I’ve been away in Italy, so I expect this Tuesday Tie-Up will be short and sweet.  If only life was always this simple.

• I’m working my butt off over at Desirable.co.uk, but completely behind the scenes so to speak.  This means I feel like I’m getting no where, although I probably am getting somewhere.  Only time will tell!
• I’m also composing (in my head presently) a guest blogger post for The Road Less Travelled, more about my travels in Italy.
• I’m trying to find new clients for my freelance content writing, rather unsuccessfully at present!
• AND I’m trying to come up with a list of Victorian-era Mock-Tudor style houses in the UK to visit before I go back to Australia on the 10th of June.
• I also haven’t yet got around to emailing UCL to tell them I’ve decided on Edinburgh University instead… not quite sure how to word such an email, ‘So sorry, I like the less popular university better, what can I say?’

Also, Lulu over at Cherry Blossom Adventures tagged me the other day to complete a Meme of Random Facts, which I’ve only just now got around to thinking about:

Here are the rules:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story.

1. I have double-jointed ankles.  Actually, they aren’t so much double-jointed, more like it looks like I have two ankles on each foot.  In reality I think my feet are just really bony, but whipping out my freaky ankles after a few drinks or at a boring dinner party can really liven things up.
2. My star-sign is Saggitarius/Capricorn - I was born on the 22nd of December, which is right on the cusp.  Rob doesn’t believe in astrology, he thinks it’s a load of codswollop, so I try not to talk too much about starsigns lest I get mercilessly made fun of.
3. When I was three years old I won a lego building competition.  I was awarded a certificate and a huge set of Lego - I think it was the Hospital kit with the ambulance.  Over two decades on, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out the other day that my friend Sarah and I both had the same Lego set when we were younger!
4. I attended seven different primary schools.  No, I wasn’t an elementary-aged rebel; my family moved around for my dad’s job, so I got used to starting each year at a different school in a different place.  Perhaps this is the reason why I have trouble staying in one place now?!
5. I have an embarrassing collection of DVDs which only my sister and I seem to like - including: Chasing Liberty (Mandy Moore), Superstar!, Crossroads (Britney Spears), Saved (Mandy Moore), Under the Tuscan Sun, and many many more.  Rob is quite concerned about my love for Mandy Moore; I, meanwhile, hope we are one day best friends.
6. I only have an automatic driving licence, something that frustrates Rob’s family greatly.  In Australia it isn’t uncommon to have an automatic car and many people only drive automatics.  Unfortunately this isn’t the case in the UK, where almost everyone drives a manual.
7. I graduated from highschool in the top 2% of my year, even though I did ‘Easy’ Maths (Mathematics A) and no sciences.  I really can’t handle numbers unless it’s something to do with calculating an eBay or Amazon purchase.
8. One day I want to be a freelance journalist for National Geographic.

I’m supposed to tag eight people to continue the meme, but as I’m lazy I’ll just ask everyone to do it - it’s more interesting that way!

Another week, another summary post.  As I’ve been away over the weekend in Edinburgh, have been trying to get my new blog up (more about that in a sec), and have been trying to catch up on work, I haven’t really had a whole lot to say over the past week.  Here’s a short summary of what’s going on:

• I can happily announce that the product-based blog I’ve been working on (with a leaning towards UK based online stores, mainly in fashion, homewares or accessories) is all ready for visitors!  If you’d like to take a look and see what I’ve been up to, you can!  The new blog is called, quite unimaginatively, Desirable.co.uk.  The present design is basically an echo of this one, but it’ll do for the time being.
• I’m off to Italy this time next week, so you probably won’t get any updates from me from the 15th of April - 28th of April.  For the first day Rob and I will be in Rome, where we’re meeting up with my parents who have already been in Italy for two weeks.  Then we’re heading down to Sorrento, Capri, Positano and Amalfi.  I can’t wait to climb Vesuvius!
• I’ve discovered some fantastic blogs this week, which I recommend you check out - Indie Fixx, Modish: The Blog, Oh Joy!, and 9.
• My new favourite store - The Museum of Modern Art - makes me cringe at the prices but desperate for just about everything they stock.
• You may also have noticed my new Friday feature - ‘Fun Fact Friday’.  Each week I’ll be posting a fun fact, probably from the worlds of history, science or pop trivia.

That’s about it for the last week!

As you may already know if you read yesterday’s Tuesday Tie-Up, I’m in the middle of setting up a new blog for all my jewellery, fashion, homewares and gadget finds. The easy part of the process is done - I have the website up and running, and I’m starting to put some content onto the blog. Now comes the hard part - publicizing the darn thing. I often find that bloggers post on the forums I read asking for advice as to the best way to go about advertising their new sites, so I thought it would be helpful to pull together a bit of a ‘How to…’ as I went about working my own creation.

First things first - what sort of blog have you started, and why? When you’re just starting out, it can be hard to summarize your blog’s focus or aim succinctly. Like me, you may have fallen in to blogging as a way of keeping your friends and family abreast of your news and exploits, or you may be using the medium as a way to communicate a specific idea or problem to an anonymous internet audience. You may be trying to share your knowledge on a certain field or specialization, or using the blog format simply to express yourself. No matter what your reasons, if you decide you want to publicize your blog you need to make sure it’s ready for the additional readers by ensuring it has a clear focus and an equally informative ‘About’ page. I won’t go into the various ways you can write a successful ‘About’ page here, but I’ve found Ben’s article, ‘The Personality of an Online Writer’ to be a good summation.

