Archive for the 'BB31Days' Category

31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 11: Dig into your Site Statistics

The task for day 13, of 31 Days to a Better Blog is to dig into your blog’s metrics or statistics package.
(for further information on the challenge I’m taking part in, see the background page to the project)

“Take some time out today to do a little analysis of your blog’s statistics. There is a wealth of information in them that can be incredibly useful.”

Many of use use different forms of finding ways to analyze our users and traffic on our sites. A few years ago, the traditional ‘hit counter’ was common place on the home page of many sites, but these do not really give useful information about the users and type of users visiting your site. You don’t see them as often these days, but many sites are still tracking information about their site visitors, just doing it all behind the scenes.
(see my past post on retro websites if you want a reminder of the good old days of websites…)

Even though this challenge is aimed at blogs, I’d highly recommend any one or organisation who has a website or blog, to use analytical software so that they can really begin to look beneath the surface at how their site is used. It will help you shape the way your site is written and also help you to find the areas which aren’t used and the ones that are.
It doesn’t need to cost anything either, just some of your time and some curiousity, as the more you begin to analyse your site statistics, the more you will be entertained by the data on where your visitors come from, what browsers they use (does your website work perfectly in all browsers? When did you last check?), how long they spent on your site, who referred them, what keywords did the use on a search to find you and much, much more…

A couple of months ago, Beth Kanter put a shout out asking if any non profit organisations in the UK were using Google Analytics. She was doing a screencast primer for the Non-Profit Technology Empowerment Network (known often as NTEN) for a forthcoming webinar, and I responded saying that the organisation I manage as my day job, uses Google Analytics in a basic way for our site.

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 10: Declutter your sidebar

I’m still there and up to day 10 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge. The challenge set by Problogger Darren was something that I had already begun thinking about whilst stuck in a bad traffic jam earlier today. Yes, de-clutter your side bar. Read my thoughts below on how I will be approaching this and why.

Darren helps us with todays task by giving us some suggestions to help us to see what we do and don’t need on our sidebar/info areas on our sites. I feel we could all use these tips, by regularly doing a check of your blog or website, especially the homepage (doesn’t have to just be a blog) where in many cases people come to first, or if they entered your site elsewhere will return to to understand the context of your site. Is your homepage overloaded with unnecessary information? Well, these sidebar tips may help your website too.

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 9: Advertising on your site…how can this work for non-profits?

Today’s challenge by Prologger Darren Rowse was to run an advertising audit on your blog. Like many of the rest of us taking part in the challenge (see here for background information as to what it is about), it possibly isn’t relevant to the types of blogs involved in this challenge and to our aimed readership.

Saying that though, I have had two requests for support from non-profits this week alone, about advertising on their websites to help bring in some extra income. One wanted to explore the idea of ’sympathetic’ advertising using other national organisations with helplines that may help some of the users of their youth orientated website. Another just wanted to understand how advertising worked and could they have a go at it. I personally don’t want advertising on my own site, and I know that on one of the forums I connect with, that advertising was frowned upon at first by the users and it did create some great debate, but it did lever extra monies to enable it to keep afloat in it’s early days, and now their project is being supported enough not to rely on advertising. So instead of totally discounting it, how can we explore if it does have any relevance for non profits and charities?

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 8: Comment on a New Blog

The 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge continues, and to save repeating what it’s all about every day, I’ve created a handy page for the background information to the project and as to why I am taking part. Also, please do read the full article, your input could help you to win a lovely prize!

Todays given task is to Comment on a Blog that you’ve never Commented Before. It was listed as an easy task which it is, but it does also serve an important purpose of widening not only your presence, but also creating new relationships. You’ll (hopefully!) receive more traffic to your own site and create new contacts.

