Successful Blog Archives - Page 855 of 858

Thanks to Week 2 SOBs

November 3, 2005 by Liz

Now, now, you know what that means . . . Successful and Outstanding Bloggers.

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this badge’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

1.4 Synchronicity in Statistics

November 2, 2005 by Liz

Interview with Indie
His Blog: The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy
URL: indeterminacy.blogspot.com
His audience: persons from all walks of life who like to read quality fiction–bloggers, high school and college students, people in the creative arts, and people who work with language in their jobs–his blogroll reflects his audience
Thing to note when you visit: the interactivity; the connection between Indie and his readers; the quality of the content; the special features and unique ideas

1.4 Synchronicity in Numbers

Indie approaches his blog as a business as well as an art. He keeps track, as much as one can, of who’s coming and how they get there. In the world of writer’s blogs his numbers are high. His blog carries a Google Page Rank of 5. A generous spirit, Indie was willing to share his stats with us and generated a stat graph to go with them.

Indie, how do you keep track of the visitors who come by the blog?

I use a stat counter to gain an idea of how many people read my blog, but unfortunately I have no way of knowing how relevant these results are. My blog is syndicated which means it is possible for people to see the photograph and read the content without coming directly to the site. These are readers I know nothing about. Because blog-installed stat counters only count hits, there’s no way to tell how many people actually read it and how much they are interested in the content.

Sometimes a person will drift in via a Google search, and then spend a half an hour or longer clicking through the archives. I like to think they are reading the stories, although it’s quite possible that they’re merely glancing through the photos.

What do you do, and how much time do you spend on building up readership? Do you use traffic exchange services? How do you expand your own blog reading?

I don’t have as much time these days to visit all the blogs I like, so my chances to read and comment are sporadic. To let people know I’m out there, I occasionally enter my blog in the Blog Battles at Blog Explosion. But in general, I think that exchange services offer only superficial traffic. Lately BE has been heavy-handed about expelling blogs that discuss/evaluate other exchange programs. I’m beginning to wonder about them. (See the censorship of Sarahtampa .)

I sometimes come across wonderful blogs that quickly come into my favorites list. Two recent examples include shtikl.com and soulkin.com.

How many visitors stop by each day?

The stat counter I have currently registers roughly 150 to 250 page loads a day. Checking the last 100 page references I see that a third of these are referrals through search results. Another third come from links at other blogs or sites, and the remainder just show up somehow.

What percent do you think are repeat visitors each day?

My stat counter uses a cookie to record regular visitors, but I know that the system is not entirely accurate. Often I’ll check my statistics and notice a friend’s visit, but he/she doesn’t show up as a repeat visitor. My stats for last week fluctuated from 20-40 repeat visitors per day.

What is your most visited day of the week? Does readership change through the year?

Tuesday through Friday are about the same. Weekends and Mondays drop off slightly. I don’t know about changes specific to time of year. Traffic has increased slowly but surely since the time I began blogging. Daily readership drops off when I’m on vacation (not posting).

The most heavily visited days were March 4th (1521 unique visitors / 1973 page loads), followed by March 3rd (1161 unique visitors / 1637 page loads).

Someone had mentioned my blog at a portal– metafilter.com. The two posts of March 3rd received two comments from new visitors, one positive, one negative. And there was one guestbook entry. It’s interesting to note that out of over 2600 visitors only three left comments. Shows how hard it is to get people to comment? Or is it a general tendancy to lurk?

Can you point us to your most visited stories?

March 4th: Karla Had Just Been Kissed

March 3rd: Vance and Vera Invited an Inflatable Man

Indie knows the numbers and he knows that they’re not an exact reflection of what’s happening. The numbers are simply one more piece to the puzzle. They help us sort out the anamolies and focus in on the patterns over time., leading closer to a picture of who our readers might be.

What patterns do you see in your blog’s numbers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Creating Reader Evangelists

November 2, 2005 by Liz

From Book to Reality

Last year, I read Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell’s book, Creating Customer Evangelists–a business bestseller. The concept, touted as a breakthrough, was really common sense. It seemed like a breakthrough because most businesses weren’t doing what it said–taking advantage of the fact that some customers are plain crazy about them. What Huba and McConnell explained was how to capture that enthusiasm and channel it for the company’s benefit.

We have our blog fans, our daily readers–the folks who think we hung the moon. They are the part of our audience closest to us. They are influencers–people who can change minds and influence others to see our blog the way they do. They’re a natural bridge to get the word out to other readers. How can we tap into the way they feel about us? How can we make it easy for them to share their excitement with others?

