Sue Waters

It is day 14 into our Chocolate Challenge of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. With my hubby beating me to bed I decided I might as well do something productive like an update on the Challenge as he is snoring loudly! Check out Darren’s 31 Day project page for the detailed information on the daily tasks we have to complete.

Day 11 – Dig into your blog’s statistics

Great idea Darren – unfortunately I have been using Sitemeter and because Javascript is not supported the only statistics I get is how many hits per day. Was on my to-do-list to rectify so thanks to Darren it now jumped to the top of my list.

So I have now installed Google Analytics – will accumulate a week worth of statistics and report back on this topic!

Day 12 – Introduce Yourself to a Blogger

Well actually I already do this a lot!

While I had been very lapsed on statistics on my blog, I do watch them closely on my wiki and podcast site – so I know how people are being referred to my sites, what is popular on the site, to see how the information is being used and can find some really helpful sites this way!). If a person/site is referring traffic to my sites I like to go past and thank them – normally as an email.

But I need to remember this tip from Darren:

My only other tip is to keep your email brief and to the point. Many bloggers are inundated with email and to be confronted with a long rambling email of introduction might not create the impression that you’re after.

No doubt my emails are probably too long – judging on my posts 🙂

Day 13 – Search for an Affiliate Program that Fits Your Blog

Yeah – not interested in blogging commercially!! So task completed 🙂

Day 14 – Analyze Your Blog’s Competition

Well – this is an interesting task and as Darren points out using the word “competition” is probably not best term to use. The concept is to subscribe and read 10 blogs in your niche for a week then do a thorough analysis on them.

I already subscribe to lots of blogs in my niches…which I have mostly stumbled across, often through others “Blogs I like to Read”. So I decided that I should locate the top blogs in each of my areas of interests: m-learning, e-learning and Web2.0.

Of I went to Technorati – which I admit I have not spent enough time using – after awhile of stumbling around I discovered I could locate popular blogs by clicking on advanced search then going to bottom of page and doing Blog Directory Search. Enter your search term, in my case was m-learning. Search will list blogs and you can change the results of the search (seeright side of page you can sort by relevance, authority (number of blogs linking to this blog) or freshness).

This is where I then got side tracked – my blog was not even making the list!!!! Great so if any one did a search of Technorati on blogs on m-learning – they may not find my blog!!! Oops — so I have now set up an account with Technorati, have claimed my blog, entered my tags and it is starting to appear on the lists.

I am tired so keep working on this and locating top blogs over the next few days.

Task Status – slow progress

Final Update

Husband still snoring REALLY LOUDLY but I am really tired so need to go to bed!!!

But before I do I need to do a real big WELCOME TO:

Al Upton and the minilegends (a school class blog) for joining our Chocolate Challenge. Read Frances’s welcoming post to the minilegends and find out how these minilegends have already taught her new stuff!!