Blog Carnivals

The latest rage among bloggers is the EntreCard, a social network in the form of an online business card that you can “drop” at the sites of other member bloggers. The card appears on your blog as a 125×125 pixel ad with a “Drop Yours” ribbon underneath. When you visit another member site, after logging into EntreCard’s site, you click on “Drop Yours” and the site owner sees your card in his inbox. You also get credit for dropping your card which can be used to purchase the 125×125 ads.

There are a lot of bloggers raving about the traffic potential of this system - and it does have that. I’m equally excited because for me it’s brought back a lot of the social interaction from the early days of blogging, back when I could leave a comment on an one of the ultra-A-list blogs and actually get responses and other readers visiting my blog to see what else I had to say. This system of hopping from site to site and getting to know other bloggers makes Web 2.0 “social networking” sites seem almost Web 1.0 static by comparison. So, clearly I’m excited about this new toy. But it’s meant to be more than a toy. “EntreCard” comes from the words “entrepreneur” and “card,” and as such is very business oriented. So, how can bloggers get the most out of their participation in this new network? With a few weeks in, I have some ideas.

Spending your 300 Drops

Each blogger is limited to dropping his card 300 times a day. Now, for all but the most serious professionals, visiting 300 sites even for a few seconds is a serious proposition and may even be more than you’ll normally achieve. So, whether you’re going to hit the limit or limit yourself to visiting 30 or 40 sites a day, how do you get the most from those visits?

• Bookmark the sites you really like in a separate folder or folders as you go. Getting the most of your visits means you should be getting something else besides “credit” for a card drop.
• Visit the latest sites page and check out the newest sites. The new members will remember who greeted them first. Jean Costa and Scott McKinnis dropped cards on me and Scott purchased one of my ads in my first few hours on the system and now their blogs are on my daily visit list.
• Get outside your niche. Take advantage of the directory and the ads themselves to learn something new, entertain yourself and have fun. Find something unusual and go back from time to time.
• Become a top dropper. Pick a few blogs and visit them every day. People notice their “top droppers” and there’s a meme going around where they link to them. You can’t be everyone’s top dropper, so pick blogs you really like and that match your own in some way.
• Use BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, Bumpzee and similar widgets. If you’re pressed for time and you can visit a blog that uses these or one that doesn’t, visiting a blog that has these widgets gives you another chance to let the site owner know you visited plus a chance to get your icon in front of her site’s visitors. Bookmark these sites in a separate folder for when you want maximum bang for your buck.

Give something to the sites you visit

When you drop your card, the site you visit gets a credit, but if you really want to have an impact try to leave something else. This may be something visible or it may be intangible, but try to do more than just click and leave.

• Take a look around. Especially on your first visit to a particular blog, look at the layout, the posts, the ads. If you see something appealing follow through.
• Comment appropriately. One great thing about EntreCard is that it’s a great way to say “Hi, loved your blog” without leaving a spammy looking “Hi, loved your blog” comment. 3rdWorldBlogger posted asking for comments instead of just card drops, “Dropping the highest number of Entrecards on my blog without even leaving one comment on any post or joining in my conversation to me is not beneficial to my blog growth on the long haul.”
• Check out the site’s sponsors. Don’t engage in click fraud, but do take the time to give the ads a read and behave as any other visitor would. This is a business oriented network and in blogging business is largely about advertising, so try to overcome the ad blindness that goes with being online so much.
• Write about what you find. That’s what this blogging thing is all about, right? Finding content, adding your two cents and linking to it so your readers can share the joy you’ve found. A link when you’ve found something you like is the single nicest thing you can do for a fellow blogger - so do it!

Give something to your visitors

If you hit that 300 drop a day mark and have a catchy ad you can expect 100 or so new visitors every day. That’s huge for a new blog and not bad even for an established one. The downside is that many of those visitors are shooting for 300 drops, so you have very little time to catch their attention and once it’s caught you have to have a strong value proposition to bring them back when they aren’t just clicking your ad. For starters, you should read ProBlogger. It’s a daily read for me. Darren Rowse has literally years worth of posts about how to generate great content and links to the best work of others on the topic. (He also just posted an interview with the EntreCard founder that has more pointers!)I can’t duplicate that here. That said, a couple of points.

• Original content. Offer something that readers haven’t already seen at 290 of their 300 daily drops. Cigar Jack offers interesting content on a topic that no other member covers.
• Be different with your ads. It seems like every “make money” blog out there has the “Ads Suck…Ours Don’t” ad from WidgetBucks - even the bloggers who don’t put the actual browser halting memory hog WidgetBucks widgets on their blogs. An ad that you see 300 times a day isn’t likely to make you much money.
• Be creative, inspired, controversial. When you do cover the same material, offer a unique perspective. Say something new about the same old thing, say the same old thing in a new way.
• Give the reader something. A contest, a t-shirt, an opportunity to get a link, an invitation to a beta site. At the very least, offer your reader your undying love.

Last bit of advice - have fun with this. Do what you love and the traffic will follow!

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