Word of Blog – 3 weeks later
Posted by Brian Kelly on 26 Nov 2006
In a previous posting I described how I had launched this Blog on 1 November 2006 (ten years since I had started work at UKOLN). As an experiment in seeing how Blogs become noticed and attract traffic I deliberately avoided announcing the Blog on mailing lists and, instead, just claimed my Blog on Technorati. Details of the findings to date are given below.
A graph showing the statistics for the first 3 weeks of the Blog are shown below.
The previous posting attracted a number of postings in which a number of people who had found the Blog described how they had found it:
AJ Cann (a regular blogger on microbiology and
Science of the Invisible) described how he had found the Blog using Technorati and Google Blog Search. He also commented that “the nice things about both is that they will generate RSS feeds of search terms that you are interested in (”guy with a wooden leg who posts about UKOLN”) which you can then plug into your favourite blog aggregator (Bloglines, in my case) and follow the “river of news” with minimal effort“.
Tom Roper described that he found this Blog using a Technorati watchlist he has set up which looks for anyone who’s linked to his blog (he gets the results as an RSS feed).
My former colleague Paul Miller, now of the library vendor Talis (and a contributor to the Panlibus Blog) had a similar experience – he found the Blog as it mentioned either Paul or Talis, which generated an alert for Paul via his NetNewswire alerting service.
Matt Jukes also found the Blog using Technorati and Google Blog Search.
Silversprite (another former colleague) mentioned that my Blog had been mentioned by Jenny Levine in her The Shifted Librarian Blog and Lorcan Dempsy (a former director at UKOLN) in his Blog – and that these two very popular Blogs are likely to generate traffic.
Similarly, Roddy MacLeod, in response to another posting, described that he came across my Blog in Phil Bradley‘s Blog.
As this Blog reaches the end of its first month of life this ‘word of blog’ experiment is reaching its end, with people now finding the Blog via a number of routes. The challenge now is to build on the initial growth and ensure that visitors return. As Phil Wilson has commented, this will require useful content, responding to comments, use of tracebacks, etc. I’ll comment on such techniques later.
I hope this experiment will be useful for others who are thinking of setting up a Blog and are looking for strategies for the launch.
Your comments are welcome.
UK Web Focus (Brian Kelly) 
bardicknowledge said
Hello! I found your blog simply by using the wordpress tag surfer. As I’m sure you have realized, along with with every other blogger out there, the hardest part is to have readers come back. I would be interested in any tips you have. I believe that is the main thing my blog is missing as is many blogs.
Best of luck with your blog. I hope you are able to build a following. A suggestion to aid you; Social news sites. If you have an article relating to technology in almost anyway, a social news site such as digg or reddit are great ways to grab attention.
ajcann said
Visitors? Blog early, and blog often. More posts = more visitors. Oh, and use those WordPress tags!
ukwebfocus said
Hi ajcann
Thanks for the reply.
“Blog early, and blog often” – on the other hand, Blog too often can result in a deterioration of the quality of the posts – and means you’re not doing other work. There’s a balance that needs to be struck.
Perhaps the important thing is to identify a sustainable approach and aim to be consistent (publishing frequency, content, style, etc.)
bRian
UK Web Focus said
[…] Pete Johnston, Eduserv Foundation, emailed me about the statitics shown in a previous post. […]
Ron said
Your site is perfect!