Have you used Ping.fm to promote your blog posts? Ping.fm is a service that allows you to send a message to multiple social networking sites with one click. This is an efficient way to get any kind of message out to all your online communities that you belong to. However, it is not a replacement for hanging out at those sites and truly being involved with those sites.
One way to use Ping.fm is to send a message to your various social networking sites that you’ve posted a new blog article or web content. This could help drive traffic to your site. In this article I’ll show you a way that will help encourage your readers to promote your web content a bit more virally, if you will.
It All Started At Mashable
Recenly, I was reading some articles on Mashable when I noticed a Ping this! link at the bottom of each article. I thought Wow!! what a great way to get your blog post or web content promoted in a bigger kind of way. For example, if I have a Ping.fm account and I broadcast my messages to 3 or 4 services automatically from Ping.fm, and I click Ping this! on someone’s article, I broadcast that to a bunch of social groups for that blog writer. Possibly sending 3-4 times the traffic per reader who click Ping this!. That’s pretty darn cool.
So here’s how I’ll do that for the end of each post. I’ll use the WordPress single page post for this but you can use it like Mashable does for each post as well by placing it in the Main Index Template (index.php) file.
The Low Down
I’m using WordPress 2.6 for this. In WordPress, navigate to Design -> Theme Editor and select Single Post (single.php). Your single post might be called something else.
At the end of the my single.php file, right before the <p class=”postmetadata”> is where I’d put this link, somewhere around my bookmarking button.
<a href=”http://ping.fm/ref/?link=http://www.thespinningdonut.com/viral-web-publishing-with-pingfm/&title=Viral Web Publishing with Ping.fm&body=Offer Readers to Help Promote Your Web Content” rel=”nofollow”>Ping this!</a>
Try it:
Note: With this example I am not trying to trick you into promoting this article. However, if you find this article informative and worth promoting that would be wonderful.
The following screen is what your readers will see if they have an account on Ping.fm. This allows your readers to immediately promote your blog post.
Click the Ping this! button and your blog post or web content will be posted to all the various social sites you setup in Ping.fm.
Again, if your readers have Ping.fm accounts and have a few services setup to send messages to, they’ll be sending a message to those services about your blog post and that’s what makes this another way to get your blog posts to go viral.
For more options using Ping.fm and coding links for your website or blog, check their Ping this! help page.
A WordPress Plugin
On another note, there is a WordPress plugin called PingPress.fm by Sold Out Activist. This plugin will allow you to automatically send your blog post to all the social services that you’re signed up for through Ping.fm when you publish a blog post.
Didn’t know about ping.fm thanks. Ive been using pingler.com very similar to the one above