1. If you want people to read your post as soon as possible – to increase your blogs popularity, you have to ping after you’ve published a post. It’s a very important subject for all bloggers.
2. There are services on the internet that scans blog for updates and publishes the recently updated blogs. As soon as you’ve updated your blog, you should let them know that by sending a ping to that service.
3. A ping is like a handshake between two people. When you’re shaking hands you get to hear the news from her/him. So, by pinging you tell services like blogrolling or Technorati that you’ve updated your blog.
4. In WordPress: There are a ping function built in already, called ping-o-matic. You find it in WordPress Admin Panel under Options => Writing. On that page’s (Writing Options) bottom, under the header “Update Services” You can se a box where it already is written rpc.pingomatic.com.
5. WordPress is executing the ping automatically, but I personally don’t think it does it fast enough, so I do it manually by Pingoat for now.
6. Besides that, if there is a problem at the pingomatic site, your blog posting can be slow. I don’t recommend to add more pinging services there for that reason. As a matter of a fact, some people even removes it from there to speed up their posting time and handle it all manually.
7. All you have to do is to go to Pingoat’s site (link at the end of this post) and the first time you have to fill in your blog name, blog url and what services you want to ping. Pingoat has a long list of services to ping for you. I have Pingoat bookmarked in my browser for easy access.
8. In Blogger: If you have set that up in Blogger, it pings Weblogs. (Dashboard, Settings, Publishing, Notify…) I don’t know exactly how it works, but I’ve noticed on my mothers Blogger blog that it hasn’t been pinged directly after I published the post, so I guess it’s the same there as in WordPress.
9. Example how to ping a Blogger blog on Pingoat:
Blog name: Your blogs name
Blog url: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com
XML feed: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml
10. You can click on the headers to mark all services you want to ping under that header, instead of clicking one by one. Click on the button “Go Pingoat!” and you’re done.
11. Pingoat tells you if you already have pinged recently, so it’s no danger in pinging manually. I’ve been pinging like this for many months now.
12. You can get blacklisted there, by mistake or because you’ve tried too many times with the same post (it looks like spam), but it’s only to contact them and they fix it. It has only happened to me once so far. In the meantime I used pingomatic.
13. I highly recommend to start pinging there as soon as you’ve published a post – if you want to ease the way for more traffic 
Oh, and sometimes people use the word ping as shortening for pingback, so don’t mix up the two different words! Read what a pingback is here.
pingoat.com
pingomatic.com
Read more on wordpress Codex about Pinging
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I had no idea that ping was even a word..Thats a neat list..I am going to try that
Lifecruiser: Great, you do that
Thanks for the advice on pinging! I was noticing that blogrolling wasn’t picking up the pings from the various services, so I was having to go directly to their site and do it there. But today it looks like it’s been fixed!
Great post.
I’m off to check out pingoat!
Lifecruiser: Thanks. I’ve been doing that with blogrolling too since the problem started.
Your new Lay-out is great. Filled of warmth.
And thank you so much for the Ping information.
btw. your the only one I have the time to visit today from work
Lifecruiser: Thanks Tor – and I’m honored
I’m glad you found the ping info useful.
I were very happy to read all this, because I am looking for a service who tells people that I have published a new post (not for writer cramps but for my cat blog) because on the cat blog people only come for the Thursday thing and not for other entries, because I left this blog unused for quite some time. So I post bravely but nobody knows. Now you said people would be advertised, but I never were advertised when you published something ! I always come here to have a look. So that’s disappointing me a little. Or I misunderstood the whole thing.
BTW, this morning I put some of my paintings on my painting blog and while I choose the painting, I thought of your background ! One of my paintings background looks like yours ! We must have the same taste for colors !
Lifecruiser: A short explanation comes here
The #1 way to advertise a blog is always to be around spreading comments on other peoples blogs leaving a link back to your blog.
When it comes to the pinging business: Pinging advertise to different kind of services like for example to the blog directorys where your blog is listed, Technorati.com services (which most bloggers use) and every subscriber of your RSS Feed (many people read blogs only by RSS Readers today, such as Bloglines.com for an example). When it comes to Blogrolling.com it also is supposed to show that your blog is updated in peoples blogrolls so they know when you have a new post, which is extremely useful of course.
There are also different kind of link exchange services, but personally I don’t think that’s a good solution for personal blogs, if even for commercial ones. That’s only to get many links to your blog, but is no guarantee that they or their visitors actually reads it, or even worse linking back at all. There are ways to cheat with this too unfortunately.
