I have to admit, this post is shamefully late. The idea behind the Micro-blogging Olympics was to test out the three major Micro-blogging sites — Twitter, Plurk, and Pownce — to gauge their effectiveness towards site traffic. The experiment was a lot of fun. I met a lot of cool people and found myself enjoying new Twitter apps and the Plurk site more and more each day. I honestly never took to Pownce though. It just seems too void of performance. I actually enjoyed Rejaw better, which is a new MB site that allows 1000 character posts, which may be moving into mini-blogging, not micro.

I can’t say the experiment was a complete success. I don’t think I have the social ability to push out tweets every five minutes or get into debates with random users, like some do. Most of the time I’m too busy working to bother with updating. I used the services to unwind and to catch up with people I’ve come to know online.

All in all, I Plurk much more than I Twitter. I think its because Plurking allows me to converse rather than just speak into a void with the hope of someone echoing back a statement or two. On Plurk I’m almost guaranteed some eyeballs on my thoughts or a funny conversation to look in on.

What Results Did I See?

The immediate results have been tangible. I know I’ve attracted a few new readers to my blog, making friendships along the way. I’ve networked and found someone to help with another project of mine. I’ve received a few link backs from various people who found me through Plurk. On the scale that I used the service, it helped me branch out and find new people to read my blog, comment and to network with me both on the Micro-blogging site and in my other networks.

The statistics show a much blander result. Throughout August I had 17 visits from Plurk. Of those 17, 58% were new visitors. They stayed on average 2:37, which is well above my site average. Unfortunately Twitter sent me 10 new visitors and they didn’t stick around long. (Just noticed Squidoo sent me a decent amount of traffic, but not sure for what.)

Proportionate Results

You really do get what you put into these networks. I know I’ve made a few new connections, laughed a lot, and learned a lot too. Micro-blogging sites may cater to a specific personality, but everyone can enjoy at least some aspect of one of these sites — you just have to find the right one for your tastes. I gravitated towards Plurk, but maybe your message can get out there better through Twitter.

This weekly wrap-up post asks one crucial question for all you micro-bloggers — Is there a wrong way to use Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, and all the others? Can you actually alienate yourself from the masses? I have no hard and fast evidence. I know on Twitter there’s a collective of individuals I’m following who “would appreciate you going easy on the spam”. But there are others who quite frequently post links to their own blogs with the intro “Some spam:”.

Micro-blogging works great to network, find answers, build an online brand, and to keep in touch with many people at once. It doesn’t seem to work well when you don’t take the time to introduce yourself to those who follow you, or at least try to interact.

I must admit, I’m often times overwhelmed by Twitter. I’m following many of the top bloggers in the industry, from Mashable to Robert Scoble. These guys are all famous in their own right and quite successful. At times, I feel like what I have to contribute would be inane, so I shut up. Other times I try too hard.  I am who I am though, and my followers understand that. It’s not like they want to me to have all the answers, to be constantly funny, or anything. Most of them don’t even know me. Why not just be myself?

So the wrong way to use Twitter and other Micro-blogging services seems to be when we try to hard and overwhelm our followers. If I just be myself and try to interact with individuals, then 99% of the time I’ll experience a positive result. If I stay in the shadows and let the tweets fly by, then I’m only going to be a small pixelated square on someone’s friends list.

How Not To Start Micro-blogging

There is one other way to start out wrong. It’s poor form to simply start following a thousand people. I’ve seen at least two Twitter users add me this weekend who have less than ten followers, but they’re following over 500 people. That’s crazy! Stop it!

Twitter does have a follow limit of 2,000. Can you imagine 2,000 people in a room? I wouldn’t want to be holding a mic telling those 2,000 people about a great offer on dog food. Stay away from spam. Be yourself.

Other’s Explosions

This week I’ve read a lot of great articles on the web. It’s hard to keep track of everything, but I did want to push some link love to a few of my favorites.

Jamie at Blog2Life.net introduced a stat tracking service called Crazy Egg. The stats track clicks on your site and can show you how traffic responds to certain areas of your blog. I’m going to give the service a try to see where you’re all clicking. I’m watching!

It’s Write Now discussed how to create your own Wordpress template, which can be highly valuable to many bloggers out there. A good series with clear instructions.

Write to Done wrote a post entitled Why You Must Blow Your Trumpet. A great article on how we need to take credit and push our own limits of ourselves.

That’s all for this week. I’ll be writing new Micro-blogging Olympics over the next few days. Stay tuned as I go for gold!

Micro-blogging has its perks. You can meet cool people and chat all day long. The downside — you rarely get much done except for talking and reading different blogs. Well at least that’s how Sunday went. I interacted on both Twitter and Plurk most of the day, adding in a failed EC forum postings. All in all it was a good day. Then on Monday, I went to the office and got overwhelmed with Twitter. The deluge of messages really came when Gmail went kerplunk.

