My backyard veggie garden is full of spiders. One, whom I have named Charlotte, is as big as a fifty-cent piece and lives on the string beans. When I pick beans, she waves her front legs so I won’t disturb her web. I give her extra room, but I really like Charlotte because she eats her weight in bugs. It’s like that with web-spiders too. I had to learn how to attract them though.
In joining a blog collective called CFBA, the owner told me to be sure to ping my reviews of different books on blog tours. I thought, “Be sure to what?” Obviously, I missed the lesson when God passed out web-sense. But now I’m feeling grand again, just knowing that folks will be far more likely to see my blogging if I ping than if I don’t. For those of you as ignorant as I am, a ping is a kind of internet alert that helps the spiders find you. That would be web-spiders, not the crawly kind, like Charlotte that preside over my garden. There’s a moral here, and it’s not about a pig.
Writing Tip for Today: The first time I saw Charlotte, she was quietly blending in with the green beans. I’ve been blogging awhile now, but this is the first I’ve learned about pings. It really makes sense and I wish I’d known a lot sooner. For your own writing platform, sometimes it’s hard to separate the can’t-live-without techie tools from the that’s-nice-but-so-what variety. For instance, this pinging stuff seems absolutely essential. Yet other things, such as avatars or even the little “reaction” buttons at the end of posts seem less crucial to me. What’s the most awesome app you’ve learned lately? Do tell!