Are you being selfish? (a case for reblogging)

 

Are you being selfish?
(a case for reblogging)

I made it through a few hundred thousand posts and comments over the weekend. One of them, I thought, indicated that the commenter either didn't understand reblogging, or is a selfish individual.

That sounds harsh, so I'm going to go with didn't understand reblogging.

However, if I told you who the individual was, I'm 99.99% certain you'd agree that s/he certainly understands reblogging.

The comment was to the effect that everything s/he has accomplished at ActiveRain was done without reblogging a single individual.

I realize that there is a love/hate relationship with reblogging, but if you've ever had one of your blog posts reblogged, it made you feel pretty good. Go ahead. Admit it. I know it did. So why would you not share that good feeling by, say, reblogging a post by the person who reblogged you? Or perhaps you could Pay It Forward by reblogging anyone at all!

If you reblog someone, you get 25 points! The implication of the commenter was that s/he had accumulated points by not reblogging anyone, which apparently is supposed to be better than getting 25 points when you reblog someone. Hmmm.

I can tell you, though, that the commenter has had many posts reblogged dozens, probably even hundreds of times, so to be proud of not reblogging anyone else is, I think, selfish. That's just my thinking. Yours might be different.

If the commenter really didn't want reblog points, then it would be appropriate to ask that those who had reblogged his posts take down those reblogs. I can tell you that if s/he ever did make such a request, well, that request was ignored by many dozens of people. The implication, which is probably 100% truth, is that the person never made such a request of any of those rebloggers.

More important than the 25 points that both the original author and the reblogger get is the amount of Google juice that comes with reblogging.

I originally didn't reblog. I was unsure of what my clients would think about me having someone else's work in my blog. Would they say, "Why didn't he take the idea and write something in his own words?" Notice that I didn't say I was worried about what other ActiveRain members would think. I was worried about what clients and prospective clients might think.

The answer came one day while I was doing a Google search. A post of mine that had been reblogged was actually higher up in the search returns than my original post. How could that be? Who cares? The reblog provided me with twice the Google juice!

Over the weekend I found someone else who was getting great Google juice from people reblogging her posts. Check out this post by Kathy Streib:

Well You Must Be the One to Call... Every Time I Google.. You Come Up! Thank You ActiveRain!

Why ActiveRain didn't feature Kathy's post but featured some of the other, uh, interesting stuff this weekend, is beyond me. But I've never claimed to know everything there is to know about how featured posts are chosen, only that sometimes the system seems to be pretty well broken.

Kathy is in Florida, and she's getting some significant extra Google juice from Cindy Bryant in Texas, Linda Thompson in California, and Tammy Barbee in California. Kathy even has a screen shot in her post of the Google search. It's pretty awesome. Go look. I'll wait.

Back? Now wasn't that great? That there is what reblogging is all about. So go ahead. Reblog!!

Some people send personal thank-yous when one of their posts gets reblogged. I try to do that but don't always do it. However, I do put "reblog" in my Excel spreadsheet by the person's name who reblogged me. Then, at some point in the future, I return the favor by reblogging something by that person. As my wise old grandmother would say, "Tit for tat." It's a good tit for tat. 

ActiveRain provides us with lots of resources. There's no reason not to use them, unless they are illegal or unethical. To the best of my knowledge, reblogging isn't illegal or unethical, and my ethics are pretty strong Southern born and bred ethics.

So I'll say it again, "Go ahead. Reblog!" Quit being selfish....

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