If you start reading any blogs about blogging for any length of time, you’ll hear about the importance of links. The Google search algorithms run on them, they’re recommended as a way to get other, bigger, bloggers to notice you and they’re a good way of sharing information with your readers, even when you yourself have nothing much to say.
Another thing you’ll probably have noticed on your travels around the blogosphere is the weekly round-ups or collections of links that many bloggers publish. These can be collections of their favorite articles from blogs they read, mentions of posts from other blogs within a network, etc. I don’t particularly want to do these sorts of roundups for several reasons.
First, because I don’t think that readers really read these round-ups, at least not all the articles that are linked to. I also don’t have a lot of time, and doing the round-ups does take time! I also don’t like that the round up post is the last to appear in any aggregated reader, instead of another, more content heavy post.
Another way of sharing links with readers is through the application designed specifically for that purpose: Delicious. I love the concept, the ease of use and being able to tag each link indefinitely, but the interface isn’t customizable, nor can you make it part of your blog.
Recently, I’ve started using another new tool, Tumblr. It’s a bit like a blog (in fact some people do use it that way) but you can also embed it into your site by using a custom domain. You can choose between several different themes, and endlessly customize the color combinations. And, saving the best for last, it will automatically import feeds from your blogs, Twitter, Delicious, Blogger and several other applications. So you can continue to use those other tools to share links, but have them all in one place, on your blog.
How do you share links?
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