The most important advice to get more readers and comments is to try to get the content in the blog as interesting for the readers as possible and return their visits. Very often the rest gives itself.
Feel free to ask fi something still is unclear… *s*
Lifecruiser: You’re warmth welcome
I’m just glad that you find it useful!
It’s quite cold on the mountain this morning and your blog has made it warmer.
Thanks for the ping advice. Is there a pong service also?
And yes, I’m back.
Lifecruiser: *screaming* You’re back!!!!! Oh, so you come here to be warm
You know that you’re always warmth welcome here!!!! Pong service may be transformed to thong, would that do? *LMAO*
I always try to ping but since a lot of my posts are done ahead it is not always easy to do so.
Mrs. L I do not like the new flame background. It hurts my eyes! And it steals from the beautiful header picture!
Lifecruiser: Well, either you have to stay away until we have change it – or you can try to put on some cool sunglasses while your’re visiting us
*giggles*
wow, very informative!
ping!
Lifecruiser: *lol* do I confuse you if I say that I ping back? *lol again*
Very useful information, thanks!
Lifecruiser: You’re welcome Jane
I didn’t even know what a ping was. Thanks for sharing! Very helpful
Lifecruiser: I’m just glad if I could be to any help
thanks! very interesting T13!
Lifecruiser: Good
That is fantastic information. I learned alot from this TT post. My favorite of the week!
Lifecruiser: Wow! I couldn’t dream about that this info was that needed! Good
Hey! You’re on FIRE over here!
Excellent, useful informative post. I’m sure you’ll be helping a lot of bloggers with it!
Lifecruiser: Thanks. Yes, I know, don’t we burn well….? *lol*
dang something I didnt know!!
Lifecruiser: He he
But now you can spread the word and pretend that you knowed by yourself 
You do GREAT work; wondering if you might be interested in publishing articles at For Your Success. With your permission, I’d like to have this one posted.
Are you open to link exchanges with this blog?
Lifecruiser: Thanks, I’m very honored. I do have to check your blog out a bit and think about it though, so I’ll promise to come back with an answer later
Hey Lifecruiser, thats an excellent post.
Did you know you can add ping services to WordPress? In the top left hand corner of my blog is a ‘Ping Services List’ page. Just copy & paste these into your blog & spread the word further (also includes pinging Google blogsearch which is essential!)
I usually find my posts in Technorati 10-20 minutes after posting, so it’s pretty fast
Lifecruiser: Thanks – and for the tip. Yes I already know that. I’m mentioning it in #6 – and also say that don’t add too much there because it may slow down the blog posting sometimes. It’s an act of balance of course
I’m also wondering:
In your list, you have at the top mentioned pingomatic also (WP’s default ping service) – but if you go to http://www.pingomatic.com and take a look of what it pings, you can see that it pings a lot of the pinging services you mention in your list.
This means, if you have both pingomatic and the other ones in your list, that you’re pinging the same pinging services more than once. That’s not really necessary and wouldn’t it make you taking the risk of being blacklisted there as “spam” pings? Besides that, can they manage if ALL bloggers keep pinging them several times?
Woow, you certainly are multi talented – this was a very readable post. I knew pinging is important for blogger but this collections of hints was an eye opener for me – thanks for sharing!
Btw: I can tell that naked flames are allowed on your cruises:-)
Lifecruiser: Thanks. You’re welcome Renny
He he he, yes wasn’t it funny that was what I was thinking too when reading your post??!!!
Well you just know everything about the ping!
LOL
Such a well-written post.
Thanks for sharing,
Frances
Lifecruiser: Thanks. Well, not everything about the ping, but pretty much. There is always something new to learn, thankfully!
I usually ping blogrolling and technorati when I post. I have them set up in my favourites.
I noticed on my site that blogrolling is acting strange today. It was showing everyone as having new posts. I had the opposite problem a few weeks ago, new post were up but they weren’t adequately marked on my blogrolls.
It didn’t matter too much, except for being annoying looking, because I use bloglines now to see if new posts are up for ‘my’ blogs.
I think your TT was very useful and informative LC.
Lifecruiser: As Caylynn said earlier here, “I was noticing that blogrolling wasn’t picking up the pings from the various services, so I was having to go directly to their site and do it there. But today it looks like it’s been fixed!” So maybe that’s why you saw this.
I don’t really ping at Technorati. It’s bothersome. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t bookmark the ping site, and I’m too lazy to even ping my site
But thanks for the great information! I now know much more clearly how it works. Thanks for sharing, I’ll try it soon!
Lifecruiser: I’m sure that is only because you are a bit shy and want to write somewhat in privacy huh? *s*