Blog Syndication

Blog Syndication

Blog syndication: What exactly is it? When we are blessed with a visitor who reads our content, it is a special gift if they want to tell others about our post. This is syndication, putting out content out on the net for others to read too.  And this gets our posts backlinked and builds our visibility and traffic. It behooves us to help our visitors to syndicate quickly, easily, and without needing any special technical expertise. How can we make it easy?

WordPress blogs are perfect for syndication because of the huge selection of plugins we can add with a few clicks. The live buttons you see surrounding posts that link to different social media sites are generated by these plugins. Click on Plugins in your WP Dashboard, then at the top of your Manage Plugins page, click Add New; type in the name or keywords related to what you are looking for, install, activate and it’s nearly done!

Now set up your new button’s function. Click on Settings toward the bottom of your left Dashboard column, click the name of the plugin to open up setup. (A few plugins have a settings link in the actual Manage Plugins page list.) Plugins have their own sites too for help if you need it.

Here is a list of my favorites:

  • Digg This O’ Mine
  • fbLikeButton
  • Simple Facebook Share Button
  • OnlyWire for WordPress
  • ShareThis
  • WP Google-buzz
  • TweetMeme Retweet Button

There is a little bit of overlap here but that’s alright because people have different preferences. The Google Toolbar has a Share button available which includes the Ping.fm button. Ping.fm is very valuable because like Onlywire, it can post to multiple sites at once. I set up my Ping account to post to sites that Onlywire either doesn’t serve, or suffer repeated failures posting. Syndicate a post to Ping with a single click, right from the Share button on your browser’s Google Toolbar.

Let me focus a moment on Tweetmeme. I LOVE this retweet button! It is small, and can be set to sit to the top right of your post. I do a lot of syndication of other’s blogs, and I notice this important button is often missing. It is easy to see, and makes it quick for your reader to Tweet just as they start reading. Do yourself and your readers a favor and install the Tweetmeme plugin now. It is easy to set up. Just put in your Twitter username and it’s good to go.

So, make it easy on your readers to syndicate your blog posts. Add enough buttons at the top and bottom so they have their familiar choices. One note about Digg…Digg your post first yourself. It is a bit of work creating the first Digg; save your readers that trouble so they can just Digg it! And pop in the TweetMeMe button today and watch your Twitter traffic grow.

Wishing you wild success!

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Filed under: How Tos

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