R.A.G.E. Media

If you haven’t found your way over to PickAFig.com, the Catholic Social Bookmarking Site, I highly suggest you take the time to check it out if you are interested in increasing the readership of your blog or website.

Here are a few tips for using the new tool, which also apply for websites like Digg and del.icio.us - although those sites are not Catholic and it can be difficult to get noticed there.

1) Submit your own stories to PickAFig. Also, vote for your own stories if someone else submits them. There’s nothing wrong with self-promoting, since you can only vote once per article anyway. Besides, how can new readers find you if you don’t tell them on a directory like PickAFig that you have content worth reading?

2) Put a PickAFig button on your blog posts. If you put a PickAFig button on your blog template, it will automatically show on each post. It serves as a reminder to your readers to vote for your story and/or submit it, and it shows off your more popular posts at a glance.

3) Don’t pass up the free incoming link. To get better rankings in the search engines, you need to have quality incoming links. That is, links that are relevant to your content from other sites that are similar in content to your own site. PickAFig, being faithfully Catholic and pro-life, can provide those links… but you or your readers have to submit your stories!

4) Vote on other stories, and discuss other posts. Your profile name and link shows when you vote or comment on other stories, and if you comment enough you’ll show up on the “Top Comments” list. Your profile should provide a link back to your site, and will also include links to stories you submitted.

Also, this is free networking with other writers; if someone sees that you voted for their story, they may be curious about what it is you write and submit. Thus, they will be introduced to your content.

5) Get over Writer’s Block. Can’t think of a topic? Browse PickAFig and see what everyone else is talking about. You may have missed a tidbit of news, or get inspired by someone else’s post.

6) Recruit more PickAFig members. The more people that participate on PickAFig, the more people will see your posts on the site. Consider browsing Catholic directories such as catholicblogs.blogspot.com, Saint Blog’s Parish, or stblogs.net and finding posts you like, and submitting them on PickAFig. Then, let the blogger know that you liked their post so much you submitted it on PickAFig.