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 7: Plan a schedule for the week ahead

The 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge is gathering pace and numbers too in the collection of people who have connected together thanks to Michele Martin’s Bamboo Project Blog. At last there is someone else from the UK taking part (there’s 14 in all from across the globe now under Michele’s mini challenge, plus hundreds of others taking part directly at Prologger! It’s not too late to join in either).
Welcome to Tim Smith another fellow UK nptech blogger, who may I add has done a fine job of his task of helping ease new readers into his blog with improved About pages. I really need to make some time to do mine and soon! (if interested about this task, refer to my day 5’s activity of auditing your About page)

Anyway, back to the task, which today is about planning a schedule of posts for the week ahead.
Darren at Problogger suggests that we need to plan ahead. He tells us of his experiences on how he used to post on his blog and how he became a blogger that planned. He gives some really useful tips that can help those especially who want to blog with regularity to be able to plan and focus.

Darren’s process to help him plan involves brainstorming topics, then picks some to develop further, then clarifies what he wants to write about in a sentence to help him to bring the idea to reality. He then brainstorms key points he wishes to use in the article, and also remembers to look over previous posts for interlinking if they have similar themes or topics.
This is really useful, and I’m probably still somewhat at the sporadic posting stage, especially with this project to some extent. I’m using this blog to journey with my thoughts on the process of it all, rather than planning what I’ll write about the daily tasks.

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 6: Email an ‘Old Time’ Reader

Today’s task in the 31 Days to a Better Blog project by Prologger, is (thankfully) an easier one.
Darren says:

“Do you have readers that have been reading your blog since the ‘early days’ of your blogging? You know the ones, they’ve been commenting and contributing away to the point where they’ve almost become part of a the scenery on your blog.

These readers play a big part in making your blog what it is. Their comments are actually content that is being added to your blog, their involvement brings a sense of community and makes it a more vibrant place and their input adds to the knowledge base of your blog.

It’s not just new readers that you should be emailing a welcome email - but old ones too.

Shooting these readers a quick email thanking them for sticking with you and for adding value to your blog is something that I’m sure would create a great impression and build the loyalty even further.”

This blog is fairly new, and I decided to import only a few posts from my previous blog that I managed with Modx. Luckily on the backbone of the other site where I had my old blog, I had kept everything there behind the scenes, so I did manage to contact the first person who left a comment on my old blog. They thanked me for contacting and hadn’t realised that this blog had changed into a new format and at a new web address. They said they’d drop in to this site someday soon.

So what is the learning that can be read from today’s task?

Well, I am learning more and more each day, that a blog is much more than the author just posting on the web, your blog will be shaped partly by your readers and you and they will gain satisfaction if you build a good relationship.

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 5: Audit your ‘About’ page

The task set out for day 5 of the 31 Days to a Better Blog project was to run and audit of your About page. Darren comes up with some really useful points which are useful to blogs and websites too, and some helpful quick tips pages on what to include on such a page. Many of these tips have relevance for not only blogs, but also for general websites too, and will work in the non-profit website communications arena too.

When I design standard websites for organisations, I spend alot of time on the ‘About’ page working with a group. I help them work through key areas which help to pull their mission messages, information about their site and who it is aimed at, to enable the page to have clarity and give a clear concise message to help their readers.
There are a lot of organisations that I have helped who originally put their whole constitution on and all their policies in full on one big long page on which to me, puts off potential readers when they use that important about page to establish who the organisation is and what they do.
Remember what if it was a potential funder or supporter reading all of this! Does the reader need to read the full long governing document for that group? What added value does that document, and some of the internal operational policies give and do they even need to be on the site at all? Quite often this streamlining process gains additional value, as when we’ve worked through this part together, the group often begins to look at the rest of their information and communications and it helps them to clarify their purpose and vision.

Anyway, back to the task, Darren quotes the following about the importance of a good About page:

One of the key pages on a blog is the about page. This page is often used by new readers to a blog to gather information about you and your blog and based upon what they find on this page they could be making a decision as to whether they’ll subscribe to your blog or not.

As a result, your About Page is a key conversion page on your blog and it therefore needs to be reworked regularly.

As a result it’s essential that you provide up to date, useful and well written information on this page.

Include compelling reasons for people to keep tracking with your blog and provide them with the means to do so within the content (RSS, newsletter etc).

Take some time today to do an audit of your About Page. What does it communicate? How could you improve it?

