Blogging My Life...Yesterday I shared Which FeedBurner FeedFlares Do I Have Set Up and I had an interesting comment soon after from Matt Cutts who said that he didn't even notice that the Search Engine Roundtable had FeedFlares.
I'm torn. All that flare may pay off for you, but I have developed flare-blindness on SE Roundtable (and SEL), and the sheer number of flare things makes it a real pain when I'm reading SER/SEL posts on my phone in Google Reader.
That is an excellent point, in fact, I offered some sage advice to Danny Sullivan yesterday. I told him to add FeedBurner's FeedFlares to the Search Engine Land site, not just the feed. You know what he told me? They are already there. Doh! And I write there and I was blind to them also. Yes, he told me he will work on making them more visible.
Which got me thinking. How visible is too visible? What is the right level.
On the Search Engine Roundtable, I hide the FeedFlares, which I call "Social Flares" on the entry pages, well under the post, they are easily missed, if you are not seeking them out. Here is a screen capture...
On the home page, they are directly under the "rustybrick in Google AdWords at 8:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) " line. But I assume, they are still often missed.
As a blogger, I do not want anything to distract from the content. Some people don't even realize that the Search Engine Roundtable has banner ads on them... Many people don't notice the flares either. But do I want to put the ads or flares more in your face. No way!
I think I will be keeping my implementation of the Social Flares (FeedFlares) as is for now.
So that begs the question, should new blogs add it if no one sees them? If so, how much effort should they use to put them in your face?
For example, techipedia uses icons, as shown here:
But FeedFlare doesn't allow you to currently use icons... I like the icon implementation.
You see, I am stuck also. How visible should one make it?
What should a blogger do?
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Comments
Hey Barry,
Those icons are from a Wordpress plugin called Sociable. It's actually only on the internal pages (not the homepage; this can be configured in the plugin control panel). I've been debating whether to keep them on or not, though I think they provide value if they aren't too intrusive (and I'm hoping they don't detract from my posts).
There was a huge debate about it that I blogged about. I suppose this issue will be around for awhile.
Posted by: Tamar Weinberg | February 2, 2007 11:41 AM
Figured. I don't find that urs detract...
Posted by: Barry Schwartz | February 2, 2007 12:01 PM