BacATu

Cision discover the perils of comparative blog analysis

2009-04-30T20:42:00.005+01:00

Cision have highlighted the perils of comparative blog analysis today. Its 'top 50 bloggers' league table is misleading and unhelpful. There's no need to take my word for it (I am biased after all) so here's Iain Dale's interpretation of the list.

Comparative analysis is misleading

Cision's list is misleading because we know it to be wrong. Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes both publish their monthly statistics online (as do many others).

There are no reliable ways of judging how many people read a blog without accessing the analytics package for each blog. Those that monitor audience figures by sampling (such as Alexa) do so with a very skewed sample. I know this in at least 30 instances because I have been able to compare the Alexa rankings to the statistics. I don't know what methodology Cision used but it's apparently flawed.

Comparative analysis is unhelpful

Why is it useful to know if Guido Fawkes is read by 10,000 more people than Iain Dale (for the sake of argument)? If an article appears about a Cision client on either blog, it's significant. In terms of reputation management, does it matter if something appeared in The Times rather than the Daily Telegraph? Not much - unless there's a specific demographic at play - in which case knowing the readership numbers is of limited use anyway.

The Newscounter method has its weaknesses too, I'm sure. Any single metric that judges a complex environment has its draw backs. But by ranking blogs as critical, high, medium or low, we give a specific enough indication as to whether its an impact on your reputation without producing a tortuous and supposedly precise measure.

If you disagree, do let me know. One of the challenges of measuring PR impact is that so few people agree on the usefulness of one measure over another. Therefore, all measures are approached with a degree of cynicism. A consensus around a smaller number of measures would at least provide the industry a tool to compare apples and pears.

UPDATE: Chris Paul has drawn attention to the methodology used by Cision. It is more complicated than my post suggests although the truth with these league tables is always that no matter how complicated the algorithm, the end result has to make sense. I don't think this league table works intuitively.

Would you join a blogging collective?

2009-04-18T13:31:00.003+01:00

Sorry for the blogging silence - it's hypocritical and inexcusable.

I've been working on an idea for a blogging collective. It's not a commercial venture so I've written about it on my personal blog.

I'd be really grateful for suggestions, thoughts and advice:

would you join?
should it have a theme?
do you want like-minded members or very different perspectives?
what are the drawbacks?

LFCTV's use of Twitter update

2009-03-30T21:26:00.003+01:00

I wrote about LFCTV's emergency on Twitter at the start of March with some praise for what they were doing and some suggestions for how they could improve.

Following Paul Rogers' comment on this blog and my own observations this month, I'd like to update you on how quickly they've developed their use of Twitter and increased the readership.

1. More conversation
I'd previously suggested that the LFCTV team used Twitter to do too much broadcasting and not enough interaction. No more do my @replies go unnoticed though. For example, one of the team tweeted that they were re-writing the managers' profiles on the official website. Alarmed, I replied asking for clarification that Senor Benitez's profile didn't need updating. I got a swift response, killing unwanted specualtion quickly!

2. More personality
They've continued to add personal thoughts and reflections on to Twitter, sometimes even pushing against the official-feel to the website news. For example, the light-hearted banter in the warm-up to the Man United game was realy good and the songs afterwards were even useful for my local pub. The reflection that Adam Pepper's goal should have been higher-up the top 10 list after a vote on the main website was also a nice touch that you can't communicate through a corporate voice.

3, Match news
Done

4. Upcoming programmes
LFCTV had done this much better than I suggested, again with more humour and personality. For example, when two guests were late arriving for a recent show, we read all about it on Twitter, reminding us to go and watch the programme. Great use of multiple platforms.

5. Advertising Twitter
The team have done really well to increase the Twitter audience exponentially thanks to news stories, promotion on the TV channel, ads on the homepage flash screen and a logo at the footer of stories. All this has delivered over 15,000 followers - most of whom are followed back which is more good practice.

Well done LFCTV - innovating across all broadcast platforms. There's an awful lot that others could learn from their style.

And finally, thanks to Paul's complaints abotu leaving a comment on this blog, we've been able to change our moderation policy.

Blogging, Twitter and SEO

2009-03-26T08:30:00.000+00:00

There is a raging - and not particularly interesting - debate about the value of Twitter for search engine optimisation. In short, people wonder if Twitter has any value for optimising your website because:
a) it depends on shortened URLs which don't build up link value and
b) Google places 'no follow' tags on Twitter links

The debate is dull because no-one knows how Google works (and those that do won't say) so people are groping in the dark.

