Cross Pollination Blogging
October 9th, 2008
I found this really awesome the other day called Mission Impossible Infertile run by a very entertaining woman who goes by the username Geohde- a recommended read for those with a good sense of humor who aren’t easily offended and know how to enjoy the company of another very down to earth person. On her blog I found this great idea of hers called ‘Cross Pollination’. The idea, from my understanding, is to help bloggers from around the blogosphere meet one another and get their blogs out there into the world.
I’d like to share it with you.
To quote Geohde:
"I am aware that clicking though blogrolls would achieve the same end, but the way I propose would be more fun.
The executive summary?
Essentially, the net effect for those who participate would be that on a nominated date (Friday the 9th of November), instead of your own usual post, you swap posts with another blogger.
This would all be clearly signposted in the title that the post is ‘guest’ , of course, and with a hyperlink to your own post, existing as a ‘guest’ post on the swapped-blog site.
The goal is cross-pollination of bloggity goodness.
Visitors to your site get to visit another (hopefully fresh and new) blog without even the bother of all that clicking their mouse, let alone typing a URL. Nifty, huh?"
:) I agree, nifty. I am definitely doing it and I’d love it if some of you readers out there would consider joining me. I think this is a really great idea for those who are new to blogging and looking for a way to get noticed (ie. more comments).
As I am terrible at summing things up on my own I recommend going and reading the original post on her blog – Mission Impossible Infertile.
In the mean time, to give you a better idea here’s the directions she gives as quoted from her blog:
- "Firstly, those who’d like to join in post a comment to this post (Spirit says: follow the link, don’t post this on my blog!) with their name, blog URL and email address. Also add if your blog is avec or sans Rugrats (children/pregnancy) so I can match up kid-kid and non-kid-non-kid blogs. I don’t want to offend any sensibilities.
- Secondly, I will compile the list of participants and email you (in about a week or so) with the name, email address and url of your matched blog cross-pollinator. This gives you a couple of weeks to dream up that awesome post you’ve always wanted to get out of your system.
- You then both compose your post for the date (Friday the 9th of November) and email each other the post text, or, ideally the code for the post text also ideally in the week before the Big Day, so everyone has their post on time to publish it.
(((You can access the code for your post in most blog programs by clicking on the ‘view html’ or ‘code’ tab (to give Blogger and WordPress examples, respectively). Copy that and email it if you can.
I’ve tested emailing code between Blogger and WordPress and it seems to work. If finding the code is too tricky for you, simply compose your post in your usual blog program and copy it into your email and send it. That should also work okay, if my experiments are to be trusted.)))
Just please, please, please don’t use MS word to type your post as it seems to create an ungodly amount of irrelevant tags that will have your cross-poster cursing your name if one breaks.
On the Cross pollination date (Friday the 9th of November, if you’re not keeping track), post the swapped post you received via email with the following additions:
The title ‘A guest blog entry, bought to you by the Great Blog Cross-Pollination’.
A request at the bottom of the post to guess the identity of the cross-pollinated blogger in the comments field and a link to their blog URL (obviously entitled ‘click here’ or some such rather than just listing the url. THAT would make it rather too easy to guess) to find your post for the day. That way your regular readers can find you, even if it’s not your usual location.
That’s it. I hope I just made sense.
Voila, Blog cross pollination.
If you’re feeling all snazzy, also feel free to lift/upload the file for the bumblebee-flower logo above to stick on your site and link this post to it. Not sure how to insert/link a sidebar icon? Just tell me in your comment below and I’ll email you platform-specific help."
:) I really hope some of your out there will check this out. No idea what I’m going to post but ‘wing it’ is my summary for life so I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble.
