3 Useful Del.icio.us Tags, Life Quotes, & Traffic Generators

Daniel from Daily Blog Tips is running a blog project revolving around the number three, so here are three sets of three useful things: tags, quotes, and traffic generators.

3 Useful Del.icio.us Tags

I’m a big fan of del.icio.us and a while ago noticed people were tagging articles with toread for articles and blog posts they did not have time to read right then and there. Genius! I started using toread immediately. Since then, I developed a few more tags for my personal use and I thought I’d share the three most useful with you here.

• touse

This tag is for anything I find useful but don’t have the time to do just yet. It could be an SEO strategy, design tip, a “lifehack”, a program, a Mac OS X or Ubuntu optimization, or anything else I find that I’d like to try but have to save for a time to be determined.

• toblog

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Any article or blog post I find that I have a strong opinion on or unique perspective but don’t have time to immediately blog about, I save with a toblog tag. Then, on days when writer’s block hits me, I can look through the toblog tagged bookmarks I’ve saved and find some inspiration.

• totag

Pretty self-explanatory. Anything I can’t think of a tag for a bookmark, I use the totag tag. Also, anytime I need to massively bookmark a lot of sites, I toss totag on them so I know to come back to them.

While doing research for this post, I stumbled upon this academic paper, @toread and Cool: Tagging for Time, Task and Emotion by Margaret Kipp, and discovered my 3 useful tags are actually quite popular among the tagging community. So to make up for it, here’s 3 + 1 useful tags I’ll begin implementing soon:

• tosee – for movies, concerts, TV shows etc.
• toshare – sites I want to show others who don’t use del.icio.us
• toresearch – dubious claims I’m interested in
• tobuy – stuff I want to buy but can’t afford right now

3 Useful Life Quotes

First up, the man, the legend, Homer Simpson, presents “…three little sentences that will get you through life.”:

• Number 1: Cover for me.
• Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss!
• Number 3: It was like that when I got here.

Simply brilliant. There’s a reason those words were my high school yearbook quote.

Next up, we have a quote from an anonymous person:

This brick can be found in the newly redeveloped Edward Everett Square, which is a few steps from my house. The “do not refuse to do something that you can do” brick is part of a neighborhood effort to completely renovate the square from a dirty, congested sore to a new community square with flowing traffic, which is partly funded by these sponsored bricks. The centerpiece of the square is a giant pear, which you can see in my New Edward Everett Square flickr set.

The last quote comes from my mom:

“Same shit, different day”

Whenever someone asks you how your workday went, just reference my mom! Seriously though, she says it in a comedic manner (rather than actually believing that every day is shitty and that nothing ever changes) and does it to remind me anytime I have a rough day at work or school that there’s a whole lot that can go wrong, but it’s usually not a big deal, and that when things go well, it just makes you appreciate those good days that much more.

3 Useful Traffic Generators

1. Post to Forums

This tip can drive traffic to your site in two ways. By actively participating in a community forum, you will gain credibility and users will click on a link to your blog (of course, this requires you to place a link in your signature or profile, depending on forum rules). Another way is to refer forum members to a genuinely useful or interesting post you wrote. For instance, when I wrote Click…Click…Click: How a Virtual (K)Ubuntu Penguin Saved My 50GB Music Collection, I thought the fine people at the Ubuntu Forums would be interested in my positive experience with Ubuntu (they were). Don’t simply spam forums with your links, but if it’s relevant, then it’s a great way to generate traffic.

2. Promote a Budding Star

Whether it’s a blogger, musician, artist, or anyone else, promoting an up and coming individual helps you and the up and comer. First, you’re helping someone you want to see succeed by driving your readers to that person. Once this future star actually becomes famous, you can ride their wave of popularity since you helped “discover” them. Everyone wins!

Of course, you should only do this if you genuinely feel the individual has a talent, not just because you think they’ll be famous. For instance, my first post and second post about Ronald Jenkees, the amazing synthesizer musician are still among my most popular posts. I thought I was helping Ronald out by sending my readers to his Youtube channel, but turns out he’s helped me a whole lot more!

3. Participate in Blog Projects

OK, so this is the first blog project I’ve taken part in so I can’t really say it’s a traffic generator, but I’m sure it will be. Still, blog projects and blog carnivals are a great way to find other bloggers and spread the message of your blog across the internet so take part in them when you find relevant or interesting ones. There’s a few I see going on at blogcarnival.com that have caught my eye, so look for those posts soon and of course, I highly recommend watching Daniel’s DailyBlogTips for future blog projects and general tips.

Find anything useful here? If not (even if you did), feel free to share any useful tags, quotes, or traffic generators in the comments below.