However, I can report this:
a) that I have a wordpress plugin that reproduces my Tweet on my blog. I did this because I update Twitter more often than I blog
b) on some occassions, those Tweets have (unintentionally) added keywords to the page. As a result, people have searched for an unexpected combination of words which has revealed my blog at the head of a small part of the long tail.

For example, I recorded my concern about Conservative donations and mentioned large Tory donor Michael Ashcroft. A couple of days later I Twittered about Allen Stanford's arrest. My blog was therefore prominent on the search results for "Michael Ashcroft and Allen Stanford" to satisfy anyone looking for information about the two men.

I can't recommend this as a strategy per se: the volumes are too low to be able to research the keyword frequency. But there are circumstances where Twitter can help your SEO strategy.

Blogs: How can they be authentically provocative?

2009-03-24T20:13:00.005+00:00

Rowland Manthorpe has asked:

"I do find it difficult to stimulate comments. I don't want to go all "look at me, I'm being provocative [six exclamation marks]", but at the moment I'm struggling to find an alternative strategy. Any ideas in that direction?"

As per my last post, I don't have all the right answers. But I do have some thoughts and would like some others.

On my own blog I've tried to be provocative in three ways:

1. Not pulling my punches.
If I don't like something, I say so - strongly and probably more strongly than I would in general conversation. So, for example, a dislike of comic relief becomes I hate Comic Relief. Of course the post-proper allows my to nuance the arguments but the point is made more strongly than 'on balance, Comic Relief is a little under-whelming and whilst I like the public effort, I'm disappointed that it doesn't increase charitable donations by more'.

2. Seeking out opposing views
To promote my post on Comic Relief, I found blogs that were talking about Comic Relief most of which were naturally supportive because they were tales of people who had done something positive to raise money. I expected people visiting my blog from those sites to be hostile and they were.

3. The hundred hits rule
I've not ever received a comment on a post with fewer than 100 hits. That's not to say that you need 200 hits to get 2 comments (that's partly because the 2nd comment should always be yours - replying to the first). Or that 300 hits get 3 comments. And blog posts with 1000 hits often have somewhere nearer to 20 comments.

I'm facing two particular challenges at the moment:

Writing things that stimulates other people to write about the issue - critical to making your blog take-off
Being provocative in a positive way. I set up my blog to be positive yet always write from a negative standpoint. More to be done.

However, I do always engage with commenters wherever possible so that when they start out negative, I can at least try to identify common ground and where we really disagree. See, for example, my exchange with Denis Cooper.

I'd be grateful for any other ideas on how to be provocative . . .

Blogging disclaimer

2009-03-23T19:51:00.002+00:00

I should reiterate my blogging disclaimer.

I've been free and easy with dispensing "advise" about blogging as if I were some sort of "expert". It isn't - and I'm not. Blogging is a form of writing just like any other with certain attributes. Just like writing a good essay is different from writing a good newspaper article, writing a good blog is different again.

However, social media does not have the longevity of newspaper writing, the science of marketing books or the same rigour to marking essays. Because the medium is changing so quickly, there are no rules. Only things that have worked in the past.

I'm writing my own blog - and blogging about it - to show you what I learn, building on my professional experience of what I've learnt helping others. But the medium is developing so rapidly that no sooner have rules been written than they can be destroyed.

So my disclaimer is that:
a) I know no more than my own experience
b) Rules are only developed from experience. They should be violated in order to innovate and enjoy writing

Matthew Taylor's blog: what's it all about?

2009-03-17T12:42:00.007+00:00

Matthew Taylor was confronted by a former colleague who suggested that his blog was all "me, me, me". It's true that blogs are inherently self-centered. But Matthew being the sensitive person that he is and his accuser being the sort that's committed to proper examination of the evidence, I thought that I'd do a quick analysis of what hs blog is all about.

I put the last five posts into wordle to produce images of the main words. These are the subjects he's blogged about in the last few days:

Now of course that excludes common words so I repeated the exercise, including common words:

So whilst 'I' figures prominently, it's not that prominent.

The ippr hasn't yet demonstrated its commitment to social media as part of its mission to be at the "forefront of progressive debate" to "build a fairer, more democratic world" so it's not possible to do a comparison.

Thoughts on whether the ippr is well suited to critiquing social media engagement and whether it can fulfil its mission without engaging with people through social media can be made in the comments section below!

