Postcards from the Funny Farm

I’ve been using a new social networking/marketing service called Entrecard and this post is a summary of my findings. By way of introduction, let me just tell you that this is one startup company that if they were handing out logo pens I would be eagerly taking several. This company is valuable and serves a viable purpose, unlike so many internet startups out there.

Entrecard is a service that allows you to drop your virtual card on blogs you visit as they leave theirs on yours. You both get “credits” for doing so and this allows you with time to purchase advertising on other blogs. This is not normal advertising, it is just exposure or advertising for your blog. Above in the screen shot you see the line of cards that were dropped on my site just today. It is good etiquette to visit each one and drop and comment back. In all honesty, I don’t always comment. There are some weak blogs on Entrecard. Besides that, sometimes I have 50 or more dropped on my blog and who has time to read and comment on that many blogs?

You see here one of the size choices for a widget. This is the size I have here on my blog. You can see it’s a simple pic with a link to the site along with a bar down below that allows you to drop your Entrecard.

This is a great day to find new blogs out there. It’s also a great way to get your blog noticed. One drawback is that the established Entrecard blogs are very expensive (in terms of credits, nothing costs anything in terms of dollars and cents) to advertise on and I have noticed this doesn’t necessarily correlate with quality.

At the same time, the “drops inbox” has a feed so you can subscribe to the feed that tells you who dropped at your blog. This makes “dropping back” really easy, well I won’t say easy, but it gets done!

People will request to advertise on your site. Once approved by you, their widget will appear for one day on your site. It’s a cool back to grassroots marketing for blogs.

There is a limited selection of blogs on Entrecard which I don’t know is a blessing or a curse. For example, I was looking for blogs on Fuel my Blog the other day and it was like sifting through hayseed. Entrecard is the opposite, there are only a handful to choose from in each category and that makes it easy to get familiar with the ones you frequent.

To conclude my very short review, I find Entrecard productive. I have gained a few new readers and some traffic as a result of using it. the drawbacks are that it is time consuming and limited in the blogs it exposes you to. If you try it out, make sure you drop on this site!