Are you on MyBlogLog? As You may have noticed .. So am I !

HART aka PetLvr
aka HART (1-800-HART)
on MyBlogLog!

This is not a tutorial for MyBlogLog or how to use MyBlogLog or the social benefits of using MyBlogLog .. it is just a detailed summary of how I personally use the service. Feel free to click the above link below my caricature and be transported to my profile in MyBlogLog.

MyBlogLog – My Profile

When you first see my profile, it says that I’ve been a member since November 10, 2006 .. but that’s not true. I’ve been a member since July 28, 2005 .. when I first heard about it on the Problogger site. On July 31, 2005 my “pro” trial was downgraded to the “basic” version .. and although I still maintained all of the required code in my headers of my main two blogs, PetLvr and 1800HART .. I pretty much forgot all about it. It was on November 10, 2006 that I received an email from “Eric Marcoullier, one of MyBlogLog’s founders” to personally thank me for joining the site. I blogged about it in this blog, as the November 11, 2006 Quickie and even noticed I already had 22 communities!

But .. now what?

So – what I have been doing is adding sites that I own and author, but excluding the “shopping type” of sites of mine .. like HART’s Picks, the Medieval Site .. etc etc. because at that time .. I didn’t really know if that was ‘socially acceptable’. At this very moment, I have 16 sites listed out of the 42 blogs/32 domains in my sidebar .. including 1-800-HART on MySpace!

MyBlogLog – My Sidebar

For authors of MyBlogLog .. you can edit your site and put up a picture. Most of the times .. it recognizes your site and pulls in a screenshot – but, I’ve had to upload screenshots on 6 of the blogs for some reason – all of them from the Battling Series. There must be something wrong with the template. When I create or rather .. ADD my site to my author profile, I am required to place code in my template .. just after the BODY tag, often in the header.php file. What this is for – is when someone actually is in MyBlogLog profile and clicks on any of the 16 sites .. at the bottom right side are the top 5 links that people click on .. in my blog). Also to the right side in my profile for each blog .. is the Widget of the top 5 recent readers that have actually visited my blog – in person (not via RSS). I modified it to have 10 people included, and some silly heading usually .. and placed the code in my sidebars.

So .. on my sites .. I can see you – if you have your own MyBlogLog profile – which, by the way – you don’t need to have a website you know .. you can create yourself and upload your image and also enjoy the MyBlogLog experience.

What I do everytime I view my own sites .. are to right click on the names of every viewer and open it into a new window. I do this, and afterwards press refresh to see if there are any new faces .. Unfortunately, I’m not that popular 🙁 and sometimes I see the same faces for a few days at a time. But that’s okay!

What I do with Every Reader That I see On My Blogs

Now .. don’t get creeped out by this – but, what I do after I right click and open your “face” into another tabbed window .. is to look at all of your sites and join each community setup for each of your blogs. While I am doing this, I will click on your link and visit your blog .. for two reasons. Firstly, to get my face in your sidebar and hopefully bring new traffic to my own profile and blogs .. and secondly to look around .. see what your blog is about .. and see if I should be adding it to my BlogLines .. and you know what? I hardly ever remove feeds from my Bloglines!

Why am I doing this? Here’s my reason: To see if you are a new reader or not. I can look at all the stats and all the refers scripts that I have .. but when I right click your face into a new window and see your own MyBlogLog profile .. it will either say “Join Community” or “Leave Community”. It is this way that I know if you’ve been to my site before.

By the way .. the above thing, with the right clickie thing from my own blogs .. is usually when I’m out blogging and in the sites for a reason. Most of the time I first check out the new readers directly from my profile, by clicking on each authored blog and see if there are any new faces. If there are, I might go to the actual website itself to see the full 10 people instead of the last 5. It’s much faster to click and go back etc.

What I do when I go to my own MyBlogLog profile?

As I mentioned earlier .. I join communities. But some other people add contacts instead. I don’t really do that .. but, I will accept any request to be a contact and add that person back. When someone does this – I get a notice via email .. so it’s easy. From now on, I should say that I will also join your communities and check over your site.

