Which Blog Widgets Do You Use?
Recently, I was thinking about all the different widgets available for a blogger, and I thought I would write up a quick post on the ones I’m familiar with, and even though I’ve been blogging for quite a while (past blogs), I’d love to find out about any cool and helpful widgets that I may not be aware of.
That’s where you come in! I’ll list the ones I’ve used and currently use, and if you have any recommendations, then please by all means let me know in the comments section.
1. MyBlogLog
I could live without this one for a few reasons. First, it lets me know immediately who’s visiting my blog, it looks pretty sharp (now that they’ve given it that spiffy web 2.0 makeover), and believe it or not, I actually use their stats tracking option for a quick glance at where my visitors are coming from. It’s real time, and while it’s not in depth, it saves me from logging in to Google Analytics 7 times a day. Also, another important aspect of MBL is the community building feature. Some bloggers have hundreds, if not thousands of members for their MBL communities, and you can quickly send out mass messages to your members to let them know any important or breaking news. This is, by far, my favorite widget to stick on a blog.
2. EntreCard
This system is one I just started recently using. I ignored it for a while, but after seeing it in action, and actually learning about all of its features, I had to give it a spin. Good thing I finally went for it, because it seems that every blogger in the world has it on their blog. It’s brought me enough traffic to justify keeping it for the long run, and also allows those without a huge budget to advertise on many other blogs by using the credits you earn via drops. Very cool, and now my second favorite blog widget!
3. Blog Catalog
These guys are similar to MyBlogLog, and I think they have the same purpose, but honestly, I don’t see many blogs using this these days. I used it about a year ago on and old blog, and while I wasn’t dissapointed, I wasn’t very impressed either. This one gets a “so so” rating IMO. Does anyone still use this?
4. Blog Rush
I remember this got a lot of feedback from many prominent bloggers, both good and bad. I used it for a while on an old blog, but it seemed that if you didn’t hold an “A list” title, it wasn’t worth the space it took up on your blog. I could be wrong, and that may have changed, but honestly, I don’t see it as much as I used too. What do you guys think?
I never thought of this as a widget, but it definitely is! This is, by far, probably the most popular little widget that bloggers display. But as I mentioned in a previous post, it’s probably best not to display it until you actually have a decent amount of subscribers – otherwise, it looks a little desperate when you’re flaunting the 8 subscribers you have.
For all you Twitter freaks (and I’m starting to take an interest myself), there is the Twitter badge. Proudly display in widget form what you are doing at this precise moment, because really, we all care! Lol – I’m kidding, but it’s not far from the truth. I’m still desperately trying to understand the Twitter craze.
This one may not be fancy, but it’s certainly a popular one. This simply displays the amount of backlinks that Technorati says you have coming to your blog. This one is fun to use when you have a respectable amount of links coming in, but it doesn’t serve much purpose other than to please the nosy bloggers that want to know who else is linking to you.
Okay, without researching, those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I know there are tons more, but they’re escaping me at the moment. Am I leaving any out that should be up here? Let me know if you get a chance!
I tend to go easy on the widgets. They take up a lot of space and can make a blog look cluttered. Not that it’s easy deciding which ones to use and not use but they need to be performing well in order for me to keep them.
Nice overview of the options around.