What Bloggers Like - 10 Things

There is a website dedicated to Stuff White People Like that I looked at for the first time last summer. I passed a car full of bumper stickers this morning and remembered how it prompted me to write this post.

So I thought it would be a good time to write What Bloggers Like - of course in my non-expert opinion.

1. Comments - We don't care if you say we don't know what we're talking about (you may after this post is finished) or our kid is the smartest, most adorable one in the world. We Love It.
2. Followers - I have recently joined a network of bloggers where we have agreed to follow each other to pump up our numbers. Boom, within the last month or so I went from three to 81 (as of this writing). You know what, I read most of the blogs I follow and some are quite good. Go figure. I felt like I was cheating on my math test and it turns out I knew the answers.
3. Widgets - Blogger keeps adding new ones and it's easy to steal ideas off bloggers you follow (see #2) above. I personally like the link within widget located after each one of my posts that teases, entices and lures visitors to keep reading my posts. It has also worked very succesfully on other blogs where I keep clicking and reading.
4. Free Blog Templates - There are numerous free templates available online for the novice blogger to the more experienced. Personally, this blog is designed by me using a free template that I have heavily modified to suit my needs. In turn, I have created my own buttons like those for Flashback Friday and my WebSavvyMom signature at the bottom of all my posts.
5. Twitter - A newer phenomenon to me is following people and in turn being followed on twitter; a social networking vehicle that prompts you to comment about what you're doing in 140 characters or less. For more of an explanation, read my Twitter for Dummies post.
6. Give-A-Ways - If you are giving away a $5 gift card to Starbucks, free blog redesign or a corporate sponsored product, people will sign up to win in the comments section. Often times the person doing the give-a-way lures the visitor into following them (see #2), tweeting about the contest (see #5) or doing a post on their blog for more entries.
7. Pictures - Personally, I include a picture in almost every post I do because for me, it's more interesting and I hope for you, the same. The better the quality and the more relevant to the post, the better, in my opinion. I decided to use one of my many self-portrait shots for this one because I was stuck otherwise.
8. Creating Aliases - When I created this blog in June 2008, I spent about three seconds thinking of a name and who would be visiting. I expected a few of my family members a few times a month. So in turn, I used my real last name and the real first names of my family and friends. Apparantly, this is bad etiquette in the world of Mommy Bloggers. In turn, I have renamed my blog (with a misspelled word) to WebSavvyMom.com for $10 a year (see this blog entry to learn how) and still continue to use real first names. I am not going to be famous, I don't write anything that will put my child into therapy (I hope) so real names are how I roll. Plus, I'm not Dooce.
9. Blog Buttons - It's important to create a blog button that reflects the look of your site but more importantly, to include the code on how to let others add the button to your site. Please note my button to the side advertising Flashback Friday, in case you want to use a HTML widget (see #3) to add it to yours.
10. Theme Days - There are many people I follow who participate in blogging theme days such as Wordless Wednesday, Writing Workshops, etc. For those of you may have missed it, this is my third shamelessreference to Flashback Friday. I started it in December 2008 and just realized that it may be something others are interested in. Please stop by on Fridays and join in the fun. If not, be sure to leave a comment (see #1) or tweet about it (see #5).

What have I missed? What other things do bloggers like?