Matt Gee appointed Newscounter director

2009-03-17T10:00:00.000+00:00

Matt Gee has been appointed as a director of Newscounter.

I'm really pleased that the shareholders have appointed Matt who I've met a few times over the last six months. He is very enthusiastic, very sharp and incredibly driven. He will bring valuable marketing expertise to the group and has significant experience to help us expanding Newscounter overseas.

Matt Gee says:

I have over 15 years’ experience in strategy, marketing and proposition
development roles, both on the client side (Channel 4, Five, Guardian Media
Group) as well as in the role of a consultant.

As a consultant I originally focused on the broadcast, film and telecoms sectors
providing board level advice to a range of clients including Discovery, ITV plc,
Warner Bros, RTE, Groupe Lagardere and UKTV. I have also advised a film finance house that successfully raised over £50m against a portfolio of Warner
Bros films. More recently I have spent increasing amounts of time working with
VCs, investment banks and start-ups.

In October 2008 I established an online business that aims to replicate the
success of moneysupermarket, with a focus on emerging markets.

The importance of news in blogging

2009-03-16T20:36:00.002+00:00

A regular reader of this blog emailed me this weekend to ask:

"As Matthew said in his last entry, however, timing is everything. Unfortunately, at at the moment, my work isn't structured to be able to strike while the iron is hot. This makes it difficult to get engaged in a debate and then try to lead it. There do seem to be other "thought leadership" blogs that don't seem to engage in a debate. Are political blogs different I wonder? Anyway, these are some topics that we could pick up when hopefully we get around to meeting.

This is a really familiar challenge that lots of our clients face. I firmly believe, having done it myself and with the benefit of working for lots of others that the following is important:

- if you can't blog frequently, write posts that you have 'in the locker' which you can post (automatically if necessary) when you can see the diary is busy. You can quickly top and tail these to make then topical.
- when you want someone to read your post, you have to sell it to them. An important part of sales is timeliness - why read it now? If you could read it tomorrow, you would then (but end up not doing so). If you want readers, the post has to be timely. Even if it's a personal blog (I had a nice weekend) it should be too late to read it five days later.
- all blogs should engage in a debate. If you're not situated in a community of blogs then the chances are you are either to successful to need it or too unsuccessful to deserve it.

I suppose it is possible to not be in a newsworthy debate with a group of other blogs. But if you're not you need to:
- really understand what interests your audience
- know where they currently congregate and how to attract them to your post
- be able to draw them back to your blog again and again
- give them incentives to tell their friends about your blog

So if you're blogging for your friends or a limited group of people (your staff?) it might not be necessary for your blog to be newsworthy and part of a debate. But if you want to use it to:
- establish your expertise
- retain existing relationships (clients?)
- develop new relationships
- broaden your networks

then I believe our advice is important. Challenge me, if you disagree.

The Pope backs Counterpoint

2009-03-12T11:45:00.004+00:00

The popularity of Counterpoint is increasing. Word reaches Newscounter towers that even the Pope understands its significance.

"I hear that it was possible to access various excerpts of the news on the internet and to have got knowledge of the problem," he says.

"I learn from this that we in the Holy See must take notice of these news sources in the future."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7938827.stm

Timing is important for blogging

2009-03-12T10:45:00.004+00:00

Over the last week or so, I've learnt just how important it is to blog at the right time.

I've posted twice on my personal blog in response to recent news stories - this in reaction to Tom Harris MP and this on increasing anger in society. Neither post was as successful as it should have been because I didn't post at the right time.

This wasn't as complicated as posting at the right time of day (which people often ask about). Whilst this can be useful (first thing at the morning, as Americans are logging in etc) it's mostly of marginal benefit to really good bloggers. My mistake was to publish over a day late. What that meant was that:
1. Lots of people had already had their say so I had less to say
2. When I promoted my post on other blogs, the comment was lower down so got less click-throughs
3. When I promoted my post, I didn't influence other bloggers because they'd already written about it

If you're going to react to an issue, do so early and amend your post as you go. There will be more opportunities to promote it on other sites the longer the issue continues, but your comments will be more prominent and more influential.

LFCTV use of Twitter

2009-03-03T22:53:00.003+00:00

My favourite TV channel has joined Twitter. I was interested to see what they had to say, over and above the content of the website, TV channel and what I'd pick up through the fans websites. LFCTV is currently using Twitter really well.

