Entrecard Notes, Update 2

It has already been two weeks since I joined Entrecard and I’m still finding my way around this unique, online traffic trading system. I have Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly score going through my mind at the moment (insanity, here we come) therefore I’ll use these three categories to explain my current observations of Entrecard:

The Good — There are some very helpful people who are involved with Entrecard. There isn’t room for me to name everyone plus some people are still anonymous to me, managing blogs where I cannot find their names. Personally, I prefer disclosure when it comes to blogging, but the consistency of drop exchanges, regularly updated and interesting blogs, and camaraderie on the forums is appreciated.

The Bad — I’ve been trying some of the power dropping methods out there including the bookmarking tagging found on Ty’s blog and have had mixed results with this method. First of all, some of the blogs have been removed, so all you get is an error message. Second of all, some other blogs haven’t been updated in months. Finally, there are a handful of blogs included which are splogs, have adult content, or are just plain bad neighborhoods. Anyway, I’ve modified Ty’s information by removing some blogs while replacing them with a few others.

The Ugly — It is a nice thought to think that fellow bloggers would treat site visitors with respect, but that just isn’t the case. I’ve come across a number of blogs which offer some form of trickery whereby you’ll click on what looks like an Entrecard, but be brought to a separate advertising page. I’ve also found blogs which are poorly written or contain design flaws making them impossible to read. I know it isn’t Entrecard’s job to police their members, but some sites are just plain crappy.

I’m still running Entrecard on five blogs with no plans to add or subtract sites for the short term. The benefits to me have been additional traffic, especially to my newer blogs, plus connecting with some decent people. Long term, I can see me reducing my Entrecard involvement to three blogs with less daily dropping as time goes on.

One Year Later, Still Stumblicious!

Hands down, StumbleUpon is my favorite social network. I am more active with SU more than I am with LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace combined. Did I mention that I really like SU?

Happy Stumbleversary!

Last week, I hit my one year anniversary with SU, but I was too busy going through my notes following my press days at the Detroit Auto Show to mention it. The date isn’t really important, rather my experience with this nifty social media tool is.

Helping Friends Out

Admittedly, I got off to a very slow start with SU as I couldn’t figure out all of the ins and outs of stumbling. SEO mavens like Dosh Dosh have published handy “stumble guides” and a few active stumblers shared their tips to help me gain traction. After six months time I began to write about SU and publish that information to this blog. Eventually, all 200 of my mutual friends get stumbled and then I repeat the process.

This morning, I spent some time stumbling through my SU Friends’ pages, something I like to do from time to time. I figure that if we’re “friends” the least I can do is to visit your site and stumble your pages. I will usually leave a comment behind, whether on your blog or with SU — sometimes both, but rarely so.

No More Proxies

SU spam is on the rise and involves silly comments to users’ SU Inbox and requests to stumble certain types of pages. Recently, I made the decision (finally, I know) that I would no longer stumble proxy pages. I don’t stumble adult, hate and warez pages and I don’t automatically “thumbs up” any page just because someone sent it to me.

Stats Not Important

I’m not part of SU for stat generating, though it isn’t too hard to climb the SU ladder and get labeled as a stumble pro. From time to time I cull through my list of friends and remove inactive people while adding those folks who have friended (I hate that word) me and who are a good fit for what I do.

Yes, after one year of regular use, I can still say that SU remains very stumblicious!