Skribit Review – How Is It Going So Far?

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:52:52 +0000

A few days ago we posted about the new service, called “Skribit” (we think it is pronounced “skribe it” but we could be wrong…. if it is “skrib it”, it sounds like a frog). This service helps provide a way for bloggers to further interact with their readers and find out what it is they want… well sort of.

We promised that we would update you with a more detailed Skribit Review once we had more information and so here it is.

1. Traffic is a Must: This was stated in the comments and is 100% the biggest factor for the success of using this tool. If you have a brand new blog, you should have loads of content and new ideas to write about anyway and you need to focus on growing your readership. Once you have an established blog and readership, then this tool can be worthwhile.

2. Multi Votes: Clear your private data or use a different computer and vote up the story you like. With every tool out there, it is easy to find ways to abuse the systems. Skribit is not a perfect tool of course and as a result there are ways to manipulate results into your favor. If you visit a site using Skribit everyday and vote up the story you want, you can influence its ranking very easily. Now the only possible way around that would be to make everyone register and log into an account before voting and therefore barely anyone would use it… unless of course we figured out how to reward them for thier effort.

3. Open to Smart Asses: Well, since we are pretty much some of the biggest smart asses around, we can see why people would be tempted to do this, but the fact remains that people can post what ever they want as a response to your questions with Skribit. Make sure to check it regularly to delete unwanted posts.

4. Interactive: Anything that can help get your readers more involved and interacting with your blog is a great thing. Not everyone of your readers may interact with it but no matter what you do, you will never get all your readers involved all the time.

Ok, so what is our overall opion of Skribit?

We like it!

As we stated earlier, anything that provides more interaction for your readers is a good thing. The system can be used to find out what readers want you to write about, what they liked best, thier opinions on topics and more. Being that it is user generated content, the variety of uses is pretty huge.

Personally we do not recommend you use it all the time. Mix it in and out of your blog and change its use. Do not keep the same question up for too long as it can look bad on your blog, you do not want to give the impression that no one ever visits your site and nothing changes. Also we recommed that you prefill some responses off the start the first time you use this. People do not always like to be the first to speak up and by seeding it with some responses you can get others to chime in.

Last of all make sure to promote your use of it. Let your readers know it is up on your blog and what you want them to do. Give instructions and explain what you are asking that specific request for.

Now We have two questions for you…

1. How do you pronounce Skribit?

2. What are your ideas for possible uses of Skribit?

Skribit Social Suggestions – Might be cool

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:59:28 +0000

Was Twittering and noticed a reference from “Problogger” about this new tool he was checking out called Skribit. The concept of the tool is to help bloggers (like us) figure out what to write about based on readers (like you) requests and votes.

Like any “Social / Web 2.0″ tool, the effectiveness of this will be directly related to the involvement from its users, but personally, we really like the idea!

No matter what your business is, it is always wise to listen to your readers, customers, listeners and so on. Now for bloggers, Skribit makes it very fast and easy…. or so it seems.

So is this tool worth while?

Dont know yet, we just installed it about 45 minutes ago and need to give it a bit to see if any of you actually send in suggestions

Check it out and let us know what you want us to moo about. To use the tool, simple locate the “Skribit” box in our sidebar, directly under the sponsor banners and click in the “What should we write about?” section. Next enter the topic you would like us to write about.

If you like a suggestion already there, then vote for it.

It looks like when a suggestion is answered it disappears… need to figure that out for sure though.

Thats pretty much all there is to it that we can see right now. We will update everyone on our opinion after a few days of use.

Interested to know if any of you have any previous experience with this and any feedback about it? Also, if you have not tried it, what is your initial opinion of it?

John Cow dot Com » skribit

Skribit Review – How Is It Going So Far?

Skribit Social Suggestions – Might be cool