But what I’ve been noticing is that .. for some of the people who’s communities that I’ve joined .. they have come back and added me as a contact as well, or instead of joinin my communities or both. When this happens, I do NOT get an email. Instead, I see this in MyBlogLog profile .. in between the Family, Friends and Contacts section and My Profile section. I don’t have any at the moment of writing, but it says something like “admirers” or something. These people have added me as a contact and I feel it’s perfectly okay to add them back as a contact and join their communities – if I haven’t done so already.

MyBlogLog – Other People

This is one of the features that I like best, when I’ve got a little time and surf. Sometimes it is sidebars of people, and other times its in these sections of MyBlogLog profile … and these 3 sections are invaluable for me. The first section, shows me people who have viewed my profile. I’m not sure if they actually have been to any of my sites .. but these people are the ones that must have seen that I do have a bunch of sites, and potential readers. So I join their communities 🙂

The second section has two great links .. one to View All Of My Communities (at time of writing, I’ve joined 190 communities) .. and New Neighbors from My Communities. The new neighbors are people who may or may not know of me, but have joined a community that I have joined. If they looked .. they might have seen my caricature in that other community. I’ve only begun to start surfing the “View All Neighbors” link just recently, in the last 2 weeks. Out of curiousity, I seem to be glued to unusual faces .. like beautiful women with nicknames like Mark, Alvin, Alex etc .. (obviously they are just trying to promote their blog and get people to look at them) .. or of faces that I normally see practically in the sidebars of regulars that I myself go to as a reader. Sometimes I might just work in an “x” across the page, or ones with non-faces. The key goal is that I will visit their website or blog as well – and hope that they too have a widget in their sidebar, see my face .. and come see my sites as well. As well as I am hoping to find new and interesting sites for my bloglines.

On the weekends, I have been going back to the communities that I have joined and just looking around at the faces and reading comments. If I was on the ball and had more time, I would be surfing every face in the same communities that I have.

MyBlogLog – Comments

Uugggh .. can you say .. awkward? If people come to my profile And leave me a message, it stays on my profile page. If I reply to the poster .. my comment goes to their profile. If I was an unrelated reader .. some of these comments and conversations seems senseless, because they are. One side of the conversation is on my blog, and the other half is on the other person’s blog. If someone leaves me a message on my profile, and instead of replying back to the reader .. I could just leave myself a comment and the conversation would “look” better. But, the original commentor will not get a notice that I responded and I’m more afraid how that would look.

So .. as a general guide .. that I myself am following (and hope others catch on too) .. let’s keep the conversations off the profile, and into the communities!

Finally, we get to the third section .. for Family, Friends, and Contacts. These are not just the random readers (which could be search engine related) .. these are people that I know and know me .. that have actually asked me to be their contact in MyBlogLog. I try to make it a point to not just browse their blogs or communities .. but really take a closer look at some of the posts and perhaps even join in the conversation.

MyBlogLog – A Few Things You Might Not Have known

In MyBlogLog profile, beneath my caricature face, you can click links to see view PICS. Here, I can manually upload pictures that I want people to see and is public viewing. I’ve added 2 pictures .. one of all my pets in one pictures on the bed .. it’s like they all have radioactive eyes .. and another is the caricature I used to create medieval flags as a giveaway at our Medieval Wedding on August 31, 2002

I never really uploaded a lot of Flickr pics myself, as I mostly upload them on my blogs themselves. However, I enabled MyBlogLog to access my Flickr account and show everybody any recent pictures that I might have taken. Feel free to “blog this” (if you do that sort of thing). There’s not many anyways. Some people who don’t have blogs might appreciate this more!

In the same section that MyBlogLog users can upload pictures, people can edit their profile. At the bottom, there is an “Automatic Joining” of communities after so-many visits. For myself, I left the default at 10 visits (the shortest) .. but this can be up to 100 visits I believe. I suppose that’s how I got the 22 communities first mentioned back on November 10, 2006 from my “Contact” Eric.

MyBlogLog – Closing Thoughts

I hope – that when people see my caricature .. or the word PetLvr .. or my name as HART (1-800-HART) .. they think of me, and all have the same opinion. I am who I am .. I hope it’s in a favorable light.