Blogs and Blogging...
Seven months into writing Prairie Bluestem, I finally understand that del.icio.us offers an effective and flexible way of categorizing the individual posts of a blog. Since Blogger (the blogging service I use) doesn't offer categories, I'm excited about using del.icio.us.
Here's how it works. If I tag several posts as "Sandhills", a reader can click on that tag and see a list of all the posts so labeled. Also, any user of del.icio.us could search for "Sandhills" and possibly come across a post of mine with a "Sandhills" tag.
I wish I had grasped earlier in my blogging experience how del.icio.us works. I wouldn't have fooled around with the categories listed in the sidebar ("All in the Family", "Memory Lane", etc.) They use the Blogger Search, and they have two unfortunate limitations:
- They don't pick up any posts made before the searches were installed.
- They don't pick up any categories that are changed or added after a post is first published.
Neither of these problems will exist with del.icio.us tags.
I've started going through the posts from the beginning of the blog and putting some del.icio.us tags on them. Today I did January's 82 posts! Good grief, I posted too much that month!
When I get done tagging all the posts, I'll probably put a list of del.icio.us tags in the sidebar. Meanwhile, if you're curious, you can see the tags I've done so far at http://del.icio.us/prairiebluestem.
I've described just one way that a blogger can use del.icio.us . There are many, many other possible uses-- even networking features so you can send your tags to friends. No wonder it's such a popular service. I'm glad I finally understand at least the basics of how it works.
I know I'm a little slow, but bear in mind -- I'm just a silly little old lady.
Technorati tags:
5 comments:
Now if you can just explain the Technorati tags to me, I'll be all set! :D
The Technorati tags on my blog are really just so Technorati will find them and add the post to their database of tags. If a reader clicks on one of the tags, they are taken away from my blog to a Technorati list of many posts from blogs everywhere that have that tag.
You can go to Technorati and search for blog posts with a certain tag. For example, if you searched for "Sandhills", you would get a list of all the posts with that tag on all the blogs that Technorati follows. The posts that I've tagged "Sandhills" would be somewhere in that list.
For the blogger, Technorati brings some traffic to the blog from searches. Prairie Bluestem gets some visits every day from Technorati searches.
For a person who wants to see what blogs are saying about some particular thing, Technorati is considered one of the best search engines.
You will get some traffic from Technorati just by registering your blog, but if you want to get the most traffic possible from Technorati, you have to tag your posts. You can read more about tags here.
Do you plan to use del.icio.us for bookmarking other sites as well? I've added a del.icio.us linkroll to the end of my blog.
I plan to put a linkroll on my blog for the tags I've given my blog posts. I might start bookmarking some other sites and possibly put that linkroll here also, but if I do, I will use a different account and not mix those tags into my prairiebluestem tags.
I see, good idea.
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