Target your publicity to your topic. Once you’ve considered your reasons for blogging and the main focus of your blog, you should be able to target your publicity campaign specifically at sites, directories and forums that suit your topic of interest. This is common sense - if you were writing a football commentary blog you wouldn’t list it in fashion blog directories, for example, as the number of people that would see the listing for your blog and bother to click through would be minimal. It makes much more sense to focus on getting your blog noticed on sites, forums and directories which share an interest in your blog’s topic, as you are guaranteed to get subject-specific visitors. This in turn will help with the retention of visitors - rather than seeing your site and dismissing it as irrelevant within seconds of clicking through, topic-targeted visitors are far more likely to spend a bit of time reading through your posts and perhaps even returning for updates!

Visit the right forums. Take my blog as an example. I use it as a medium to discuss my life in two different countries, as well as observations about my job, my studies, my opinions on blogging, and interesting odds and ends I come across. Because I write about travel and Australia a fair bit, I have signed up for the Aussie Blogger Forum and the Expat Forum. Because I’m interested in the science of blogging, I’m also a member of the Authority Blogger Forum and the Bloggeries Blog Forum. As I’m a historian continuing my studies in the field, I also regularly participate over at the Historum Forum. All of these communities are friendly and packed full of advice and conversation about the topics they cover, and thus they are perfect for making your own opinions (and the existence of your blog) known. I get a great deal of traffic from the Historum and Aussie Blogger Forums, and I know that visitors from these sites will generally like what they find here because I write about topics that are relevant to the forums they’ve come from.

Comment on the right sites. One of the best ways to get topic-relevant traffic to your website is through visiting others that are focused within the same field. For my new website, which will be fashion and homewares based, I’ve been targeting design blogs, fashion diaries, and sites like Etsy and Mintd. The trick is to comment in a way that makes you seem intelligent, interested in what the other person has to say, and genuine in your intentions. Leaving a comment on a blog that reads, ‘Hi, I like your site, visit mine!’ won’t get you anywhere. A friendly question or knowledgeable response to the author’s post will take you a lot further - it will probably get the author to visit your site out of courtesy, and a few of the other blogs’ readers and commenters to click on your blog’s link out of curiosity.

Become a member in the right places. Just like being a member of the right forums, signing up for relevant communities and top lists is incredibly important. Again, to use my personal blog as an example: as I am Australian and often post about fashion and history-related topics, I have registered with The Australian Index (both in the Blog Directory and the Fashion Directory), the Australian Bloggers community at BumpZEE, and as many fashion, history, and Australian-related groups at BlogCatalog as I could find. This blog is also signed up for Ratified.org Australia, and the Top 100 Australian Women Bloggers.  My memberships and listings don’t necessarily get me a huge number of visits each month, but the people that do turn up at my site through these networks are guaranteed to at least be somewhat interested in what I have to say.

Links, links, links. Ah, links. We all crave them, we all wish they were easy to come by. Unfortunately getting people to link to your site can be quite difficult, particularly as it is not polite to simply ask for a link exchange without first establishing yourself as a genuine and frequent visitor to the other person’s site. My advice would be to avoid asking for reciprocal links altogether unless the other blogger or site owner has made it clear they are looking for new exchanges. Instead, focus on directories and services that will be seen by people interested in your blog topic, and the links will soon follow. You can try signing up for Entrecard and networking services like Technorati or MyBlogLog, but you need to make sure you use these services properly - you don’t want to come across as a spammer or someone desperate for attention. Be courteous, friendly, and never assume people are going to visit your site simply because you’ve visited theirs.

Hungry for visitors? Try establishing a good feed. Your feed - you may have seen the initials ‘RSS’ bandied about before - is basically a plain text version of everything you write on your blog. Readers of your blog can tell their feed-reading software to update whenever you make a new post, so that they don’t have to visit your site unnecessarily. People that use feeds regularly usually have a number of blogs and sites they receive feeds for, cutting down on loading times and eliminating the need to visit hundreds of different sites. It’s important to have a feed for your own blog even if no one subscribes to it straight away, in part because it establishes your blog as one that has had effort and thought put into it, and in part because it allows you to easily update a number of feed-related services which will in turn bring you new visitors to your site. There are a number of directories for feeds that you might consider signing up for - I recommend you check out the TopRank Best List of RSS Blog Directories as this was particularly helpful for me when I was starting out.

Mention your blog everywhere you can. Put it in the footer of your emails (but make sure you’re happy with the content on your blog being seen by everyone you email!), put it in the signature of your forum posts, and always fill in the URL field with the blog address when you leave someone a comment. If you become a member of sites like Last.FM, Shelfari, Kaboodle, Etsy, Amazon (for product reviews), or Flickr, make sure your website address is mentioned in your profile. People that have similar interests to you or who like what you’ve got to say will visit your blog and hopefully become return visitors.

Of course, the best way to keep your visitors coming back is to write interesting and well thought-out content - but this won’t get visitors to your site initially, so it’s important that you lay the ground work.