In the first part of A One Year Experiment in Blogging, I shared lessons I learned about producing content. In the second part, I shared lessons in making blogs readable and marketable. In the third part, I shared lessons in bringing in visitors from search engines. Today, I’ll tell you about social media. While bringing in visitors via search engines is important, an equally important task in building your reader base is attracting visitors via other people. Being social is the name of the game and the traffic you’ll be bringing in from social networking sites is more valuable than that from search engines.

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Although most of my traffic  comes from search engines, I find that readers coming in from Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ and other social sites are much more compelling. The reason for this is communication and engagement are strong with this kind of traffic. When people like your shared posts, you know that they’re interested in what you’re selling. In terms of my personal blog, I’m selling my thoughts and the silly things I have to say about comics and all forms of dickery. They are interested in similar shenanigans that I offer, hence the possibility that they will come back for more.

If people share your content with their own networks, you’re practically getting free advertisement. It also means that your content is compelling enough that other people want to share it with their friends, relatives and random Internet stalkers. This is why posting your blog updates to social networking sites is pretty much a must especially if you’re still building a following. Don’t overdo it, though, because  sharing everything — even your less than stellar content — can be quite annoying. I know this because I get easily annoyed with people who overshare too.

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Being single for the past 3 years, I know a lot about the whole experience of spending Valentine’s Day alone. I know some of you would say that on Valentine’s Day, love between lovers is not the only kind of love we can celebrate. We can celebrate the love we have for friends and family. WRONG. We all know only bitter single people say that. Valentine’s Day is about the passion and the romance shared between two people. For those of us who are single, it’s a jarring reminder that we are, indeed, single.

We usually spend this day locking ourselves up in our cold and dark rooms or crying in the shower while eating fried chicken. This year, let’s mix it up a little. Let’s go on the Internet and wallow in self-pity there. As a trained professional expert in being single, it is my duty to inform you of your options for celebrating Valentine’s Day online.

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I’ve noticed that Plurk is slowly pulling in some of my non-Internet friends and acquaintances. A sign of increasing popularity in the Philippines, perhaps? If so, I guess it’s time for me to shove a blog post about Plurk down your throats. I’ve been a plurker for more than a month now, and by Blogosphere Law, that means I can already act like a Plurk expert! So here, ladies and gentlemen, is a list of requests demands for all veteran, newbie, and future plurkers. Read it and live your Plurk life by it for the common good.

1. Make your user name short and sweet. For those of you who still don’t have a Plurk account but are seriously considering getting one, make your user name as short as possible. During discussions, people may link to your Plurk profile by typing your user name preceded by the at symbol (e.g. @baddie = baddie). Don’t make it a hassle for them to type a really long user name. Also, avoid using alternating letters and numbers (e.g. b0p01s). It’s annoying.

2. Go easy on your display name. When you reach 40 karma, you’d be able to change your display name. This is fun for you, and if you manage to change your display name into something funny or entertaining, it could be fun for your Plurk friends as well. But, don’t overdo it. Changing your display name regularly can be annoying. Also, don’t use special characters. It may look cool for you, but it will probably look like garbage in other people’s eyes.

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Scientists say that 7% of the Internets is all about asshattery and dickery, while 3% is serious business. The remaining 90% is porn. I can attest to the porn number, and this blog more or less falls under the Asshattery & Dickery category. For the serious business side of the Internets, though, I have the perfect examples. I know this for I have firsthand accounts. Yes, ladies and gentlecreeps, all this bogus statistics bull is just an introduction to my pimping of the following:

Bum No More is a blog about tips and guides on employment, lifestyle, and other things that might interest new college graduates and young upwardly mobile professionals. It’s only been online for less than two months, but it already has a wealth of wisdom ready to be devoured by hungry young job seekers and corporate n00bs. Aside from this, job seekers can also subscribe to the Bum No More Weekly Newsletter that features entry level job openings every week.

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I’ve had my Facebook account for quite a while but I never got around to updating and playing around with it. But with all the recent hype, I decided to dick around and explore if it really deserves all the noise. I have to admit, I’m very much impressed. I’m seriously considering leaving my other social networking accounts and start nesting in Facebook.

There’s one huge-ass problem, though. Most of my friends are still fixated on Friendster and Multiply. I think it’s up to me to convince them to consider getting a Facebook account, if not to totally make it their primary social networking site. With this in mind, I’m going to do a series of posts to pimp Facebook, and you’re all going to read it whether you like it or not.

But before I proceed, let me just point out that the screenshots you see here are products of the Jing Project software. Mike “Fucking” Villar did a nice review on this Jing thingamajig, and you should read it. If not, he’ll rape you. That’s a promise.

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