Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Blogging Odds and Ends

It's a hectic day here at the offices of The Scratching Post, so we don't have time to do some of the more detailed posts swirling around in our heads. In the meantime, here are some odds and ends.

Carnivals increase your link count, but don't do much for your traffic. I think that the number of people visiting a carnival like Carnival of the Cats or the Catholic Carnival is a very small multiple of the number of people submitting posts. Somewhere between two and four times that number. I had another big hit count day yesterday, but nearly all of it was from Google searches on the San Diego fires.

At work, we're trying to change our culture from email-centric to web-centric. I'll post more on that later, but we're discovering that the problem is cultural and not technical. We've had to form a Blogger Underground of subversive counterculture types to prosletyze about Web 2.0.

When trying to change an organization's culture, selling "more features" doesn't seem to work nearly as well as "easier work." That is, if the new technology allows you to do your existing job faster and/or easier, the general public will be interested in it. Most people don't understand the value of any new technical feature until they've played with it for a while. This seems to hold true even for the technically literate folks.

The reason that blogging gurus recommend that you keep focused on a single subject is to increase your recapture rates. When people come to read about the San Diego fires one time and then, on a whim, they visit again only to find Jacob happily crowing about Marques Colston's 3 touchdown receptions, they wander off, confused. If I focused on San Diego topics or natural disasters or fire preparedness, I might keep some of those readers coming back.

It doesn't bother me that they don't come back. This blog is what it is. It makes me happy and I really enjoy the regular readers that come by to leave comments. I'm not in it for the hits.

Still, an Instalanche now and again wouldn't hurt... :-)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I came for the Catholic Carnival, and I'll stick around long enough to read the front page full of posts, at any rate.

BTW, I appreciate that you don't require readers to have Blogger accounts to comment.

Rose said...

Here's one for you and Jacob.

Wollf Howlsatmoon said...

Yeah, what you said, KT. Being the selfish creature that I am, my blog is for me.

Least, it started out that way.....

If you have absolutely no idea what you feel like reading, checkout our sites, right?

In my case, I don't care very much if the stay or go.....But I Love it when they're confused.

(insert spooky Halloween laugh here)

You know I really enjoy your site.
Wollf

K T Cat said...

If you have absolutely no idea what you feel like reading, checkout our sites

An instant classic! LOL!

Scribbit said...

Yea, I've noticed that happening. You get a link in a big place and the traffic is huge for a bit then trickles off. Oh well :)