1) Front page of my site, to the left of the article about Shyla http://www.clintcatalyst.com/blog/she-aint-ugly-shes-my-shyla is a SQUARE RED AND GRAY button that on the left of the Green Straight Jackt pic says “Move This Blog Up! On Blogsurfer” — Each
time a person clicks it, the action moves the huge-ass article about Shyla [and I do
mean HUGE..big sexy em-effing photos of her pin-up photographs, visual
art, dolls, ~&~ linkage to the various sites with juicy teaser
photos]… I SAY, EACH TIME A PERSON CLICKS THE BUTTON, IT MOVES THE BLOGATURE TO THE TOP OF THAT SITE’S BLOGROLL. A quick 2 second click now, maybe one later when you think about it? BAM! Yes, that *WILL* MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

—ALSO, if any of you have blogs of your own? The next tip will help YOU while you’re helping her (& me, & any other cool blogger) ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It’s also quick & easy, so spare me the symphony of sighs. (Aiight? Or +AHEM!+ “Please” & “Thank You,” that is…) =]

2) Download & install
the Alexa toolbar for either Firefox/Mozilla/or Internet Explorer. For
whatever reason, it isn’t compatible with Safari, but that’s not the
point. Deal is: Alexa is a site ‘ranking’ system owned by Amazon.com. With
the Alexa toolbar included on your browser, it shows at any moment the
ranking of your sites, my site, the buzzfeed site…fkn’ everything.

Just
so you know: the main # is a site’s ranking OUT OF THE ENTIRE WORLD, so don’t freak your geek/feel the need to be embarrassed if your URL wields a scary #. Besides, after you’ve had it installed for around a month, you’ll be able to
see break-downs by country, as well as even which state you rank
highest in.

Translation? Some of my friends started out with a
rank of 22 million something. What’s exciting is
watching how quickly a couple of articles can make your number increase. For
a personal site, making it into the top 100K in the world is kind of a
big deal. In fact, only one of my friends has done it thus far with a
personal site–but she’s since fallen out of that bracket. The top 100
K means you’re ‘up there’ competing with every company, web-zine,
magazine, social networking site, et cetera. When I first added the
toolbar, my worldwide stats bummed me out, as they were pretttty bad… though I’ve since made it as far up as 172K (still a far way to go from the top 100, which hopefully
someday I”ll hit… but that was better than what it is now, anyway: I’ve dipped back down to the 185K range intl., 40,000 in the U.S., & 17K
in Cali, where the majority of my traffic originates.

Point of
all this? I promise that even as few as 5 of my friends & 5 of Shyla’s friends
add Alexa tonight? By this time tomorrow, we’ll all see a notable
improvement. & the day after that? Even better. That goes for Shyla, as well as you, as well as me… because we can either all help each other & benefit when the river rises, or suffocate in bitter “Me!It’s Team Me!It’s All About Me!” cunty competitiveness.

Too brash or direct, kiddos? Delete me from your friends’ list. But when you see me showin’ somebody else ‘The Love’ tomorrow, or next week? Don’t come weaseling around thinking it’s your turn, bub.

3) Ah!
& of course, if you already utilize Mixx/Digg/StumbleUpon/Yahoo buzz/Google buzz/Delicious/Plurk/Fark/Hipstr/Bordom/or any of the other sites of that nature? Here’s another neat little tip that you’ll notice:

If you’ve tried them in the past, though quit after a couple tries because “nobody gave YOU any traaafffffic,” answer me this: did you only post links to your own content, or did you have enough respect for the communities that you contributed to them elsewise?

For every single URL you toss into the forum, contribute to at least 5 others. Amber Osborne knows this to be true, & I’ve never had a single conversation with her about it. Haven’t, ’cause there’s no need to: I already see her workin’ that social media magic a lá Miss Destructo. It’s something so, so basic; maybe that’s why it’s so easy for most folks to overlook.

Whatever the case, congrats to Shyla for a post on BuzzFeed catchin’ the attention of the Huffington Post—& by proxy, that opening the proverbial floodgates.

Now let’s help her, which helps me, which helps you. Unless, of course. you’d rather try your luck playing TEAM SOLO-N-SO, to which I respond:

Best of luck!