You write the blog... then what?

Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

1. Bookmark your best posts on Delicious. Once it’s in there, there’s a chance someone might happen upon it.
2. Stumble your best posts on StumbleUpon. Some folks disagree with stumbling your own work. The way I feel okay with it is that I stumble approximately 9 other people’s great blog posts to every one of my own.
3. Post an intriguing title and link to the post in LinkedIn‘s status message.
4. If your post is about a specific industry or relates to other great blogs, find a recent blog post that has related information. (Now, this is different than what you MIGHT normally do, so pay attention). In the URL part of the sign-up form, put the link to your post, not your blog in general. In the comment body, don’t talk about your amazing post. Just offer genuine commentary on the post you read, and share your thoughts and ideas. Repeat: don’t mention the post. (If your comment is great and worthy, people will click through and check it out.)
5. Share your post on Facebook. I really like BlogCast, which used to be FlogBlog. It’s got a nice interface.
6. Share your post in FriendFeed automatically, and let the amazing community there decide if it’s interesting.
7. Try Zemanta. Zemanta is a blogging tool that either adds on to your browser (Firefox only, I think), or comes now as a WordPress plugin. It allows you to find related stories and post them at the bottom of a post. When you’re part of the Zemanta community, I believe your stories also go into their list of potentially related stories. I’ve seen traffic coming in from Zemanta-recommended links.
8. Don’t forget Twitter. I find lots of my traffic comes from Twitter, especially because I don’t ever just post a link. I ask questions, inspire comments, etc.
9. Write blog posts that others will find useful. I know it’s not a technology answer, but it’s the truth. If your posts aren’t that useful to other people, they won’t be popular. People won’t care. If you’re re-blogging news that several other larger sites have covered, who cares? If you’re telling us about your day at college, who cares (unless you’re a great writer)? Make it really good, useful stuff, and we’ll come along for the ride.

Facebook Is Now Court Evidence

Social networking sites, such as Facebook, have now become informational sources that workers' compensation lawyers are now utilizing for evidentiary purposes. The question that remains unanswered is how information obtained through social networking sites can be admitted and utilized as evidence.

In a recently published article, Law School Professor Gregory M. Duhl and attorney Jaclyn S. Millner, focus on the issues of professional responsibility, discovery, privacy and evidence when social networking factors integrate with a workers's compensation proceeding. Since the compensation system is theoretically no-fault and the evidentiary system is informal, the authors theorize that the workers' compensation arena will act as a fertile ground for experimentation in the legal application of this new technology.

Social networking sites have experienced a surge in use. Web users spend more time on Facebook now than on Google. Workers' Compensation judges are also increasing their use of social networking sites.

Text, photos and commentary, shared among the social network, will provide a new avenue of factual discovery that may assist the decision maker in reaching an evaluation of the claim. The authors review the professional responsibilities of attorneys to their clients in advising them of the potential benefits and hazards of social networking, as well as their strategy for preparing text and photographic material into evidence. They conclude that lawyers handling workers' compensation matters need to be educated on how to properly utilize facts and opinions gathered from the social networking system.