More on the tag-surfer can be found here.

What happens is that you make a post and assign as many tags as is applicable. This means that your posts will appear in the wordpress.com tag system.

But more than that, on the logged in admin panel is a page entitled ‘tag-surfer’ and posts on wordpress.com tagged with the same tags that you tagged your post with are shown (in order of date). You can then add tags you want to follow, and remove tags you don’t want to follow.

What I have found, is that for new bloggers, getting that initial interest can be very hard and demoralising. But with tag-surfer your posts keep coming up in other peoples admin panels. (Especially if you ise tags like; religion, Christian, church etc.)

As well as showing the post, it shows the number of comments. Meaning that if people see that no comments have been made against your post they are encouraged to do so.

Another point, is that bloggers on wordpress.com are not allowed to place advertising on their blogs (unlike blogspot), which means there is not the abuse of the system or manipulation to get traffic in the hope of revenue, so I haven’t yet found totally irrelevant posts tagged at random appear.

(Paul if you do make a blog post on blogging platforms and therefore post on wordpress, you’ll need to make it clear what the difference is between the free server install version and wordpress.com free but controlled hosting).

I want to end this comment, but I am compelled to note a couple of other advantages of wordpress.com blogs;

Support: the support is outstanding. Quick replies, honest answers, excellent forums. They take note when you flag a blog as a splog.

Stats: the stats system is mature but not burdensome, pageviews from spammers and spambots are excluded as are pageviews from the blog owner. So stats are not inflated.

Comments: while logged into wordpress.com, if you visit a wordpress.com blog, you can comment without having to enter any details. This encourages commenting. But more than that, in the admin panel (dashboard) your comments and any replies are shown, in reverse order, with the newest replies at the top. This certainly facilitates the conversation.

Apologies again, this time for length.

Hugs…Cindy in WV

Thanks for the info about WordPress.com and the tag-surfer feature. I have not taken the time to explore the various hosted blog options, so I appreciate you sharing your first-hand knowledge. Can you tell me how the tag-surfer feature gets implemented? Do you have it on your blog somewhere?

Following on from the points in the post on comments. While is is good to comment on other people’s blogs, it is also really important to respond to the comments people make on your blog. If they have taken the time to do so, you owe them a response. This is especially true if you are trying to start a conversation.

Another point from me (sorry): On your blog, keep on topic. If you are blogging about church stuff don’t stray. I hate it when I am following a blog on Christian type topics and every other post is, ‘ooh my stats’, ‘subscribe to my feed’, ‘yesterday I got this much traffic’. Of course the odd personal post on family life for example is welcomed as this can bring a reader in.

Two of the advantages are tag-surfer and my-comments. This has led so much more visitors interested in the same kinf of things to my wordpress.com blog than any of my other blogs.