The Cerebral Mum

I said recently that moving to the new domain and losing all my rankings was a bit hard. As much as I write for me, a blog without readers makes no sense. I do want to be read. I have never known how to write anything without trying to create for an audience. Don’t get me wrong: I never write to an audience. But what is worth saying is worth saying aloud. And what is worth creating is worth sharing.

I love my little community here. I love the people I have met and I love their blogs. And I want more. I also love learning. I like picking things apart and figuring out how they work. Blogging has provided me with a lot to figure out.

One of those things is social networking. Even that phrase is daunting to me. I have never been a networker. I have never gone out of my way to build connections. I am not even particularly skilled at maintaining the ones I have. The beauty of the blogosphere is how many ways you can build your social network, though, and this post is one of them.

Recently, I had a few new visitors to my blog. I like to try and return the favour. Tonight, stopping by to see Sueblimely Blogging Sueblimely, I read her post about rssHugger. This is one of the reasons I love blogging. The blogosphere is a generous community, so generous that it seems like serendipity.

I have been struggling to find the right ways to publicise my site. There are so many options but nearly all of them have appeared to be spammy and shallow. That isn’t a good way to build community. It’s a time sink. But just when I thought that Technorati was all there was for me, Sueblimely appears with rssHugger.

Now, I’m am not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to social networking, but even with a quick skim through of Sueblimely’s post I could see that this was something that would suit me. The aims of the site are simple.

• To bring bloggers and readers together.
• To provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader.
• To help visitors be able to easily find blogs that write about subjects they are interested in.

By registering there, I will be getting a page which profiles my blog and syndicates my feed. That’s something of real value to me. And it costs $20. Except right now. Right now you can register for free, providing you write a review of the service on your blog. Obviously, that is what I’m doing right now.

The service is new and, as Sueblimely said, that makes it difficult to get a full idea of how it will work and the direction its development will take. From my initial impressions though, it looks like it could be good. There are already some very credible blogs listed and there are definite benefits to getting involved at the birth of a new project.

The fact that Collin LaHay, whose brainchild this is, opened up the the site for free registration because of a vote within the community is a good sign that he will be responsive to the needs of those he provides a service to. I like that.

So, it’s a good time to sign up if you want to. I know a couple of you readers are as, hmm, let’s say… as naive about social networking as I am so perhaps it is worth checking out. It can’t hurt. And it might just turn out to be a wonderful thing.

Besides, you will find me there.

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