Back on Plurk, things were a little smoother. Plurk does have the Karma feature afterall.

Recently, everyone reached Plurk Nirvana. I had it with less than 20 Karma. It appears you should only receive it with over 80. No big deal. It’s not like it adds a whole lot to the experience. It’s just a number, right?

It has been fixed though, so no more free Nirvana spirituals.

The Karma Number

It is just a number. But the number ties into your profile and your specific activity so it can be a good indicator of your popularity to someone you don’t know. It’s tough to add random people, because you don’t really want to add just anybody. What if they have a terrible attitude? You need some degree of separation from them. Choose a friend whose judgment you trust and check out their friends.

When you’re new to a service like Plurk, it’s good to judge by numbers. On Twitter you would look at the followers compared to the number of those they’re following. On Plurk, you might also look at this, but you would check out the Karma points too. Those with Karma points above sixty definitely participate. It’s good to be in a community of those who participate because it reinforces our desire to be there. Without those individuals responding to our plurks, we’re simply talking down a long empty hallway.

Mama Always Said Be Picky When You’re Choosing Friends

I joined Plurk from an invite. I then decided to visit that friend’s friends. Ultimately I searched for a few people I knew would be using the site, added them, and then sat back to plurk. Others have added me since. As I’ve grown to use the service more frequently, I’ve found I make genuine connections with people. I could have gone through and added person after person, but people might have denied me and that would have hurt my Karma. It makes sense to add those you know then branch out slowly from there.

I looked through the interesting plurkers earlier and found one of the top plurkers to be TechCrunch’s Arrington. He had over 92 Karma. If I had his cred, I could just let the gravity of my presence feed my karma. Unfortunately I have to work hard at it, like most everyone else.

What’s the Point of All This Again?

The point is to bring in traffic and analyse how well each service helps with that. I suppose there’s lots of intangibles too. Do you have a personality people are drawn towards? Can you stay active enough to make an impression? So far with micro-blogging the newbie seems to go after well known bloggers or industry professionals first, then heads to the lesser known folks like myself. I’m trying to just get out there, get noticed, and help you all out in the process.

1. Follow me on Twitter
2. Join me on Plurk
3. Pownce on me

The Olympics have commenced. I’ve dug into my micro-blogging sites of choice and begun the games. Here’s one response to my previous post.

“I have just started with twitter but honestly I don’t believe that it will add that much readership but one has to keep trying to promote a blog if your going to go through the effort of writing it in the first place.” — Renee from Womanist Musings

I can understand the sentiment. I felt the same way myself. I began using Twitter about two months after my blog began. I mostly added friends and read tweets. The experience didn’t do a whole lot for my blog. It helped me get to know other bloggers on a more personal level, but overall had no effect on my traffic. Now the Micro-blogging Olympics are testing a few of my theories about these types of services.

1. If we’re active on them, we gain followers who will periodically read our blog.
2. We gain a network of like-minded people who help us better our blog, essentially propelling our blog towards larger readerships.
3. We keep the momentum going, as constant contact with other like-minded bloggers will keep the passion alive.

I’m Only Selling Myself

I did some basic maintenance on all three of my profiles. I added links back to my blog, uploaded photos, and on Twitter, followed those who had added me since my last pass through (about 40 more individuals). I then began digging into Plurk and Twitter. My account on Twitter has a much better chance of sending me traffic. I’ve had it for a lot longer and have close to 150 people following me. The Plurk experience was a little more fun though.

Plurk has the casualness I crave. The friends I’ve added seem to talk quite a bit more than Twitter ones. Unless, you’re following Scobleizer, Guy Kawasaki, or other power users for that matter. A lot of Twitter power users seem to use the service to convey links/information to their followers. They don’t use it necessarily for their own sites, but they do push a lot of content. I’m fairly certain this is just an off-shoot of them being highly active on social networks and on the internet in general. They probably receive crazy amounts of email everyday, giving them tips on a site here or there.

Plurk has feature after feature. When you first create an account there, you might notice the Karma score. Everyone has a Karma score. It’s the first bit of obsession. How can I up my Karma score? I uploaded a photo, which gave me a whopping 7.5 karma. BAM! How’s that for instant gratification?

You can gain karma points by being active, not getting having friend requests rejected, and having people respond to your plurks. This is the biggest thing about Plurk, so far — having people respond to your message. It creates a fun and interesting way to have a conversation. Instead of all the @s to individuals, you can have a group of people commenting and joining in on the fun. I imagine as I gain friends that will definitely go up.

Still on the Starting Blocks

Pownce has the feel of an IM on the web. I haven’t dug into the service much yet, but at first blush it seems difficult to find people. Who has Pownce? Do you use it? I did update my profile on there a bit today, but haven’t looked around much. I need to put some time into it if I really expect to give it a chance. What do yow think? Wowld yow wse pownce over the other services?

1. Follow me on Twitter
2. Join me Plurk
3. Pownce on me