Thursday, August 02, 2007

31 Days to A Better Blog

I mentioned to Michele Martin that I was interested in participating in the 31 Days to a Better Blog Exercise being led by problogger Daren Rowse. I was initially intrigued by Daren's ideas and by Michele's enthusiasm. I'm not blogging for the money or the fame, but I am in it for the community, networking and learning opportunities. So I guess it doesn't hurt to try and get better.

Well, when I stated my interest, Michele went nuts and added me as a participant on her blog list. She's an inspirational task master, really. Since I've now got some authority to report to, I'll do my best to keep up with the homework.

I'm already behind...

Day 1: Email a new reader. Haven't done that yet, but I was inspired to make sure I am actively commenting on commenter's comments. I'll take the leap. I really will. If you are a new reader, why not take the leap yourself and comment on my blog? I'll send you an email and will be taking blogging to that next level together!

Day 2: Sit with a new user while they walk through your blog. Hmm...I need to find a likely suspect who's willing to waste some time with me. I did send my blog link to my cousin Alex who works for a new media company. We were IMing each other and he disappeared for about 15 minutes. When he came back he said, "that's great stuff!" He's my cousin and he's supposed to say that, but I'll take it anyway. Does that count for my homework? (He occasionally posts at his company blog Inspire Action. Check 'em out. They're hip. They're funny. They're new media.)

Day 3: (Which is today -- actually, I think that's tomorrow. Daren is in Australia.) Search for and join forum's on your blog's topics. So I'm thinking I'll finally join Jay Cross's Internet Time Community. Is that what you would call a forum? (I admit to feeling like an old lady by even having to ask that question). Do you have any suggestions for e-learning/instructional design forums?

In preparation for all of this, I did spend some time mucking with Feedburner. I've been using MyBlogLog to track visits, etc. but it doesn't tell me how many actual subscribers I actually have. (Other MyBlogLog users -- am I missing something?) So I set myself up in Feedburner and now have a benchmark and more analytics to check out. I admit to getting overwhelmed at times with all the tools out there. What tools do you use to track readership/subscribers for your blog? Or do you even care?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You look like you're doing well so far!

Don't worry--I'm sure I'll be falling behind soon, as I have a grant due at the end of the month. When I do, you're allowed to publicly mock me since I got you into this a little reluctantly :-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Cammy, I agree with your comment about Forums, and in what context he means forums. I'm with certain forums relating to software I use rather than my topics of my blog, but you've nspired me to investigate futher. Stay in touch and good luck with your challenge!
Laura