Best Blogs in Manchester

Praise can be few and far between as a blog writer. So it's with a big smile on my face I announce that it's official.

New To Manchester is in the Top 5 Blogs in Manchester, according to Blogged.com.

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Salford Bloggers Do It For Free!

If you live in Salford and belong to a community group, and you want to join the online revolution, go here, to Charlestown & Lower Kersal Social Media Centre. They'll teach you how to get a free blog, where you can post your thoughts, get involved in online debating and even market yourself for jobs.

Safe, mate, d'ye knaa wha meen?

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Linking

I think part of the problem is I'm not cultivating links. If I link to someone, they aren't obliged to link back to me. So what are the ways to drum up some readers?

1. Tag more consistently

2. Write to a specific audience. At this blog I tend to write to anyone, and on every subject, and this scattershot approach probably doesn't help with building a consistent audience.

3. Get more involved in the social media process - Digg, NewsVine, Del.icio.us; what are all of these things and what do they mean?

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The Great Social Media Experiment: Part 1

After many fruitless hours faffing around with this blog I'v decided to jump in feet first (can you do that with the internet?) and try to start telling people around the world about this blog. The problem being, I don't get any comments, so I never know if all this wonderful information about cars, TV, the media, pubs and the Daily "Heartless Arsehole" Mail is reaching anyone.

So, step one on the ladder is something called Technorati. I've seen it all around the Manchester Blogs I read, for example. So, what is Technorati and how do you join?

1. Log on to www.technorati.com - choose a username and password etc.

2. Now comes the interesting part: claim your blog as your own. This is a service to denote that the blog you write is yours and yours alone. By taking this action you will also be made aware of how popular your blog is (in terms of overall rank), and how much authority
you have. Authority is simply the number of authentic blogs/websites that have linked to your in the past 6 months.

3. Weep at the results. We all like to think we're good writers, that what we write is read all over the world by silent crowds. This blog is currently the 2,461,872 most popular. I currently have just three blogs linking here; Manchizzle, Mancubist and The Asparagus.

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Social Media: Friends

The habit of "friends" tagging in social media is getting a bit redundant. People I meet on the internet are not my friends. They may be contacts, acquaintances even. But I don't complain to them about my girlfriend, or try to explain to them down the pub why Crewe Alexandra are the greatest football team in the world. You're not my friend unless you know my cats' names. End of.

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Is Twitter useful?

Once heralded the Next Big Thing in social media; are people taking Twitter too seriously? Ah, well, you see, many things that started off as a bit of fun between friends (Facebook, YouTube) are now seriously popular.

I still, despite long conversations with collegues, can't see the business application of a device which is used by so many people as yet another stream of consciousness updater. Microblogging is not what I want to see.

So you live your life online, you work there, you play games there, you blog about the interesting things you've seen (presumably on the way from the computer to the fridge). Do we really need to know what you're thinking every 4 minutes?

Some journalists (especially journalism educators) maintain that Twitter is useful as a tool for keeping in contact with your editorial team. Okay, so a story breaks and you need to get the details out quickly. That would be great. Recently, you may have seen my posts about the 2008 Manchester Earthquake...being awake at 1 i the morning and not knowing who to contact about it. Should I have twittered? I don't think so. I can phone or text just as easily without the need to engage in what is essentially a bit of fluff application.

I see Twitter as a needless and obstructive device, the problem being that the communication is one-way only. If you "twit" (ie post on twitter), you can't enter into a dialogue with people who are "following" (ie reading) your posts. You can post on your own page replies to your followers, but this somehow misses the point.

Conversation seems to be the flavour of the month with Twitter at present, as Mike Butcher ably covers here.

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