TrackBacks & Pingbacks: Building the Blogosphere
Why in the world would I want to talk about someone else’s blog on MY blog?
Pingbacks or trackbacks are vital aspects of blogging because:
- It provides additional context to your own opinions and ideas
- Other blogs are a source of inspiration when confronted with “writer’s block”
- A means to share ideas, causes and products that you have discovered with your audience
- A very focused means of directing readers with similar interests to your own blog. Talk about your niche marketing!
- Jumpstarts communications with other bloggers. Where many bloggers won’t have the time to check out the links on all of their commentators, most bloggers will want to follow a pingback to see what others are saying about them. This is true for even the really famous ones out there. Check out my post on giveaways where I pingbacked Lorelle of WordPress fame.
- If you talk about other bloggers, and have something worth talking about on your own blog, they are more likely to be talking about you!
On this blog, you will often find that I refer to other blogs in my blog posts. I do this for two reasons. The first is that I want to bring certain ideas to your attention to certain blogging topics. Second, I am hoping that my post will inspire you to visit the other blog for additional information and to expand your reference resources. Therein, lies the power of blogging. 
So, if I wanted to show my readers an example of good writing and how to engage with your readers on a personal level I might write a post about Barb’s post on Scrapbook or Art Journal: Its a Personal Journey. To make it an educational post, I would identify key themes and techniques in the writing of that post that make it so successful. I would compare and contrast it with another great example of student writing with Shoshanna’s post Hiding out from the Third Millenium.
If I was stuck and frustrated with writer’s block, I could tap into Val’s post on Literary Finds and the post Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. Those posts might inspire me to think and write about classic books, the books that I grew up with or a lament on current literature. I could go a variety of directions from those posts from a critical literary review to a discussion on how popular books impact the culture of their day to…
We have a lot of instructors in this class. Maybe they have been too busy to check out all of their classmates’ blogs and have missed out on the great instructor references that Karen provides us with her post Use Free Online Resources to Teach Your Online Courses. Because we know that no matter how busy they are, they will make time to read the all the posts in the class blog! ;-P
If you take a look at the posts that I have mentioned in this post, you will see that there is a pingback to here in the comment section of the post. Well there will be, if the blog owners decide to approve the ping back.
Tags: Blogging, Blogosphere, Promotion, Student blogs, Writer's block
Well, I’ve evidently got pingbacks – at least from you – automatically approved. I got a message that you’d put one in, but the only options were to view it, delete it, or Spam it.
Still working on the theme thing. I got one I liked, but all the text was way too small, so now I’m tweaking the CSS in between doing plumbing projects and mulching flower beds.
Now to check out a few of those links…
Have fun!
Val P.
You pointed out the big difference between trackbacks and pingbacks. In trackbacks, the blog owner could edit what appeared on their own blog, thereby changing the words of Blogger B. Well, unfortunately that was abused. So, you can’t edit a pingback. You can only approve/view, delete it or report it as spam. The drawback, according to my point of view, is that pingbacks aren’t as enticing, you can’t see a line or two of what Blogger B wrote, depending on the theme, you might see little more than the title of the Blog B post. Another reason why titles are increasing important, but that is in week five’s lesson
When I think of all the blogs I’ve commented on over the last 6 months, I wonder why I’ve never got a pingback. A lot of people have linked back to me – maybe none of them had a wordpress blog!
Wendy,
Most blogs have some sort of trackback or pingback system, but not all blog authors opt to use it. Some disable it. To register as a trackback or pingback, the Blog B author needs to have the URL of the Blog A post, not the blog URL in a blog post. Placing someone in your blogroll, or a link to another blog post in a comment doesn’t qualify.
Don’t be surprised to start seeing pingbacks now. Also in general, the more quality posts you have, the more pingbacks you are likely to acquire.
I almost missed the pingback from you. Since you had already been approved I didn’t get a notice of a new comment. Is there a way to set up a notification of a new comment?
I’m still working on trying to figure out how to do a trackback.
Carol
Carol,
Check your Settings > Discussion > Email me whenever
Make sure that the box, Anyone posts a comment is checked. Then, you will get notification of comments and pingbacks.
To do a ping back, write a post in YOUR blog that discusses a blog post on someone else’s blog. Make sure that you link to that blog post within your own blog post. It does not work to leave a link to someone else’s blog post in a comment. If they have pingbacks enabled, you will see the title of your blog post as a comment at the end of their blog posting.
You can look at Average Joe and Cocoanut for a great example of how they have pingbacked each other and bridged the conversation across two blogs.