My 8 Hours As A Blogging Socialite
36
Comments
Recently I spent 8 hours as a blogging socialite. I found out some awesome things and was shocked at the positive results!
How I Became A Blogging Socialite From The Beginning
When I started blogging 3 short months ago I already had some websites that generated income. The only reason that I wanted to switch to blogging was because it made it so much easier to organize content! I wouldn’t have to design each and every page and I would be able to dedicate more time to writing content.
One thing I didn’t anticipate when I started blogging was how social it is. Bloggers love to be friends with other bloggers! I am still amazed by how friendly bloggers are; people genuinely care about you in this cyber-social world!
A few weeks ago I was reading Wendy’s Monday Motivation and felt compelled to make a goal to meet 50 new bloggers. My motivation to meet them was based on three factors:
- Curiosity – I wanted to know what’s out there and was hoping to find some new, helpful blogs to read.
- Social Interaction – Meeting cool people is fun for me and I was hoping that I could meet a few bloggers that I liked.
- Ambition – I obviously wanted to get some extra visitors to my site and was hoping that this experiment would bring some.
A funny thing usually happens to me when I decide to do things like this. If I’m going to experiment, I love to take the experiment to the extreme. I decided that instead of meeting 50 new bloggers, I would meet new bloggers for an entire, 8-hour day.
I decided to spend the entire work day finding new blogs and introducing myself to the prospective bloggers through comments. I figured that in order to best analyze the results I would need to make the experiment bigger than 50 people. I had no idea how many I could find in a day so I didn’t know how big the experiment would end up.
Preparing For My Day As A Blogging Socialite
The day before I started this little social experiment I had to organize a few things. I first wrote my post for the next day – I didn’t want my readers to miss a day of learning just because I was going to spend my day as a socialite. I also told my friends that I would be turning my phone off. I completely blocked off 8 hours of my day.
How I Approached The Day
I decided that I would completely focus on the new sites that I found as part of the experiment. I never once tried to draw attention to my own site, although I did leave my URL each time I left a comment. Since I felt that I would be more likely to click with bloggers whose blogs are similar to mine, I decided to use Technorati to find them. I went to Technorati and set the search bar to “in tags” and did a search for “blogging tips”:
I didn’t discriminate between the results at all. I visited each site that appeared on the list hoping that I could find something that inspired me to comment. If nothing inspired me to comment I simply moved on to the next site.
Each time I was inspired to comment, I did. I sincerely thanked each blogger who was able to teach me something new. I asked many of them questions and praised their good work. Interestingly, I didn’t really expect to learn much about blogging from the experiment, but found tons of information I didn’t know before. I had to email 6 different bloggers to find out how they were able to do certain things with their blogs. Amazingly, each of the 6 answered the emails.
During my 8 hours as a blogging socialite I visited nearly 300 blogs that were somewhat related to mine. I immediately closed the ones that were splogs (spam-blogs that steal content from others) and read at least one article on the rest. I left a genuine comment that added to the discussion on almost 150 blogs.
Positives From Being A Blogging Socialite
- I met some outstanding people. I can’t believe how friendly everyone was! I asked questions to multiple bloggers and was amazed by the number of them that emailed answers to me.
- My daily traffic grew to over 100 unique visitors higher than its per-day average. During the 24 hour period following the experiment, I got nearly 300 visitors more than my all-time high. Much of the additional traffic obviously turned into daily readers. At first it didn’t really make sense that the traffic spiked that much; I only commented on 150 blogs. After thinking it over I realized that I received visits from the bloggers and their readers.
- At least 22 of the 150 blogs I commented on linked to articles on my site. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there were more that I haven’t been able to find in Technorati. So far it has been exactly a week since I became a blogging socialite, so I would imagine that I’ll get even more links as some bloggers probably haven’t gotten around to reading through my site yet.
- I was added to 4 Blogrolls. Again, there could be more that I haven’t found.
- I got some great ideas for my site. I was able to find a very powerful plugin because I saw it in action on one of the sites I visited. Teaching my readers about the plugin sparked a great debate and the article was linked to by several of my readers.
