Blogrolls and the value of linking across websites, tweets and Facebook pages

One of the topics which came up at an earlier Talk about Arts, Culture and Place sessions was a discussion about blogrolls.

We were looking at the ways in which people find out about what’s on around them, how they get recommendations to start that journey and how they can help signpost useful information to other people.

Creating a simple reference list of sites (blogroll) which readers of your blog or website might also want to visit was for many years a staple feature for many of us.

And while quicker, faster methods of sharing have since come along, creating a blogroll can still be a valuable way to link to other people, give them recognition for their activities and help join up activity into a bigger blogosphere for the benefit of those involved.

Plus it can be the starting point for more activity such as creating RSS feeds, aggregated content feeds for widgets or visualising local activity via maps or diagrams.

The massive and long-running blogroll at The Manchizzle blog (screengrab above) is a great example of this sort of activity and has been mapping the cultural activity of Greater Manchester for many years. It is now so large that many categories have been produced in order to make it easier to navigate.

But although there isn’t currently any similar overarching website or blog for the wider Tees Valley area, mapping and recognising those sites, blogs, Facebook and twitter feeds already serving the area would seem to be as good a place as any to start so we thought we’d start with a shared document as a resource.

At this GoogleDoc is the start of a blogroll with some of those we’ve found to date – it certainly isn’t complete and is missing those blogs, sites and pages run by individuals that are currently often hard to find.

Know of any more? Please do help us to build this up and help make these sites more visible. If there’s any mentioned here that would enhance your own blog or website please do show them a little link love and add them to your own blogrolls too.

You can write directly into the spreadsheet – feel free to add more rows as necessary – or drop a link into the comments field below and we’ll update the roll. It can be your own site or just one you enjoy that you’d like other people to discover.

They are currently in no particular order. If many different categories become apparent over time, they could be separated out.

In addition, we’ve started this Twitter list – please do let us know if you belong there – and give them a follow! The hahstag for all activity in connection with this is #noticeTees.

If you’d like to meet up with some of the creative people busy across the Tees Valley area, we have two more events coming up before the end of 2013.

– On Saturday we are in Darlington and running a free session about using social media to make connections and increase visibility. Sign up for that here.

– A week later, it’s all going to be about video and audio. You can sign up for that one here.

We’d love to see you.