, I keep up to date with that and, hopefully, it would help me as well improve that linkability.
We shall see how that goes. I will get started with it from this weblog post onwards and would appreciate if you would share a comment or two on how you, faithful readers, would feel about it. If it works out it would be one of the many changes I have got planned while I transition into a new host, which I suspect is not going to take me much longer any more since I think I have found a very good choice. But more on that later on this week…
Technorati Tags: Metablogging, Linkable, Google Blogoscoped, Flickr
Blame It on the Weather!
You would expect that having had a day off today (And tomorrow, too!) I would have had plenty more time to write a couple of weblog entries over here to share some other interesting ideas that have been crossing up my mind lately, but alas that will not be the case, at least, it doesn’t look like it would be like that for today. We shall see what happens tomorrow. The weather has been rather nice, once again, and after having spent most of the day in Arguineguin and Little Venice (Goodness! I really like that place, I tell you, folks) I just got home in order to get ready to leave again. Yes, I know what you would be thinking by now 
Yes, folks, that is what days off at work do to you, and some lovely weather, too ! Thus there would be some light weblogging ahead for the next couple of days. But don’t worry because earlier on this morning, before I left, I was working already on a couple of rounds of some incredible pictures that I have taken in the last couple of weeks from several different places, including from the recent trip I did to Madrid, and since I have neglected sharing some of them over here I will go ahead and add some more whenever I find some free time to do it. For the time being, I think I am going to enjoy these couple of days off and catch up with life. After all, there is more to life than just weblogging on a daily basis, right? I shall be back soon!
Technorati Tags: Metablogging, Work Life Balance
WhoLinked – Seeing Who Is Linking to Your Conversations
Posted on May 24, 2006 | Categories: Knowledge Snippets, Knowledge Tools, Metablogging, Productivity Tools, Social Enterprise | 7 Comments
If you have been reading my weblog for some time now you would know how time and time again I have always been saying that weblogging, whether you do it on the Internet or on the Intranet, is always about the conversation(s), about engaging in them and sharing your knowledge and collaborating with others. Indeed, a very interesting option for Knowledge Management to explore further if you would want to look for alternative ways of facilitating that knowledge exchange. However, there are times where you may be engaging in the conversations and lose track of those folks who you may have been collaborating with just because at some point it may be more difficult to catch up than anything else. So how can you get that focus back and give you and your readers some more visibility about where you are engaging with other webloggers in the Blogosphere?
Check out WhoLinked, folks. You are going to like it. At least, I have been enjoying it quite a bit since I got it installed in my weblog after having gone through Corporate Blogging 101‘s Cool New Service – WhoLinked.com by Patrick Dodd. Patrick shared a very nice overview describing how it actually works but basically with WhoLinked, and in three very very easy steps, you would be able to get a more visual view of what other webloggers are saying and linking about your own weblog. Pretty neat, indeed. Yes, indeed, it is all about keeping track of the conversations.
So if you scroll down in elsua under the blogroll, on the left column, you would now be able to see who is linking to my weblog and with a direct link so that you can go there and check out some more about those different conversations. I know you are going to say that Technorati does some of this already and you are right but the main difference between both offerings is the fact that Technorati forces me to go to their web site whereas with WhoLinked I get to see the direct links and it would take me there right away without having to go through an interim web site to find those links. Yes, I know, very handy !
Right now you would be able to create that widget in a couple of minutes (Even less!) providing you with information from web links up to 10, which I think would be a good number to give you an idea of who else is currently linking their weblog to your weblog. If you go and take a look now you would be able to recognise some of the webloggers that I have been following up for some time now and some other interesting links that you probably never thought would be there in the first place, which is always a good thing because you can then see how diverse and engaging participating from the Blogosphere could be.
Thus if you are looking for a way to bring some visibility to those folks who link back to you and want to find an easy and inexpensive way of doing so I strongly suggest you have a look into Patrick’s weblog post Cool New Service – WhoLinked.com to see how WhoLinked works and then head over to their web site and set up your widget in less than one minute, upload it to your web site and start seeing the immediate benefits that, believe it or not, you are not along out there in the Blogosphere!
(Thanks, Patrick, for the headsup and for the great tip!)
Technorati Tags: Metablogging, WhoLinked, Technorati
