You've heard the old philosophical question: "If a blogger posts in The Cloud and no birds are there to Tweet him, does he make a noise?"

Well, it goes something like that.

Bloggers are always looking for ways to make more noise and get more listeners -- more traffic. Blog Riffers was created to help. And today, I've added a new enhancement.

It started when I was reading a guest post at ProBlogger by Onibalusi Bamidele. His first traffic tip for bloggers was:

1. Secret blogging clubs

...

Secret blogging clubs consists of a group of bloggers with one aim: to help each other spread the word about their blogs with a view to generating traffic for each others' blogs. The concept is simple: you join a club with around 50 members, share each others' post with your fans and followers (around once a week), and this will generate more traffic, since it exposes your blog to a wider audience.

I've always been a little wary of things like this because in my experience, any system that promises links and traffic for nothing tends to attract freeloaders -- people who post junk, expect everyone to share it (yuck!), and either don't share anybody else's posts, or do it using a spammy account that nobody actually listens to.

It's telling that Onibalusi calls them "secret" blogging clubs. Why would you keep it secret? The only reason I can think of is that you're afraid it'll look artificial or spammy.

But the core concept is entirely legitimate: cooperate with like-minded bloggers to help lift each other. It's so much easier to grow your traffic in a group than when you stand alone.

Blog Riffers does something similar, but in a way that focuses on adding value. And since the value-add is obvious, there's no need to hide it.

Anyway, getting to the point of this post -- it occurred to me that Blog Riffers needed a "sharing" component. So I did two things today:

  1. Created a hashtag to use when you tweet about a Blog Riff or Riffback: #blogriff. When you see the #blogriff hash tag, consider helping out a fellow Blog Riffer by retweeting it. Yes, I realize I'm stepping into the same territory that I've just cast doubts on. Please only retweet Riffs that you think are worthy of it. The purpose of the hash tag is to remind people to retweet good stuff, not to request a retweet for junk.
  2. Created a Blog Riffers Twitter account, which I'll use to retweet good Riffs that aren't relevant to the themes my other Twitter accounts are centered on. I want to help share good stuff on a variety of topics, but not alienate anyone who's following me for specific types of information.