Sunday Shorts

Shorts? Shorts? Not today! It's a miserable, damp 61 degrees here today, the shorts are in the laundry pile and the sweats are resurrected for, hopefully, the last time this year. Actually, I'm referring to snippets, the ones that follow...

Getting back into the swing of things, yesterday, while visiting all my favorite blogs, I found that Debbie over at Mama Flo's Place started a list of blogs not accepting Entrecard paid ads. She graciously added my three blogs to that list, very quickly and then advertised as well! Head on over and get on the list too.

As time goes by, I'm liking CMF Ads more and more. It is clean, simple and very effective in getting traffic to your blogs. The big difference is that the people who do visit are going to read and comment, and read and comment long after the ad spot expires. In other words, no drop and runs that kill bounce rate and site rank. Instead, you build a solid, real audience for your blog.

A reminder: When you are leaving comments, be sure to use the Name/URL option. This gives you an immediate link back to your blog, which improves your site ranking. It's a lot easier to do than begging for reciprocal links, and as long as you leave a good comment, bloggers don't mind a bit. I also use the Recent Comments widget which also shows commenters' name and blog address on every page of the blog. You get a mighty bang for your buck commenting here!

I've had an account on Facebook for a long time, but didn't quite understand it all. I still don't, but I understand Twitter less! In terms of microblogging, Facebook at least shows you every conversation you've commented on in one place, making it much easier (for me) to keep track of where I've been.

Google's Friend Connect is turning out to be quite useful too. When you click on one of those tiny photos, you get a link to their blog, which makes it a lot easier than building a link list to keep track of everyone. I use that little widget often to visit with the people who've chosen to follow my blogs.

All of these things ease my mind quite a bit as I contemplate leaving Entrecard. I've been with Entrecard for quite awhile and look forward to seeing all the blogs I've come to enjoy so much. But, it's a high maintenance system that requires a lot of time for little in return. I'll be putting my time into CMF Ads, Facebook and Friend Connect more and more nowadays, because I just don't have the time to "drop" on blogs that just drop and run on mine.

Here's to hoping that the temperatures rise enough to wear those shorts. I'll see you soon...