Becoming Permanently Social
This experiment taught me that being social is one of the best things that you can do to promote your blog. For obvious reasons I can’t spend eight hours a day as a blogging socialite, but I can definitely spend one. You don’t need to spend eight hours to get positive results. Spend a little time each day!
From now on, I will always be a blogging socialite! I would highly recommend doing the same.
This guest post was written by Court Tuttle, who blogs about making money online, SEO and internet marketing at CourtneyTuttle.com.
Get Your FREE 21-Page Internet Business Idea Guide
Enter your name and email below and we’ll send you our unique 21-page guide chock full of Internet business ideas – for free! Your information will be kept private, of course.
Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Easton Ellsworth is owner of 
Great article. A little note first, you show court as the guest writer, and your heading says you wrote it. Of your goal to meet 50 bloggers.I was wondering why just bloggers. I am a web master. You don’t like us? I’m sitting by my computer waiting for your email. Ha Ha! Of your goal to get extra visitors to your site, if you can figure out some kind of win/win for both me and you I am here to help! Again, fantastic article! Keep up the good work.
Court, I really enjoyed your post! (Thanks, Wendy — you always have great guests!)
I have tried to do some Blog Socialiting, for all those wonderful reasons you mention. I have never been as organized as you are, though — what an inspiration!
I’ve got to run over and check out your blog–
Sherri – your comment just made my day! Why? Because this is exactly what I hope to happen with this guest authors – to create a place for them to get in front of new readers and get the audience they deserve!
Thanks for sharing that!
Hi Court,
I think I’ve visited your site before (had a quick look and it pulled a few brain cells from somewhere) but through it I wouldn’t have known how friendly you seem through this guest post.
Wendy,
I’m with Sherri, nice guest – again!
Court – really good post. This is something we all do to some extent, but it’s difficult to quantify the results, so your “experiment” is really valuable. I’ve appreciated all your input on my site.
I try to do that but sometimes its hard people take it for granted, or don’t comment back. I think a lot of people who get comments are lazy and never return them even if i’m late i do make it a point to return all comments the best that i can.
Court, very nice article. One of my goals for this month was to be a little more social myself as I wanted to make a minimum of 10 new StumbleUpon contacts, 10 new Technorati favorites and 10 new MyBlogLog contacts and communities.
I haven’t been quite as organized as you are but your experiment will give me another idea to try for my own blogs.
To other blog owners, I highly recommend the subscribe/notify plugins for people that leave comments. It is far too easy to forget all of the sites where you have commented and these plugins help people like me to keep coming back to your site. I wrote a post about why I liked the subscribe to comments plugin (linked above) and highly recommend it.
Thanks everyone for your kind words! I have to admit that the results were a lot more positive than I anticipated. I kind of just did it as an experiment, but it worked so well and people were so friendly I decided to be a real, blogging socialite.
I’m just grateful to Wendy for letting me guest post, more people will get to read it this way!
Court – I can and do reject guest posts sometimes (though it pains me to do so!!).
The reason I asked you to write this is because you were already doing the right things. So it was BECAUSE you were being so social that I wanted to give you the opportunity to post here!
I was also glad you got outside of your own comfort zone and clicked ’send’! I, too, have been scared to send emails to people in the past (and I’m sure I will again some day), so I just think it’s so cool that you did all that you did!
Court,
This is so inspiring. Thanks for sharing not only your idea, but also your results. I’ve not done this too much, but I think it was mostly because I hadn’t come up with an organized way to do it. You’ve really helped!
Lorna, I’m so glad to hear that! It really worked out well for me, and I hope that everyone somehow becomes more social because of it. It would be a good thing for all of us, and it would be a lot more fun.
Hey Wildwood, the reason my name appears in the header is because WordPress automatically inserts it there according to the person who publishes the post.
If any of the guest authors became a regular contributor, I would be able to create a separate account for them. But since usually the authors submit one post, I wouldn’t want to give “back-stage access” to everyone!
Great and inspiring article! Thank you Court.
I am still learning a lot about the blogsphere. Actually I learn something new everytime I discover a new site or Stumble around.