My own About page on this blog needs a fair bit of attention paying to it, so how can I make it better?

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 4: Interlink your posts

Wow, this challenge is requiring abit more headspace and time than I previously had anticipated. I hope that I can keep up!
For the background as to what this is all about, I was tipped off by Michele Martin’s Bamboo Project Blog who is collecting a growing list of bloggers like myself who are all undertaking and connecting over the challenge set by Problogger Darren Rowse. I’ve found it imensley useful so far, I have a whole new set of readers from the US and Australia who themselves are taking part in this experiment and we’re all commenting on each others observations on the process of it all. The comments they’ve made are really useful as well, exploring new ideas or confirming thoughts.
Another benefit of this experiment is that I’ve also found new blogs, which I may never have seen before thanks to the networking that has come out of this, and interestingly they all are useful in one way or another to me. Since pulling all my feeds together using the fabulous Netvibes, which has made my life so much easier to keep up to date with my favourite blogs and sites, I have become possible abit narrow visioned and forgotten that there are other sites and blogs out there that provide use to me. It’s also inspiring me for new posts (which will come in time, when time allows!) which can only be a good thing. Apologies if me blog seems more of a personal diary currently, but I think it’s a useful project for myself, and hopefully will have some use for others out there, especially within the non-profit arena as my thoughts evolve.

Anyway, back to the task in hand.
The task is to dig back into your archives and do some interlinking of posts.

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 3: Search for and join forums. How can non-profits preserve their image?

Today’s task for Probloggers 31 Days to a Better Blog was to search for and join Forums.
Rightly as Darren quotes by taking part in forums and online communities, they can help build relationships, help with profile and branding, learning and readership. (and increase your credibility?)
Like Michele Martin on her Bamboo Project blog, I already subscribe to a fair few forums. So what can I learn here?

I analysed the forums, and more so the ‘communities’ which I take part in. Some are much for my own learning with a particular application, and as myself I’ve grown and learn’t with the application, I’ve become confident to offer back advice to others that post questions. Some, I dip into with them a specific query or just plain curiosity when I am not sure of an answer. I haven’t the capacity to take on joining up any further fora just for the purpose of this experiment.
One thing that did make sense though, was the part of highlighting my signature, of linking to my blog. Some forums I have been with for years, and some forums and communities are newer, am I using the same ’strapline’ or signature and highlighting my blog?
Erm, no. Not in all cases. So something to rectify at some point as soon as time allows or I next revisit them.

So, if we were looking at this from the perspective of a non-profit, voluntary or community organisation who blogs, and also takes part in discussion on various forums. How would we ensure that we did it right?

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31 Days to a Better Blog - Day 2 continued…

If you read yesterdays post, I was embarking on the challenge of 31 days to a better blog and had a new reader which commented (thanks to Liz at Smoke Free Wisconsin!), and I duly emailed back and am pleased to see she is joining me on the challenge with Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project.

Well, the people I was aiming to tackle as being my first time readers to do an audit with had no internet connection when I turned up. So, I kept quiet about my ’secret life’ as a blogger until something amazing happened later in our evening conversations…My friend said she’d actually looked at my blog and told me without any asking and prompting of how she viewed the site and so on. Really useful. (She liked it! Didn’t understand it all as it wasn’t her thing but liked the style and the layout and the clarity!)

Still not satisfied though, I managed to get another friend to do the dastardly task earlier today. They really only used the web for online management of their accounts and using it to find out information or for researching other organisations and funders. They didn’t get the point or reasoning of blogs and weren’t really enthused at the idea of reading my blog at first but were prepared to give it a go for a bit of bribery on my part, as they know that I am abit of a ‘nptech’ enthusiast and wanted to help!

(A good specimen to try out with!)

It was really interesting to watch them have a go with viewing a blog instead of a ‘normal’ website.
They found the whole experience strangely enlightening. They usually found ‘blogs’ a real put off as they were used to using the web for a different purpose and usually were turned off from reading blogs due to the clutterness that many blogs contain. Never ending home pages due to all the blog-rolls and links at the sides and content which had no reality to their needs. Too much mixed media and mixed messages.

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