Promotion is necessary to sell books. That’s one of the distasteful jobs traditional publishers saved novelists from. Although many self publishers have a hard time doing this, it needs to get done.
In today’s world, we need an online presence. Authors need blogs, whether we self publish or not. Registering our blogs with Technorati is supposed to help promote them. When you sign up with Technorati, you can fill in a profile. But to register your blog you need to “claim it” which you do by posting the unique code Technorati assigns to you (for this blog, it’s K76X4UNJWKR9 ) in a blog post. What this does is prove to Technorati that you have the keys to the blog you say you own, so Technorati validates that you do actually control it. Of course, this can be annoying, since once posted, the code needs to stay in the blog forever to guarantee your continued Technorati accreditation.
Another big part of self publishing is being your own boss. Self Publishers get to make our own decisions, and that includes learning to use our time effectively. Which is why I have not bothered to go through the rigorous Technorati process with all my blogs. In my experience there have always been glitches in the process.
For instance, today I upgraded my personal Technorati profile. There were several new fields to which I could add information if I chose, including links to various web platforms like Facebook. But after getting all the information, when I pressed the “save” button, Technorati didn’t like the facebook URL for my Facebook author page. But in rejecting it, all the other information I had added or changed in the profile was wiped out. This is a mistake common to many online forms, and it is always annoying and a waste of the user’s time. Silly me, I went through the whole process again, this time using my personal Facebook URL. But Technorati rejected that too, again wiping out everything I input. For my next attempt, I filled in the other info one field at a time, saving after each.
And again my Facebook URL was rejected. One of the things I have learned not to waste my time on is trying to contact a human being at giant web platforms like Facebook, since it’s generally pretty futile.
I decided at that point to “claim” this Libreleft Books blog on Technorati. Again, after accepting my g+ Libreleft Books page, Technorati refused the link to my Libreleft Books Facebook Page. This tells me something is broken, whether at Facebook or Technorati I can’t say.
Nor can I say whether having verified blogs has been particularly helpful or not. This might be different if I involved myself in Technorati in other ways, but I am spread too thin as it is. If you have any experience, I’d appreciate hearing Technorati feedback either way.