I am really looking forward to reading your next guest post.
The social aspect can carry you away. I quickly realized that I must give structure to my social wanderings or I’ll not get anything else on my lsit completed.
Sue – It’s totally true – I have to be very careful about it, because I could write, surf and comment all day! Wish that was the only thing I needed to do to make money online!
Wow. A simple concept but hard to make yourself do it. Like face-to-face networking, which was an acquired taste for me, as an introvert. Your approach reminds me of the way my grandma served in her church congregation as a greeter and welcomer to all who were new.
Whenever I have to “get out there” I try to put on my grandma’s persona and just start smiling and shaking hands. I think your concept is just that, though all the handshaking is done in the blogosphere.
Thanks for a good read.
Being a blogging socialite is definitely the way to go to find new blogs and get connected with other bloggers. It’s easier said than done though I think, or maybe it’s just me.
Nice post Court! Very informative as usual.
For those of you who don’t know, Court is also giving away his May’s paycheck! His site is worth a look.
Don
Nice article… So were you the Paris Hilton of the Blogosphere ??????????
Court, I love that you pointed out that you only made comments when you were sincerely lead to do so; it shows your genuineness.
I can relate to what you did through my one week of throwing myself into the Problogger group writing project and reading & commenting on many of the 893 submissions. I certainly didn’t get through all, but I did get to probably 1/4 of them (I didn’t keep a tally).
Thanks for sharing this, it’s a very good way to not only learn more yourself, but also have fun reading new blogs, and bringing more exposure to your own.
Great article Courtney. I definitely need to get more social. I have been visiting more blogs lately and getting onvolved but I need to focus more on my areas of the “blogosphere”. Thanks again.
Dennis – I’m still learning a lot too! I definitely think that I will always keep learning, there are endless ways to improve.
Sue – I agree 100%. No matter how good anyone is at marketing, it won’t be very effective if the site doesn’t rock! I spend most of my time trying to come up with ways to make my site better.
Katie – I’m with you on that one, I am a born, natural introvert that has a hard time meeting new people. Once I realized how friendly people were it became a lot easier. It’s also a lot easier online than it is face to face.
Jen – It definitely is a great way to get connected. I used to think it was hard, but now I think it’s easy!
Don – Thanks much! I AM giving away my check, at least it looks like I will unless I get really lucky. That will be fun, and who knows, you might win it!
Alexander – I was Paris for sure, except I didn’t end up in trouble over anything I did.
Jolynn – I can’t believe I didn’t participate in that one! That would have been a really fun experiment and I bet I could have learned a ton from it. I think I’ll read many of them but I didn’t participate, dang it!
Dave – It would be a great thing if you focused on your area. It’s just a lot easier to click with people that have similar interests.
Wendy – Thanks again! This was really fun for me – we’ll have to do it again sometime!
I have definately learned alot by reading others blogs, and I enjoy commenting. I never realized the benefit early one, but I figured that out fast! LOL!
It can be a fun way of helping your own blog get some traffic, and find new friends on top of it!
Interesting experiment! I don’t know if I could do it for 8 hours straight tho! My kids would interrupt to often! LOL!
Hey Court! Congrats on this successful article. Very cool! Great job!
Socializing is part of the “work” of blogging, but isn’t it fun! It gives us all an opportunity to support each other and learn from each other.
And I’m always learning from you!
Dang your DIGG count is looking good. More proof that being friendly and social on the internet helps you in more ways then one.
Excellent post Court, I really must give it a go myself.
I just wanted to congratulate you on a fantastic initiative and also for helping to keep the blogosphere as rich as possible. I certainly plan on following your lead.
Thanks for the inspiration!!
Andy
Never know I can be a blogging socialite! Sometimes I wonder if blog walking is useful but this article shed some light on me. I’m going to make it a point to be a blogging socialite everyday – a few blogs a day, if possible. Great post.
What a great idea! Maybe this is something you do every month or so. I could recommend this as starting point for businesses who are just starting out.
“Stage one – Find some friends!”
Jamie