One of the many ways to drive traffic to your blog is through the popular blog search engine Technorati, which is currently tracking more than 55 million-plus blogs.

Through Technorati, you can track who’s linking to you, who talking about the same subjects as you, and let others name you as one of their “favorite” blogs and favorite them too (see who’s favorited me).

Start by signing up for a Technorati account here. Then be sure and “claim your blog,” which looks like this:

I talked in a previous post about “tagging” and gave you a link to an outstanding tag generator that generators tags for Technorati too.

ONE MORE THING: As I already said, when you sign up in Technorati, you can “favorite” the blogs you read often.

I’m a big fan of promoting other good bloggers … to thank the respondents of my 5 Blogging Questions, I’ve put in all the code necessary for you to “favorite” them. So, go sign up at Technorati, come back and click on the green icon next to their name and add them to your favorites.

FAVORITE THESE BLOGS:

1. Mark Batterson of Evotional
2. Andrew Jones of Tall Skinny Kiwi
3. Ben Gray of OpenSwitch
4. Michael Spencer of InternetMonk
5. Tim Stevens of Leading Smart
6. Tony Morgan of TonyMorganLive
7. DJ Chuang of DJChuang.com
8. Gary Lamb of Mad Babble from a Church Planter
9. Darren Rowse of Problogger.net
10. Marty Duren of SBC Outpost
11. Anthony Coppedge of AnthonyCoppedge.com
12. Joe McKeever of JoeMcKeever.com
13. Ben Arment of History in the Making
14. Micah Fries of Friesville
15. Kent Shaffer of Church Relevance
16. Mark Roberts of MarkDRoberts.com
17. Wade Burleson of Grace and Truth To You
18. Ariel Vanderhorst of BitterSweetLife
19. Tim Ellsworth of Tim Ellsworth.com
20. Gene Mason of Communicorps
21. Kem Meyer of Less Cluter & Noise
22. Steve McCoy of Reformissionary
23. Drew Goodmanson of Goodmanson
24. Perry Noble of Perry Noble
25. Todd Rhoades of Monday Morning Insight
26. Dan Lee of Blog Ministry
27. Alan Nelson of Rev! Unplugged (Magazine)
28. Peter Bishop of Peter Bishop
29. James Higginbotham of Agile Ministry
30. Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost
31. Jon Edmiston of As Far As I Can Tell
32. Terry Whalin of The Writing Life
33. Greg Atkinson of Church Video Ideas
34. Dr. Hershael York of Confessions of a Pastor
35. Dr. John Jackson of Pastorpreneur
36. Dr. Alvin Reid of Books, Culture and the Gospel
37. Chalan Thibodeaux of ChalanThibodeaux Dot Com
38. Michael Foster of The Gaslight Gospel
39. Scott Reavley of Treasure Chest
40. Jim Walton of Church Tech Matters
41. Dan Ohlerking of The Pursuit
42. La Shawn Barber of La Shawn Barber’s Corner
43. Mark O. Wilson of Revitalize Your Church
44. Bob Franquiz of Bob Franquiz.com
45. Brad Hinman of Churchonomics
46. Tim Challies of Challies
47. Dr. Mark Devine of Theology Prof
48. Bob Franquiz of Bob Franquiz
49. Kevin Kendricks of Church Marketing Sucks

Also: Brian Clark at CopyBlogger

Me Too, Please! Here’s the CCP link!

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[ Read all the previous posts in the Blogging 101 for Pastors series, including 5 Questions responders. ]

Bob Franquiz is founder and lead pastor of Calvary Fellowship in Miami Lakes, Fla. He’s also the author of Elements: Starting a Revolution in Your World. He blogs at Bob Franquiz.com.

Here’s his answers:

1. Why (or how) did you start blogging?

I started blogging for a couple of reasons:

I felt like I had something to contribute to the conversation of what was happening in [the] church world. There was a few blogs that I had started reading and really liked, and I simply wanted to get to know some other leaders that felt the same way about church leadership as I did.

It also created a way for the people in my church to hear my heart about a variety of topics of regards to church, leadership, or teaching as I shared my thoughts with other church leaders. So I could say anything about why we do what we do and it wasn’t me preaching to them. Instead, the folks in our church could eavesdrop on my conversation with other leaders.

2. What subject do you post most about?

I write mostly about things that I’m learning about leading a church. I write about preaching. I review a lot of books. I write about the Red Sox. I blog about the challenges of being a portable church. That’s why we created our Momentum blog for our upcoming conference for portable churches. (Was that too shameless of a plug?)

[ Editorial Note: NO WAY! That's allowed! ]

3. What are your favorite blog tools?

I use Bloglines to stay current on the blogs I read. I use TypePad for my blog. It’s easy to use, so the average Third Grader could build a blog.

4. How often do you post?

I try to post once a day, but I don’t hold myself to any quota. Honestly, I post when I think I’ve got something to say and when I have the time to say it. I try to be consistent, but I don’t let rule my life.

5. What one piece of advice would you give for prospective blogging pastors?

My advice to Pastors would be to stay focused on what they want to talk about. If your blog is so varied that there’s no real theme, adding readers will be more difficult. So find the niche you want to write about most and write about that 75% of the time. You can pepper the rest with stuff that’s more interesting to you. I know people read my blog because I write about leadership and church, not the Red Sox. So I focus my blog and sprinkle some other stuff in there for fun.

[ Read all the previous posts in the Blogging 101 for Pastors series ]

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[ Read all the posts in the Blogging 101 for Pastors series here. ]

One of the questions I was asked about recently as part of the Blogging 101 for Pastors series is “How can I make my graphical header look better?”

You’re not always stuck, of course, with the headers that are provided to you by your blogging platform’s templates (i.e. Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, etc.).

But if you have some photo editor, like Adobe Photoshop or Paint, you can create a cool header for your blog pretty quickly.

I’m not going to get into all the details of how to replace the image, because I spent way too much time preparing these graphical examples (which you can download here).

Here are some general guidelines for blogging pastors graphical headers:

• On finding photo backgrounds — I went to stock.xchng for the leaf photos below. That’s a great site for photos, but be sure and use only ones that don’t have restrictions … you’ll need an account, but most of the photos on that site are free! Also, try iStockPhoto (paid service, but awesome photos!).

• On fonts — I used common fonts found on most computers and those popular with Web 2.0 logos, such as VAG Rounded, Helvetica, Arial Black.

• On colors — See these color generators for some neat color schemes.

• On sizing the graphics — Generally over 700 pixels at 72 dpi

Here’s some examples of headers I did for fictional blogger Pastor Pete:

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due: I used this incredble, awesome, fantastic site for three of these graphics. Download the Photoshop files and have fun!

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