Promote Your Squidoo Lens with MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog helps you to find out just where your traffic is coming from and how they're getting there. Personally, I don't think you can ever have too many traffic stats. The secret is to use it to your advantage. Why not visit Squid-Stats for more information about traffic stats via your Squidoo dashboard?

MyBlogLog is like any other (blogging) community:

You need to put into it what you would like to get back out.
Take the time to visit other member's blogs/communities and comment :)
Networking is key for MyBlogLog to work but it's all worth the hard work in the end.

For sure, you'll get some people that won't or don't visit your lenses but that could be said for any community like this. In order to maximise the traffic to your Lenses from MyBlogLog, you need to work at it!

Views have been mixed across the WWW about whether MyBlogLog is any good for maximising traffic but I tend to think this is because those who don't receive very much from it are those who don't use it to its full potential.

The Isle of Squid

If you have a blog (or a site that uses a RSS feed) then, it's a good idea to join MyBlogLog.com. For the reasons why, check out the What can MyBlogLog do for me? above!

Click on MyBlogLog.com. and sign in with your Yahoo ID (Yahoo will ask you to verify your password.) If you don't have a Yahoo ID, don't worry, you can still register without one.

Fill in your profile with as much information as you can. Your profile will display all the blogs/websites that you own, your contacts, yours and your contacts' feeds, recent visitors, your tags and any communities that you have joined.

Traffic Tip!: Join MyBlogLog Face Ads!

On the left hand column, scroll down to My Sites and Services and click on the link that says Add Website.

Add your Blog name - I named mine Inkserotica on Squidoo.

Add your URL display name (this will be filled in automatically as you fill in your blog name but you can edit it if you wish.) - E.G. inkseroticaonsquidoo

Add your Blog site URL - This is your profile URL on Squidoo, e.g. http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/inkserotica

Indicate if your blog is Adult rated or contains porn and enter a short description (I used 'Spreading my smarts and ideas on Squidoo')

Now, click on Add Blog/Site!

Traffic Tip!: Offer a free back link (plus additional description) to anyone that joins your community. Publish a blog post about it, then send a message to some members of MyBlogLog, linking to your post.

'The Prom Queen has invited you to join MyBlogLog

A little MyBlogLog background...

Discover something new or cool each day. Find a sites are unique to your interests, be that "you'll never guess what I found on the internet" person.

Learn more about the people who publish your favorite sites? What do they read? Who else reads them?

Connect with people who read the same sites as you, make the world wide web a little smaller, more connected.

The Prom Queen thinks MyBlogLog is so great that they've taken the time to let you know about it. Come check it out. If you've got a Yahoo! account, you're already half-way there. Join The Prom Queen! Check out www.mybloglog.com to learn more.'

Topics can be found on the top menu bar. It is currently in Beta.

It displays the hottest blog topics that are on MyBlogLog each day. The image below is a screenshot of a graph of the hot blog topics on MyBlogLog on 19th September.



These are:

Talk Like a Pirate Day
Jimmy Carter
NCIS
Rosh Hashanah
Raymond Clark

The featured blog posts on each topic is then listed below the graph with even more Hot Topics listed even further below that.

So What use is Topics for members of MyBlogLog?

Use Topics to find blog posts about your favourite or an interesting topic. Visit each blog in turn, read the post and comment, leaving your own link to your blog or Squidoo Lens. Do NOT spam!

Use Topics to discover which subjects are hot at any given day and write your own blog post about it. See if you can get yourself (or your blog) featured in Topics on MyBlogLog :)

After you've added your blog, you will be given a tracking script which you will need to add to your blog html code. This can be placed anywhere between the Body tags.

If you've added your Lens profile page, unfortunately you won't be able to do this but as Squidoo tracks your traffic anyway, it's not a great loss.

Next, click on the Go to 'yourblogcommunity' link at the bottom of the page. On the next page, click on the Settings link at the top next to the screenshot image of your blog (you need to add this now, as it will be displaying a generic image from MyBlogLog.)

On the Settings screen, you will notice that your Blog Feed URL will already be added. Below that click on Upload Screenshot.

Now you're going to upload the screenshot of your blog:

I use FREE software, Screen Grab Pro v.1.5 which can be downloaded from Traction-Software - Screen Grab Pro. Edit the image so that it's approximately 400 px in width. I use Adobe Image Ready CS but if you want to use free image editing software, here is a list:

PhotoPlus
Gimp
Photobie
Picasa
Paint

Upload this image to your MyBlogLog account.