At his site, Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel has thoroughly covered this subject for us. He’s taken Huba and McConnell’s thinking and translated it for use in the blogging world. I’ve brought you a taste.

Steve offers six blogging points that echo the six points in the book. Since Rubel writes for a marketing/business audience, I’ve slightly edited his words and added my comments in italics after each.

1. Use your blog to solicit feedback from your readers and then act on it. It makes total sense. If you want to engage your evangelists you have to be engaged yourself.

2. Blog your best ideas. The thought here is not to hoard your best ideas. Get them out there. Let your evangelists use them too. They’ll come back to you ten-fold.

3. Find, listen, engage, and empower your blogging influencers. Everyone wants to feel a part of something bigger than they are. Let your influencers be a part of what you do in every way that you can. Encourage participation. The more they feel they belong, the more they will bring friends along.

4. Blog with a higher, holy calling. If you have a passion about what you’re doing, other’s will at least pay attention. Many will become passionate too.

5. Blog away trinkets, credit, and links. Be generous of mind and of spirit. People remember and respect generosity. It’s a statement of character. It also gets their attention.

6. Show your readers that you’re their greatest fan. Anything I add would be redundant.

Steve also provides links for more articles he recommends. This button will take you to Steve’s article, “Creating Customer Evangelists” from October 20, 2005.

This is one of the best I’ve seen on the web. Read it. Print it. Keep it. But before you go . . . leave me a comment too.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

1.3 Audience Synchroncity

November 1, 2005 by Liz

1.3 Audience Synchronicity

Indie has two English-language blogs and a Polish-language blog. Click the screen shot to see his satellite blog–Indeterminacies of Synchronicity. It’s this second blog that provides the venue for the feature that engages his audience in writing their own flash fiction stories each week. Each story posted there is rewarded with a link. The Polish-language blog offers translations of selected stories for a smaller segment of his audience.

Indie’s respect for his readers shows whenever he talks to or about them.

Indie, who is your audience?

I’ve been greatly surprised by the type of people reading my blog. In a nutshell I think of them as the blogging elite. I’ve received feedback from artists, musicians, authors, editors, stand-up comics, company CEO’s, psychotherapists, lawyers, professors and other high level professionals, many of them authors of intelligent blogs themselves. This is, for me, another sign of success. Not too long ago I noticed I had some referrals from an online university class in which the professor asked the students to analyze a flash fiction story of their choosing. He had included my URL as an example of flash fiction, a genre which I incidentally knew nothing about until long into the existence of my blog.

All this attention has been especially gratifying, but also intimidating. I hope I am able to keep up whatever it is that caught their interest.

How do your readers find out about you?

People have found me by accident, through links, random referrals, by word of mouth, using search engines and probably other ways I can’t imagine. I followed all the instructions for promoting one’s blog. I entered myself in all the directories and search engines, I use several traffic exchange programs, I comment at other blogs I find interesting (though these days I have hardly any time left for reading other blogs), I have a description and keywords list included in my blog template, which probably helps improve my search rank for various terms. Lately I’ve been presenting my blog at Blog Explosion’s blog battles. Also, many visitors seem to show up through image searches, which probably goes with the territory of having so many photo posts.

What do they like best about your site?

According to the feedback I receive, people like the idea of what I’m doing (pairing found photos with stories), even if they do not enjoy my writing. Others seem enthusiastic about the pace at which I post stories (five a week at the moment), as well as enjoying the stories. Others enjoy the interactivity or the fact that I try to answer all my comments. On weekends I post a photo without a story and invite my visitors to contribute their own story. I then post my take on the photo the Monday after. Those stories have all been collected at the companion blog indeterminacies.blogspot.com, including links to their respective authors. A few bloggers have been kind enough to write reviews about my project. I’ve linked to them on my front page, and would refer you to these for a feeling about what other people see in my blog.

Indie’s audience is made up of blogger readers from all walks of life. They could be the same people who read our blogs. It’s hard to miss Indie’s connection with his readers. I suspect that even with the great photos, stories, interactivity, and sense of community that the biggest attraction for readers is Indie.

What brings readers to your blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

1.2 Indeterminacy of Purpose

November 1, 2005 by Liz

Interview with Indie
His Blog: The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy
URL: indeterminacy.blogspot.com
His initial purpose: to match photos with short fiction in a writer’s photo blog
Thing to note when you visit: the interactivity; the connection between Indie and his readers; the quality of the content; the special features and unique ideas

Indeterminacy of Purpose

1.2 Purpose

Every one of us was a new blogger once. One day we’d never heard of a blog. The next day we had. That was the beginning.

In this part of the conversation, Indie shares how he decided to start a blog and determined what it’s form and purpose would be.

