In my experience most of your reader share going to find you via other means than mostly Google (curious to see what others have found in this btw). My blog is in the top 5% of Microsoft blogs (fair whack of readers) and majority of my readership simply find me, add me to their RSS Reading agent of choice and leave it at that. The ones that don't are usually the ones that come from external linking and usually to throw some abuse / support my way on whatever today's topic is. The key to it is to ensure your blog RSS serves up the complete post from end to end. As you don't want to make them read "to get more" as that just ticks them off further and not only that i've found if you do, it reduces your chances of them "sharing" you around (sounds like a prison story).
It pays to give out a feedburner.com style RSS feed instead of your own, as if you decide to switch in and out of blogging tools, it won't disrupt your subscribed readers. This site also helps you ascertain how many readers subscribe to you as well (not accurate but close enough). It gives you a break down of how they are reading you as well (ie Surprisingly Outlook 2007 has majority 64% of the lion share but i'm stoked for Nick and Feedmon). I'd also shop around for some analytics tools, probably slap two into the code to keep a benchmark as not all are accurate. If you've got "hands on" access to your code or want to, also think about tracking those who comment the most on your blog and more importantly keep an eye on your topics of choice. In that for my blog anything "Adobe Compete" gets a spike from new/old readers whilst talking RIA also brings them out. If i mention anything personal related or left field, I get about a 10-15% read if that.. I find that comments aren't a good gauge to judge a blogs popularity by. I at times used to get disenchanted that I hardly got comments (mostly the pro-adobe-i'm-annoyed-at-you-barnes crowd) and thought I must not have a readership that cares? yet every time I try and change it up in a different route, i get complaints direct.. so understand your audience once they settle in with you and make sure you talk about what you think is relevant to you first, but also to those whom are reading as the purpose of a corporate blog is really to drive home an insiders view of whats going on... not so much "my cat dipped his head in the water, it was so funny.." as then you're effectively talk by yourself ;) Windows Live Writer is freakin awesome, iv'e not heard a bad thing about it from any blogger yet and it's by far the easiest way I've ever encountered to blog with, so make sure your solution can use that (not sure if BlogCFC has one, I had intended to write one many moons ago but workload crumbled over the top of me on it). As my big chief (COO) would say "..Here are you Go Do's.." - Use Feedburner.com to hand out your RSS, and stray away from given folks access to your direct RSS/XML feed. - Use more than 2 analytics services to track your audience. - Use a client tool like Windows Live Writer as it just makes life easier (whether you like/dislike Microsoft) - oh and J.J. Allaire's team wrote it, so it's kosher for you all ;) - Listen to your audience, monitor them and talk with them, not at them. Unless your blogging due to some therapeutic way of channeling your thoughts, in which case you blog for you, not readers.. I do both.. - Your blog engine of choice matters little, so long as you give me the full post in your RSS feed.. don't make me click or else.. - Watch for spam, it will ruin your day / blog and that also goes for aggregators. As what they do is aggregate your blog, make money off the ads and creep into Google / Live.com search rankings.. You can't stop them but don't link back to them via automated ping/trackbacks. Keep your comments clean as if people subscribe to them, and spam keeps rolling in, it alienates your audience. - Syndication (MXNA, FullAsAGoog etc) can help you reach new audiences, but don't use it as your main source of marketing, learn to go beyond them as it will teach you a whole new level of blogging ;) - Have fun and blog smart.. in that if you blog for a company, pay attention to legal / PR related issues... (ie 2wks in Ted and I had a dust up and Andrew's crew - builderAU - decided it was news worthy.. I didn't mind PR ringing me but Legal was a pain in the butt as they never share my sense of humour hehe). - Watch spelling and grammar but don't put to much emphasis on it, humans are great at skim reading and pattern recognition.. except Mark @ Gruden will argue that point ;) .. than vs then.. ok ok.. I got it.. If you can spare the cash, check out a commercial writing course, i'm doing one this year focused on journalism style writing..(hints taken all) - Use mind mapping software to structure your posts. Last week I started this and have found it to be a useful tool as it will help you distil your idea for a post into a structured flow (post-it note your articles?) I'd love to see more CFAussie peeps blog, as I'm sure there are many insights / lessons you could share. P.S I just redesigned my blog tonight - http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog *--* *Scott Barnes * (RIA Evangelist) Microsoft Pty <http://www.microsoft.com/australia> | *New!* *The RIA Times:* http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog | *Office:* +61 (2) 88179139 | *Mobile:* 0439-072-184 *Twitter*: twitter.com/mossyblog ** * **The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -** **George Bernard Shaw*** **** --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "cfaussie" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cfaussie?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