Next, add Tags to describe your Lenses content.

Traffic Tip!: Bookmark every blog that you come across that displays a MyBlogLog widget. Save that bookmark in a folder named "Mybloglog Blogs" or similar. Now, visit each blog regularly. Don't forget to leave a comment or two!

Widgets wasn't something that you could add to Squidoo as they're usually Javascript but MyBlogLog has fixed that!

You can now add a widget that doesn't use Javascript.

MyBlogLog says it only works on flickr.com, Yahoo! 360, wordpress.com and myspace.com so although it displays correctly, I'm not yet sure if it updates every time someone new visits or you refresh your page.

I've already fitted mine to my profile on Squidoo, so now you can see who has visited your profile. Go visit them back and leave a comment!

You can also add a button to your profile page like this one:



Anyone clicking on this button will be taken to your Blog community page where they can see how many members have joined, your latest feeds (this will refresh when you update your Lenses), tags and your profile.

Consider using these tools to further boost your MyBlogLog experience:

Track MyBlogLog - 'This plugin identifies and tracks MyBlogLog readers on your website. The plugin will store the user avatar, location, website, twitter, technorati, etc.. along with the last visit dates.'
MyBlogLog Widget Colorer - This tool is created by Thin & Light to help you customize the colors of MyBlogLog "Recent Readers" Widget.
MyBlogLog module - This module provides simple and hassle-free integration with MyBlogLog services. MyBlogLog provides community-based services and statistics to web sites (not just bloggers.)
New MyBlogLog Community Widget - The purpose of this graph is to make it simple for you to see who exactly is visiting your blog and what other blogs they enjoy. This will benefit you greatly by allowing you to see what your readers enjoy so that you can provide more targeted content on your blog.
MyBlogLog is on Facebook

Here is a list of a few worthwhile Squidoo communities to join on MyBlogLog:

Now this is the easy bit!

All you have to do is sit back and watch the traffic roll in :)

Though, I do recommend that you join communities, visit blogs and publicise your Lens blog on MyBlogLog in as many places as you can.

I.e. Stumble it! Digg it! Furl it! Bookmark it! Add it to search engines and use other promotional methods.

Traffic Tip!: Create a MyBlogLog meme. To get it started, ask bloggers to leave a comment on your blog requesting to be added to the list. Then create the rules! E.g. they must visit and join all the communities on the list, they must publish the list (rules and all) to their own blog and they must add new communities to the list by requesting comments.

You're probably already aware that, if you wish, you can go Pro at MyBlogLog, but is it something worth doing?

Find out here!

MyBlogLog has to be one of the services on the Internet that going Pro doesn't really achieve much in the way of additional features. Plus, you would need to go Pro for every blog or website you have registered, not just for your account. Tally how much that would cost you if you had, say, the amount of websites I have registered!

A Pro account costs either $3 a month subscription or an annual fee of $25, both payable through Paypal or a credit card if you wish to purchase the annual subscription. The monthy fee will be automatically paid every month and the annual fee would have to be renewed by you every time it expires.

Here's what going Pro would give you on MyBlogLog:

When you first register a blog on MyBlogLog you are given a 3 day free trial which will enable you to see just what you will be getting with an upgraded account. However, unless you have more than 10 members in your community already, it really doesn't give you any useful information.

MyBlogLog themselves say that many people do not feel they need a Pro account, so why bother having the option to go Pro?

I suppose if you need real stats and want to download your traffic stats log to analyse yourself then by all means go Pro. MyBlogLog state that if your site has a lot of links and a lot of traffic then going Pro would be very useful. I think it all depends on what you feel you need and what kind of information you require.

How do I go Pro?:

1 - Click on the Settings link of the Blog you want to upgrade.
2 - Scroll down to Account Status
3 - Choose either MyBlogLog Pro Monthly Subscription ($3 monthly recurring, PayPal) OR MyBlogLog Pro 12-Month Service ($25 for 1 year, credit card or PayPal)
4 - You will be taken to your Paypal account. Check that all information is correct and Click Submit.
5 - All done! You will now have live traffic stats :)

So, is going Pro worth it?

I would say, no, it's not. If you decide to go Pro you wouldn't receive any additional features or services than if you kept your account free.

Save your money and enjoy MyBlogLog for free! :)