Indie, what made you start the blog? How did you decide on its purpose?

I first found out that blogs existed early in 2004 and had a vague wish to start my own. But I was uncertain as to what it could be. I thought the world could do without another online diary. At the same time I discovered the phenomenon of finding photos via file sharing programs. By summer I had further vague ideas of starting perhaps a photo blog with my own photography, or perhaps a short story, novella, or even a novel built around a series of photographs I had found via p2p. I’d written a few short stories before, but writing had never been a major part of my life. In fact, writing had always been such a painstaking process to me, I could not imagine writing anything longer than a few pages. Despite the verbose answers I am giving here, brevity of expression is one of the concepts I admire most.

My catalyst for beginning the blog was stumbling upon the site 10eastern.com, which had received lots of attention for it’s gallery presentations of found photos, as selected by the site’s proprietor. Until then I was skeptical about the acceptance of a blog which used found photos–photos which were sometimes unintentionally shared.

I greatly admire the stories of John Cage written for his Indeterminacy project, and all of a sudden I realized that the best way for me to do my project was not with a long story wrapped around a series of photographs, but daily one-minute short stories in the form and perhaps style of John Cage’s stories. I believed it would be possible for anyone to have at least one good idea per day. That’s how it all fell into place.

Blogging can keep us so involved day to day, that we forget to stop to see where we are. There was a reason we each started blogging. How has that purpose changed over time? Is our purpose still our guide, or have we lost sight of it?

Knowing the purpose of my blog makes it easier to make decisions about what belongs and what does not. I want to keep enough focus so that when readers return, they’ll know they’re on familiar ground.

My personal blog’s purpose is to offer readers a place to get away from the world, share a few stories, and wonder about things. What’s the purpose of your blog?

Like the bloggers who blog them, every blog needs a purpose in life.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

1.1 Meet Indie

October 31, 2005 by Liz

Interview with Indie
His Blog: The Synchronicity of Indeterminacy
URL: indeterminacy.blogspot.com
Location: Europe
Genre: Writer/Photo Blog
First post: Friday, August 13, 2004
His audience: persons from all walks of life who like to read quality fiction–bloggers, high school and college students, people in the creative arts (artists, writers, stand-up comics, musicians, designers) and people who work with language every day (lawyers, therapists, professors, teachers, editors, company CEO’s)–his blogroll reflects his audience
Thing to note when you visit: the interactivity; the connection between Indie and his readers; the quality of the content; the special features and unique ideas

Meet Indie.

Indie

Indie’s an American blogger, living in Europe. He’s the first interview because his blog shows how quality, creativity, and attention to readers can turn a basic template into a memorable blog. Indie gives his audience a flash fiction story five days a week. He also has made the writer’s blog interactive.

It’s hard to miss the sense of community on this blog. The folks who hang out here are having fun. Indie has both a factual and an intuitive sense of who his readers are and he clearly connects with them. It comes across in their comments and his responses. His writing voice is authentic and engaging. Just listen to his answer to my first question.

Indie, how would you define a successful blog?

Since you selected me as a “successful blog,” I had hoped that you would tell me what the definition would be. . . .

In my case, I call my blog a success because it fulfills my personal feeling for aesthetic and expression. The stories are all short, which gives me time to read and correct them until everything sounds “just right” to me. My feel for what is “good writing” is probably a composite of my years of voracious reading. I never posted anything that I did not think was up to my standard of quality. In this respect I can call my blog a success.

About six weeks into my blogging I received a flattering comment to one of my stories from Anonymous which describes, by process of elimination, that person’s idea of a successful blog. The comment left me stunned and . . . I hope I deserved it.

“That’s great! All of your stories are good. I get so sick of the intellectual web people who think they’re the next … some one…. They love to attack gods and people and things. They like cynicism for the sake of cynicism. They usually have some Japanese sounding name, and a Nietzsche quote in their signature. They want desperately to be “thinkers” and “uber” and different and cool, but there is something fundamental that they just don’t get. I find 95% of blogs and stuff on the web to be like that, 95% of the stories and fiction to be entwined with some bitter little agenda.”

Three of my stories have been included in the quarterly E-zine Practically Creative which is another sign for me that I am on the right track.

Indie proves that success has many definitions. We’ll be talking with him all this week. If you haven’t experienced his blog, I encourage you to. There’s a great chance you’ll find something that sparks an idea that works for you.

Have questions or comments for Indie about his definition of success or what you’ve seen on his blog? Feel free to leave it for him here. He’ll be stopping by all week to join the conversation.

Tomorrow–Indie’s Audience–why they come, what they like, how they find him, ideas for interactivity, and more . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss