This is a guest post by Melissa Langeman
Got some content up, so my next step is increasing traffic. I found an interesting service called BlogGlue and thought I’d give it a try. I’ll admit this up front. I’m a noob around the blogosphere. Do people even say ‘blogosphere’ any more? Or ‘noob’? Anyway…Here’s the gist: you can find other blogs with similar interests to ‘partner’ with. The BlogGlue service creates internal links as well as links to related content with your partners to drive traffic around your BlogGlue network. So, posts from my blog will appear as recommended links in one of my partner’s posts and vice versa. They claim that the posts will be related content, so the readers will be interested in the content. A great idea!
Early experiences:
1. Disclaimer: I’m using the free account as a test drive right now. This limits me to 5 partners. The idea is that more partners should give more relevant traffic. There are packages you can purchase to increase the number of partners and pages the site will create and manage for you.
2. The blogs available right now are heavily skewed to Social Media, SEO, Affiliate Marketing and Web Design. About 20 % are more personal blogs. There’s a sprinkling of related content to mine. At least, in the categories I assigned to my blog, this is the case. I’m listed in coaching, education, corporate and work. If you’re a blogger on these topics, excellent. You’ll have more partners than you can shake a stick at.
3. Sometimes, they get it right! I checked back after about 3 days. I just opened my blog to see what gems were waiting for me. And I’d have to say, a few posts have been nailed beautifully. Right on the head, one swing, everything to make a builder proud.
4. There are those other links. I also have some links that are really not related to my blog post. It’s not just left field. These links are not even from the same sport! And I chose my partners so carefully too. Unfortunately, I can’t choose which pages to connect. The system automagically does this in some way I don’t understand just yet.
5. Blogglue offers Social Network integration. You can have BlogGlue update Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with your blog posts for you. Unfortunately, it will also tweet old posts on your behalf as well. From my understanding of the product, it won’t automatically follow people, though it does reserve this right for itself. I’ve decided not to use this feature. I have other automation software which handles my updates for my new posts. I think it’s better to keep this under my own control.
6. How much traffic can it generate? The sad thing is, I don’t really know, since I’ve had no traffic from it yet. To be fair, I have only 3 partners. Trying to keep my partners relevant. There are definitely users there who will partner with anyone and everyone. I doubt unrelated blogs will have readers interested in my work.
The verdict? I’m keeping it for another two weeks. The only concern I have is unrelated blog content at the end of my posts. The blogs I partner with have great content, and it is related to my work. I’m following these people on Twitter so at least I can keep up on their blogs if I don’t keep BlogGlue. If nothing else, I found a few great bloggers to reach out too. Anyone else checking out BlogGlue? We’d love to read your experiences as well!
Melissa Langeman is a Business Analyst on sabbatical in Belgium, fresh from a posting in India. An MBA student, her business blog covers careers, travel and the MBA experience in a foreign land.
Very interesting i just was introduced to this from a plugin upgrade, thanks for sharing your thoughts
Did you remove the plug-in? I don't see any links to other blogs.
Do you still use the plugin, I received the email from BlogGlue that they won't be offering the free service anymore, so I'm interested in some other BlogGlue like services that are free