How Does Post Toaster Increase Blog Traffic?
| March 13th, 2008One of the most effective ways you can increase traffic to your blog is through social networking sites, like Digg or StumbleUpon. However, one of the downsides to this is the amount of time it takes to submit your new post on each and every one.
Welcome to the world of “A Little Bit Easier” with Post Toaster
What It Is
PostToaster is a rather neat free resource that allows you to streamline the submission of your post to the various social bookmarking sites. When I say “various”, I mean their current roster of 73 different sites. This came as a surprise to me, since I could have probably only named ten or so, and none of them would have been IndianPad, ThisNext or Sk*rt, all of which are niche social bookmarking sites that PostToaster is compatible with.
How It Works
PostToaster gives you a “bookmarklet” that you can drag to your browser’s toolbar, allowing you to simply click it while a post is open in your browser. This will open the PostToaster page, with some (emphasis “some”) information pre-filled in…usually the URL and one post title. You have the option of writing four different post titles (along with four different descriptions) for each post, and you can select which of the bookmarking sites you wish to submit to as well. After this is done, you click “Submit”. Now, your post is submitted to each of the sites you selected, right?
Not so fast, Kemosabe. Now comes the work.
Clicking “Submit” will take you to a page with links to each of the sites you selected. Using those links to open each site will auto-fill the submission blanks on each one for you, using the post titles and descriptions you entered in a rotating fashion. (This is to allow you to get a bit more “juice” from each submission.) After opening each link, usually you will only have to double-check it and click “Submit Article” or its equivalent.
What It Is Not
PostToaster is not a magical “auto-submitter” for social networking sites. You still have to manually submit at each site…PostToaster simply cuts down on some of the repetitive work in submitting to a variety of sites. Also, keep in mind that you have to have an account at every site you wish to submit to, and must be logged in. Most of these sites will simply ask you to login after clicking the PostToaster link, and then continue to a pre-filled page, but it can be easier to simply log into each site you’re going to submit to first…if you have your cookies enabled on your browser, it will remember that you’re logged in on each one and eliminate that step.
The Verdict
It’s not an “I WIN” button for social bookmarking, but it is a useful tool for bloggers…and it’s guaranteed to open your eyes to a few sites that you didn’t know existed. Plus, it’s hard to beat “free”.
I am just starting to get serious about submitting my sites, and this looks like it could be a helpful tool. I’ll have to give it a try.
Thanks!
While I don’t know of any service that can beat Post Toaster in terms of sheer number of sites, I personally prefer socialmarker.com. Coming in at a only(ahem) 46 bookmarking sites, it does have one feature that can have me done all 46 in under 20 mins (assuming I’m already logged in): drag and drop.
Similar to PostToaster, you pre fill your info (url, title, tags, and description) and select which site(s) you wish to submit to. Once you click the submit button, things change a bit. Each site is opened in your current browser window, wrapped in the socialmarker page. Usually, everything is filled in for you, but in case it isn’t, there are a series of text boxes at the bottom of your window with your info in them, just drag and drop the missing fields, and continue. Click next, and you’re on to the next one, until all are done.
Cheers, Marc
Agree to it, Marc.
SM is by far my most faved. Although sometimes it crashes and closes the window by itself
Hey thanks for the review. I built Post Toaster because I was once using services like socialmarker.com and socialposter.com. However, these tools didn’t have enough sites for me. I also added in the randomize feature to spread out the anchor text, titles, descriptions of your posts as to prevent repetitiveness. Soon after I created Post Toaster, Social Marker and Social Poster both flooded their services with the same exact bookmarking sites that I had. Another feature that I added was the ability to only choose sites that had dofollowed links. Again, social marker and social poster copied this. So I guess I’m flattered
Thanks for the write up.
i knew about socialposter and socialmarker, but not post toaster. i am glad about the features like random title and prepolulation of tags.
thanks for the great review!
Hello,
This very good post , This is giving good information . It’s real informative blog . Your site is too good.
Well, I did not know of IndianPad, ThisNext or Sk*rt, but Post Toaster, I’ve trying it for a while… thanks for your tip.
My friend on Facebook shared this link with me and I’m not dissapointed at all that I came to your blog.
A mate urged me to check out this post, nice post, fascinating read… keep up the cool work!