We are all here at cre8buzz for various reasons, but two of the top would have to be to 1) build and participate in a fun and relevant community and 2) to drive new, quality traffic to our personal blogs. As one of the first 100 beta testers of cre8buzz, I have seen an increase in traffic and comments at my personal blog, Velveteen Mind, since day one. I've met some fantastic bloggers and picked up some interesting (and interested) subscribers. Needless to say, I've also had a lot of fun along the way.

However, in discussing traffic sources with other cre8buzz bloggers recently, I realized that not everyone is seeing a steady flow of traffic back to their own blogs from their cre8buzz profiles. Taking a moment to step back and look at the forest rather than the trees revealed that one main difference between the profiles that drive readers to our blogs and those that don't (yet) appears to be widgets.

I was one of the first to add widgets to my cre8buzz profile, specifically the RSS feed widget (this was back in the day of no custom templates), and I still field a lot of questions about them. Ya'll, I promise they are super easy to install and fun to play with, so here is a quick breakdown of the widgets I use and how easy it is for you to install them, too.

SpringWidgets RSS feed widget:

http://www.springwidgets.com/widgetize/23/?param=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FVelveteenMind&paramstyleborderColor=0x330099&paramstylebrandUrl=http://downloads.thespringbox.com/hostedcontent/images/3c380a44d01149f7a117a02ccf6af121.jpg&width=300&height=418&wiid=wiid23&partner_id=0

This is the one that features the feed for your personal blog, highlighting your post titles and a brief snippet of each post. It is safe to say that the majority of my traffic comes from this one. Although cre8buzz does have a section for you to highlight your favorite posts (or all of your posts), this widget cuts out one more click from the process of giving your profile viewers a taste of what your blog is like. If they see a snazzy title that they like, they click and it takes them straight to you.

The link above takes you directly to my SpringWidget feed, though not with my specific customizations. You could also go to the root of the set-up (below), though, and start from the beginning without my example. If you aren't familiar with pixel widths of your cre8buzz profile columns, this set-up page gives you easy to guesstimate guides to go by. You can tweak and tweak to your heart's content. Just set your size, feed URL, color choice, and picture if you want to use one.

http://www.springwidgets.com/express/getFeed/

Twitter badge: Flash, with Friends:

http://twitter.com/badges/which_badge

This is the one with the little pictures and updates about what certain bloggers are doing. Totally obnoxious and completely addictive. I chose the "Flash, with Friends" badge, but you can choose one that features just your Twitter updates. I like the "with friends" one because it is similar to the Google Share feature where you can highlight what your favorite bloggers are doing, in addition to just your own brilliance. When a reader sees something funny or interesting, they click your Twitter (sounds dirty, right?), it takes them to your Twitter page, and then they can click through to your blog. Sure, it takes a couple of clicks, but it pulls people in with a glimpse of your personality.

The link above takes you directly the the html badge choices, which is what you'll need for cre8buzz.

Finally, the Chat Widget:

http://beta.cre8buzz.com/profiles/89/blogs/608/blog_entries/4121

This is a chat widget that I bought for cre8buzz in order to temporarily fill a repeated request to Antman for a site-wide chat widget. At the time, there were no other chat choices, so I tested a handful of them on my profile and ultimately chose this one because it was the least intrusive and allowed you to link back to your personal blog through your screenname. Again, one more chance to get your profile viewers to click through to your blog. Even if you aren't on live, chatting at that moment, they can scroll back through old conversations and pick up on bloggers they think are funny or clever. It also has a timestamp so you can see when the last message was posted, that way you aren't always responding to chats from hours before.

The link above takes you to my cre8buzz blog post that has the chat widget code.

The key with each of these widgets is that they highlight you and your personality. Most importantly, they do so along with links back to your blog. Increase the links, increase the odds that your traffic will pick up and you will gain some fabulous new readers. Even better, you'll find fantastic new blogs to read yourself. And that's why we are all here, isn't it? So get buzzing! Oh, yeah, and installing widgets.

An easy way to install them, if you don't know what to do is:
Go to My Stuff.
Click on Create/Edit Custom Theme under Manage My Profile.
Paste the codes under the right sidebar, where you see <cre8Buzz-contact-me /> but above </div>.
I put paragraph breaks between each code and centered them, as well. Just place the code between <p><center>insert code here</center></p> for each one.

Let me know if you have any questions! I'm no tech wiz, so if I can do it, you definitely can!