Mybloglog community positioning tactics
Despite the Mybloglog Boycott I still love the idea and the widgets created by mybloglog. Its a great way for bloggers to get to know each other and to promote and FIND new and interesting blogs. Being an active member at mybloglog can help drive traffic to your site over and over again. Similarly, if you view many blogs a day like I do that also happen to have the mybloglog widget on them you are opening yourself to more exposure.
Here are some tips and tricks I have used and seen people using to gain traction and community positioning on mybloglog.com:
The Hot Babe Avatar:
Sex is not a tactic just used on TV, Books, Magazines, Movies and Radio. The Internet uses it TOO! So why would you put a sexy photo up on your avatar. The basic idea is to attract the clicks and traffic to your mybloglog account. Once you have the visitor then we open them to the possibility of joining your community, leaving a comment, leaving a message or even visiting your site.
The Branding Avatar:
One of the most effective ways to market yourself, your blog or a product is through brand recognition. Something I have done and seen done is adding your branding onto your mybloglog.com avatar. This has the same effects as the hot babe avatar but can be less effective if your brands reputation does not supersede yourself.
Offer Free Stuff:
Try giving away something free like an IPOD or FREE HOSTING for a year or a free t-shirt for people who JOIN your community. This can help entice people to actually join your community after visiting your community page.
Message Blast (not spam):
Lets say you have a blog about music. Do a search on mybloglog for sites about music. Check out their community pages, Check out their sites and leave a nice comment. Be interactive and DO NOT spam. NO ONE likes that. The idea here is to basically be active in your community and use the tools set forth by mybloglog to do this.
Visit Blogs:
This is a tactic I feel many marketers DO NOT USE. So hearing this will give you an advantage. If you have a site that is related to cooking. Find as many blogs as you can that have to do with cooking or a field roughly related to yours and add them to a bookmark folder in your browser. Get as big of a list as you can for this and make sure these sites utilize the mybloglog widget that shows your avatar when you visit it. Now, daily you will want to open all tabs in your bookmark folder for these sites. What this will do is place your avatar/branding across all of your competitors/authority sites putting your community page in front of thousands of people. Use this with caution 
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Invite:
Do you have a ton of friends? Do you have a large email list? Do you know people interested in or willing to join your community? Utilize the invite function on mybloglog here. It only lets you do 5 at a time BUT if you are a large corporation I am sure you can task someone out on this. The possibilities are endless with this really.
Respond to Messages:
When you get a message from a user, try to respond quickly and politely. This is a chance to let users know that this site is ran by an individual and not automated or unattended and gives a sense of community to your space. This will help with unique visitors, viral marketing and return visitors.
Spaming mybloglog stinks but here is what I have seen.
Co-Author Spam:
In my opinion I believe people have probably built a shell app around mybloglog to do this quickly (against tos) but what this does is basically send requests to a mass amount of users on mybloglog asking them to CO-author a blog community. This is like asking someone to become a community member but as a co-author instead. In some cases I have heard of these people sending emails to eric and asking them to change their co-authors to members and play innocent like it was an accident they have 200 co-authors in order to have them change the co-authors to members. LOL riiight.
Message Spam:
Message spam is the same message over and over and over again on many peoples community sites. Usually this message says something like “woe your blog rocks make sure you buy my product, check out my site and become a member”. I hate this.
Shoemoney has put together some great posts on mybloglog exploits that have been done but just to let everyone know these post basically set himself up for getting banned on mybloglog and then re-included after the mybloglog boycott. I wanted to include these into this post just to give a quality overview on all mybloglog marketing tactics although some are best practice, some are spam and some are exploits.
MyBlogLog Showing Communities I did not Join
How are people getting free targeted keyword links on MyBlogLog
How to surf as someone else
One thing you could do is friend other MyBlogLog users that you like. It is a great way to increase your popularity.