Have a Wednesday Laugh

Join me at Wordless Wednesday

I have stumbled upon Darren Rouse several times in the past two days.

Yesterday I was on Twitter and saw Darren twitter  his traffic stats

#1 Google organic, #2 ‘Direct’, #3 Stumbleupon, #4 Google referral, #5 yahoo/organic, #6 delicious, #7 jobs.problogger, #8 technorati , #8 technorati, #9 bloglines, #10 netvibes, #11 aol organic and #12 popurls – digg was at #39, diggers hate problogger

I was surprised to see how high Stumbleupon was and the low ranking for Digg. I then realised I need to add some analytical time and skill building to my weekly routine. It is good to know where your traffic is coming from and as Wendy Piersall has found out this week, who your readers are.

This morning I saw a Twit from Darren saying he was doing an impromptu Q & A on usstream.tv. It was a great session, very casual and I came away better informed and  I am putting on hold a new blog I was going to work on over the next week.

The basic reason I am not going ahead with that blog was that Darren said the Making Money Online is a very crowded market. I also have a blog in one of the niche areas that Darren mentioned, that need more attention.

Head to the this link to hear the replay, there were many gems. I asked about the 6 figure Blogging Course that is coming up and found that last time there were many Intermediate level bloggers. I am considering doing this course to take this blog to a 6 figure income.

If you want to connect with Darren read today’s post where he lists what he uses now and may explore in the future.

One new one Darren mentions as being cool is new, Friendfeed,  one I joined this week too.

Now I am off to get update my Stumbleupon account. Please stumble with me there

This week, I have been in my home town of Canberra, catching up with friends and celebrating my best friend’s birthday milestone. My good intentions for daily posting went out the window, but it was great to spend the time with old friends.

That is one of my important communities. my online communities are also important to me.

Since I have come back I have found a new community, Yovia I had seen their stand at BlogWorld Expo, but had not really focussed on them until Des alerted me to the post he had just written Keeping The Advertising noise down with Yovia. After reading the post I visited Yovia’s site and liked what I saw.

The Yovia Network is a group of websites committed to keeping free of SPAM. Each website is linked to the others, but not in a fake or contrived way.

I submitted this blog for consideration.

Today I received an email from Israel Swanson of Yovia, saying my site had been profiled on Buzz Yovia and asking me to spread the word. I then remembered getting a postcard at Blog World about spreading the word.

I am now a founding member of Yovia Network

Join me at the

 

 

Alone we can do so little:

Together we can do so much"

   – Helen Keller

Most Sundays we go to a local farmers’ market and stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables for the week.

Last Sunday we parked in a different place and I saw the wonderful tile montage above, on the wall of the Local Family Day Care Centre.

I don’t normally take my camera to the markets, but at the last minute I had put it in my bag. I had the idea for this post  but didn’t imagine capturing something so wonderful.

The montage of individual tiles was painted by children, staff and carers at Tweed Heads Family Day Care centre, and  represents the sense of community that they see this montage depicting.

Over the past week, I have spent time updating my own map of my online community, my social networks, and working out where I spend my time.

When I went back to paper planning last week, I listed the forums I was going to participate in and which social networks.

I found that as the week went on I had added a few more.

One I joined last week I am very excited about.

Jack Humphrey’s from The Friday Traffic report had set up is Social Marketing Central at Ning. At last count there were 502 members.

Jack says on his first post on the forum on February 10th:

Well I finally found a cure for my paralysis in deciding which social community platform to go with. Here were my requirements:

1. I didn’t want to install, configure or host it myself.
2. I wanted to turn it on, do a little setup, and let it rip.
3. I needed it to have several types of functions like RSS from my main social marketing blog, groups, forums, and other stuff to keep people interested in coming back and making connection here as opposed to (in addition to) 4.6 trillion other social networks out there.

Ning made the cut, and here we are today!              

There are groups forming within Social Marketing Central

 Alex Blackwell set up a stumbleupon group. This has just been going for a  few days, I have met new blogs as well as bloggers and had increased traffic to the highway.

Jack Humphreys set up Diggers group – learn the secrets to gettting dugg on Digg

  and RSS Feed Central, to help one another increase feed subscriptions

WordPress Central set up by  Ben, a.k.a. internetgenius, from WordPress University

Today Greg Lungar set up Technorati Favourites Club

Social Networking Central is building to be a great community, bloggers helping bloggers.

My question now is how to manage all the other networks and forums?

Just as for my email, some of these will be stripped away. 

 And a few more that I have forgotten I belong to

The decision will be which ones?

How are you managing your social networking?

Please share below.

If you liked this article, please  stumble, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg. I’d appreciate it.