This post has been submitted by Sharon Hurley Hall from Get Paid To Write Online.com.

For a long time, Backtype had the ’so what’ factor for me. Yes, it was cool that you could have an online profile where all your comments could be stored, but since I don’t have a huge network, it wasn’t really that exciting. However, it has come a long way since then, with a lot of really cool features.

Getting Started With BackType

Getting started is really simple. All you do is input your blog information and you’re set. You can have a short profile and photo and you can specify communication preferences, then claim your comments through a simple one page form. Backtype starts tracking your comments and asking you to approve them for listing in your profile. I used to find this annoying when I signed up, as BackType found comments that were months old for me to approve. However, now that those are out of the way, I get an occasional email when there are comments to approve.

Being Sociable

Like other socially oriented sites you can have friends and followers and you can set preferences for how you interact with their content. One nice feature in the comments approval window is a list of the blogs you have commented on in the right sidebar. You can share and tweet comments from within the BackType interface as well as remove them. You also have a chance to identify spam comments and have them removed.

The Dashboard

The main page shows comments from people in your network, allowing you a second chance to tune into a conversation you might have missed. BackType pulls comments from WordPress, Blogger and Typepad blogs as well as Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and many others, so its reach is wide. Other features include to set up alerts for search terms mentioned in comments, subscribe to comments on particular posts, and now to track conversation around a particular URL.

BackType Connect

But the latest announcement made me jump up and down with glee - BackType Connect, a WordPress plugin which lets you track conversation on your blog posts via BackType. Immediately after installing it, it found tweets of my posts, as well as comments on another site. These are now accessible to people who visit my site, potentially broadening the conversation even further.

The Verdict

At the moment, I’m glad I stuck with BackType. I think the latest addition makes it useful for any blogger who wants to track interaction on the social sites. There are widgets for shared comments and a blogroll comprising the sites you comment on most, too, so it’s got a lot going for it. I plan to stick with BackType for a while.

Sharon Hurley Hall
Get Paid To Write Online.com

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