Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Answering a Few Questions about the Search Engine

WkbBadgeI’ve gotten enough emails and DMs on Twitter that I thought I should probably run a short post answering some questions about submitting posts for the search engine, etc.

First of all, thanks so much to everyone for their support! Mike Fleming and I have been really overwhelmed by the blog posts, the tweets, the Facebooking, and the encouragement. Thanks so much to everyone!

The content for the search engine is coming from the links that I’ve tweeted. Each week, new links will be added to the engine from the posts I’ve tweeted from the previous week. So basically, Twitterific is going into the search engine.

I’ve had quite a few questions from writers on how to get their content added to the search engine. I’m usually looking for craft-related, industry-related, social media, promo-related, or writing inspiration posts. I love posts that are easily skimmed (as opposed to a block of text--most writers are working with short amounts of time), have great content, and can be helpful to many writers.

I’m scanning over 1500 blogs…and it’s easy for me to miss a great post. I’m trying to spend only an hour a day reading posts, so I’m reading them very quickly. What’s most likely to make me accidentally skim over a wonderful post is a misleading title, an intro that doesn’t relate to the rest of the post, or a truncated post in my Reader (the whole post doesn’t show up in my Reader and I have to click “read more”…leaving my Reader and opening another window to do so.)

Have you got a great post on the writing craft—even something in your archives? Feel free to email me at elizabethspanncraig (at) gmail (dot) com or to shoot me a DM on Twitter (@elizabethscraig). Not sure your blog is in my Reader? Please send me a link and I’ll add it.

Thanks so much again, everyone, for the amount of support you've given us and the ideas you've had for the search engine. We're hoping it'll be a tool that's a quick, easy way to connect with resources. And please let me know in the comments or by email, Twitter, or Facebook (Elizabeth Spann Craig, Author.)