Tips & Tricks: The network diagram of a blog

For the bloggers and nerds amongst you...

In this post I explained in laymen's terms what RSS feeds are, and what they can do for you as a reader, and as a blogger.

In a more technical post, I explained some of the technical tools I use to "transform" RSS feeds to different platforms.

As with over 20 blogs and aggregation sites, 40+ bookmarking sites and link collectors, it was time to map it all out -- click on it for a high res view.

The interesting part, is that there are only just a few data entry points (marked with a typewriter icon), where I post blogs, or paste and comment on links. In some of them, it is even optional, as they are also automatically fed or cross posted...

My blogging tip of the week for you: RSS can make your blog more appealing, and your content more relevant for your users. The better you filter the RSS contents and the more selective you are in what RSS feeds to use, the better the output will be (the old "junk in, junk out" principle).

Two warnings:
- do keep track of all the links, and map them out as I did in this diagram, certainly if you start cross posting. It is easy to make a mistake and double post or make a cross posting loop. This will chase your audience away, as it looks sloppy.
- Be aware that any RSS feed (or any widget for that matter) you put on your blog, will make your site load slower. Keep the download speed up as much as possible. Tips on how to do that, you can read in this post.


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