Revision of Distributing & publicising your blog’s content from Wed, 04/30/2008 - 18:14

Recent innovations in digital technology have produced a range of “social networking tools” — often called “web2 tools” — that you can use to publicise your blog, network with other blogs and add more content to your blog. All of the following are important fro making your blog accessible to as wide an audience as possible:

  • Syndication – Blogs can be “syndicated” by using something called RSS feeds. This is done automatically if you create your blog using Wordpress or Blogger.com. Syndication means that anyone can subscribe to your blog and receive automatic notification that your blog has been updated. This means that they don't have to visit your website all the time to know that it has new content. You in turn can subscribe to other blogs via their syndication (RSS feeds) and receive automatic updates.

Online Social Bookmarking tools allow you to save blog or web pages that you feel will be useful to you at a later date and which you want to share with others. It is the same as using the 'bookmark' or 'favourites' feature on your web browser, but this allows you to publish your favourite sites for others to see. Some examples are:

Blog Directories allow you to register your blog with sites that draw together communities of bloggers around issues of concern and interest, take a look at:

Aggregators are sites that automatically check for new posts from blogs and list these in real time as they are posted. Some are topic related; others are regional or issue-based.

To give you some examples, blog aggregators with a national and regional focus in Africa are:

Of course many countries and regions have their own equivalent. A more international example is:

Online Communities allow you to publicise your blog and become part of a community with other bloggers.

Online Media Storage sites allow you to store, share and view a range of media such as digital photographs, audio files like podcasts, videos.

Web-Rings are communities of blogs that you can join or create yourself. There are thousands of web-rings under in all sorts of categories and issues. See www.webring.com

Social / Community News sites allow you to submit your blog posts, or posts from other organisations or individuals, if you wish to publicise something they have posted.

Carnivals are weekly, bi-month, or monthly roundups on a particular issue or topic — such as the Carnival Against Racism or the Carnival of Positives. You can set up your own carnival and invite other blogs to join in. Don’t expect your carnival to take off immediately; it takes time and perseverance. http://blogcarnival.com/bc/

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