Simon Wakeman - marketing, public relations and digital communications

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@jangles - that said, it outputs as <ul> or <ol> so that wouldn't work as you need a dropdown. i'll think again!

Are trackbacks dead yet?

Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 10:10 pm

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On my blog I write about marketing, public relations and digital communications. To keep up-to-date with my posts you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or sign-up to receive blog posts by email.

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Antony Mayfield asks are trackbacks dead yet? Steve Rubel seems to think so, but I’m not so sure.

Trackbacks are an effective way for bloggers to create multi-threaded conversations that take place on multiple blogs.

It’s been suggested that widgets and other integrated third-party tools that bloggers embed on their site can take the place of trackbacks. They show who’s linking to a particular blog or post and are automatically updated by the third-party service itself, rather than relying on the blogger to send a trackback.

However I still think there’s value in trackbacks. They provide a direct link between two related blog posts, rather than an indirect link through a third-party site.

As a blogger I welcome trackbacks even more than I welcome comments - because if someone’s sending a trackback they’ve typically taken the time to write a post referencing mine, which shows a (slightly) greater level of engagement than writing a comment directly on my blog.

That said there are some real disadvantages to trackbacks. As Antony notes, bloggers need to be disciplined to send trackbacks when posting, as it’s all too easy to forget. Plus there’s the fact that some blogging platforms don’t accept trackbacks (why?) which means they aren’t a universal standard on all blogs.

I’ll keep sending trackbacks when it’s appropriate - and hopefully people will keep sending them my way too.

(and please, no-one ask me the difference between a trackback and a pingback - I’ve never really understood - but they seem to give the same end result)

Tags: antony+mayfield, Blogging, micropersuasion, open, pingback, Social media, steve+rubel, trackback

Comments on “Are trackbacks dead yet?”

Antony Mayfield
Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Ahem: where’s me trackback

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Simon Wakeman

I've been on the web since 2001 and have been blogging about marketing and public relations since January 2006.

I'm currently Head of Marketing at Medway Council as well as a freelance marketing and PR consultant.

The content and opinions expressed on this website are not endorsed by nor reflect the views of any company or organisation I work with.

I have always found him knowledgeable, pleasant and professional…I would happily recommend him to anyone needing a professional advisor in the areas of social media, web 2.0 and public sector communications although it’s worth mentioning that his skill set is much wider than that. Raul Gonzalez, Ether-Ray

I highly recommend Simon. He is an experienced marketing manager with excellent digital channel skills. He thinks strategically, is exceptionally reliable - always delivering on time and with good quality - and is also a good team player…It was great to have him on the team at Egg. Wendy Schratz, Egg

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