As many of you know, Cheryl used to work at Starbucks. Last year, she was a barista for a few months between jobs. And let me tell you, those were magical days. Full of discounted coffee roasts, $1 toffee almond bars, and a vast array of Starbucks coffee drinking vessels. She’d constantly try to teach me about the different kinds of coffee, and why certain coffees pair with certain deserts, but I would never listen.
It wasn’t until I read this book, How Starbucks Changed My Life, that I got all into it. That’s when I started using the phrase, “Did you know coffee and Chocolate are like kissing cousins?” And she’d look at me sourly because she’d been trying to teach me that all along. I know, I’m dumb.
Well Biters, this little story is to highlight a few things about blogging that you should all know. And hopefully you won’t have to read, “How Snailbites Changed My Life” to learn them.
“Did you know that Blogs and RSS are like kissing cousins?”
RSS stands for Really Simple Search Syndication. In laymen’s terms, it takes some kind of web content (video, headlines, pictures, etc…), and publishes it regularly on another page. It is more popularly known as a feed. For example, on a news site, you could have a front page with a whole bunch of feeds from different blogs (an opinion blog, a sports blog, etc…). Each blog author would write a new entry, and that new entry would magically pop up on the front page in chronological order. Scroll to the bottom of nytimes.com for an example.
So for all you Biters out there that can never keep up with all the crazy Xangas, Blogspots, jmotives, and Snail’s bites, I say to you: simplify! You don’t have to come to Snailbites every day, although we’d love to see you that much. You can get Snailbites and pretty much every blog on the web delivered right to your home (page). All you need to do get a free feed reader, plug in a few feeds, and you’ll be on your way. (Add on a few Apple products and some thick rimmed glasses, and you could can officially call yourself a Tech Geek).
Some cool feed readers are: Netvibes, Google Reader, and Bloglines. These are three that I like, but do a Google search and you’ll find a million more. All of them do the same thing, so it’s just a matter of which appeals to you. Sign up for one of those, and then come back here and click on the subscribe button on the right sidebar to “Get Your Daily Bite!”
Magical Search Terms
I added a few tools on the backend that let me see how people are coming to the Blog (whethere its by direct click, thru Google search, or link referral). And oddly enough, I noticed a large amount of traffic from Europe, because of the search term “spider pig”. I checked it out for myself, and found that if you google the term “spider pig”, Snailbites is regularly one of the top 5 hits.
I thought this was really strange and quite amusing. So to that end, I’ll post some of the random search terms that garner Snailbites some sort of web popularity.
- spider pig (image search)
- top fast food places in nj
- money doodles
- homer pig (image search)
- quiznos logo
Try them yourself! I think its hilarious what things get picked up and what things don’t.
Keep It Locked!
Lastly, make sure you check back often for some (really) good stuff coming up this month. Specifically, Snail’s Long Awaited Post-Engagement Reaction, The 2009 March for Life, and most exciting of all: Snailbest’s 2009.
Subscribe to get your daily bite, and keep it locked!
