Do you use Technorati?

I've been seriously surfing blogs for the past couple of months and am incredibly impressed to see that so many artists, crafty people, SAHMs and WAHMs are online. Many, if not half of the blogs I read and creative businesses I visit (such as Etsy) are new this year. Reading various forums, I have started to notice a particular topic over and over:

How do I promote my blog and/or store?

The next several blot posts here will touch on some of the most commonly seen tools and techniques for blog and store promotion. Hopefully you'll find something new to help you out. Comments are encouraged - I'd love to hear how these tips have increased your traffic. Please comment with any other ideas, too.

Today's tip: Use Technorati.

What is it? Technorati is the mother of all blog tracking websites. It tracks who's saying what, who's blogging about whom, which blogs are linked to other blogs...

How do you use it? Go to www.technorati.com
Once you sign up, add your blog or blogs.
After you add your blog(s), you can click on "Blogger Central" on the right and get a little widget to put on your blog, like this:

Why do I need it?
1. Technorati tells you who is linking to you
2. Technorati ranks your blog according to how many other blogs link to you - the more blogs link to you, the higher your "authority."

View blog authority

3. Technorati tells you who is blogging about you

View blog reactions

4. You can search and chart any word(s) you like, and can search for blog posts using this word/words. Here is the graph for a search on Bayfield, a beautiful little town in northern Wisconsin.

Posts that contain Bayfield per day for the last 180 days.

Get your own chart!

Who is using it?
Well frankly, a LOT of bloggers. You'll find the Technorati widget on these fine blogs.
Flora at Bone Head Studios
Waterrose at Waterrose Handcrafted Obsessions
Stacie at You Go Girl! Soaps (and check out her Technorati link to see how it looks)
Tanya of At The Honeysuckle Tree
Spincus of Considerations - The Art In Marketing

To sum it up:
Because Technorati finds blog feeds on its own, your blog may be listed without you even knowing it. Once you go there, and sign up/sign in, you can search for your blog and "claim it" as yours. You can also favorite other blogs. To boost the ratings of the blogs I read regularly, I have favorited all the blogs on my sidebar. The mention and link to the blogs in the paragraph above has increased the "authority" of each of them by one point. If I publish the links in the above paragraph a second time, their authority rank will increase by another point again. Authority is Technorati gold, so as you plan your blog posts, talk about other blogs and link to them to help their ratings.

For more information, you can check out Spincus's forum post at Considerations - The Art in Marketing.

Do you use Technorati? Please share how it has helped you!
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