I started following the channel the day before the Real Madrid game and it was interesting to read 'behind the scenes' glimpses of the club. It wasn't just that you could follow the flight into Madrid and found out that they drank too much that night - but that there was an insight into the operational side of the channel too.

When news broke of Rick Parry's departure, LFCTV were first to confirm that a statement would appear on the official website.

The good things about the use of Twitter are:
* additional content over and above the day to day
* regular but not over-intense use of the channel
* the variety of content from match news to channel operations
* the personal element which came through strongly in the post match reaction to the Middlesbrough defeat

However, there are a number of areas where they could be still more engaging:
* they recently Tweeted that they were off to interview Rafa Benitez. They could have asked for questions to put to Rafa. The incentive would be seeing your question put to Rafa live on LFCTV - certainly an incentive to pay the subscription
* they have started responding to questions but it is still too much broadcasting and limited interaction
* advertising upcoming programmes. Twitter gets boring if it's just a series of commercials but for particular programmes or interviews on the channel this could help demonstrate the commercial value of Twitter
* match news (rights permitting). Twitter updates from the academy games which aren't shown live would be particularly uesful.

Overall, the Newscounter verdict is: great start, the content, tone and style is great; Now try to interact more with the community and use it to add commercial value.

Dare to Act - website evaluation

2009-02-23T21:29:00.005+00:00

Dare to Act is a new website campaign launched by the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union. There are lots of strengths in the website that other campaigning organisations can learn from. However there are also some areas where Newscounter would advocate a different approach.

A clear call to action

There are three clear calls to action on the site: get to know the case, dare to act and keep yourself updated. The user can understand completely what to do and how to use the site. The information is informative and entertaining and motivates users to take action.

A range of different actions

The motivated user has a range of different actions - sending an email is easy enough (although would be aided by a single point of contact and the urge to CC the UN secretary general seems a little implausible to be effective. Interestingly, they enable users to send a fax, as well as share the site with friends.

Good integration of multimedia content

The video is neatly embedded in the site and it's easy to navigate between the different sections.

However, there are a number of weaknesses to the site which may hinder the effectiveness of the campaign.

The site isn't well optimised for search engines

The site lacks a meta description or clear page titles and there are few internal links. It is hard to find the site on a search engine unless you have already heard of the campaign.

Content can't be linked

By building the site in flash, each page doesn't have a separate URL which makes it impossible for other websites - and bloggers in particular - to link to relevant parts of the content. Yahoo currently records just 27 websites linking to the domain which is far fewer than you'd expect - particularly given the quality of the website and its content. However, publishing the videos on YouTube was a sensible way of compensating partially for that.

There's no community dialogue

The website won't build a community because it doesn't allow any dialogue between the users.

No capacity for updates

There doesn't appear to be any capacity for regular updates from the campaign (also a missed opportunity for better SEO). A campaign blog, forum or Twitter account would provide a capacity for the campaign to provide regular updates to engage users on the development of the campaign.

Lessons for other campaigns

There are some critical lessons for other campaigns:
* ensure that the structure of a website is usable for different levels of users - those who will just engage but also those who want to participate and lead a campaign
* if you choose to build a website in flash, provide alternative ways to help bloggers and others engage with the campaign
* blog if at all possible to provide regular opportunities for users to engage with the progress of the campaign. Even if the campaign doesn't change regularly, the policy and political context in which you are operating changes weekly and probably daily.

Labourlist: on course to be a top political website

2009-02-20T11:00:00.014+00:00

Labourlist has been so successful in its first five weeks that it is on course to be one of the top political sites in the blogosphere. How have they done it?

It has certainly been controversial and site editor Derek Draper's conduct occasionally aggressive and even offensive. But whether you like it or not, it's working.

Building links

Last week I noticed that it had attracted a significant number of links into the site. This was particularly surprising as some of the biggest right wing bloggers have refused to link to labourlist.It isn't yet competing with the biggest sites but is growing at a significant rate and if it continues, won't be far behind its main rivals before long.

Generating traffic

I then noticed how much traffic it generated to some blogs that Newscounter helps. It's not a huge amount of traffic in absolute terms, but far more than I expected for a site of that age and which had attracted that volume of criticism.

There is also some interesting traffic data from Alexa which suggests that its traffic is already in the same ballpark as Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes. At Newscounter we no longer put any faith in Alexa stats because the data samples aren't properly weighted to reflect reality (at least in the UK). However, as the Manchester Evening News blog points out, Labourlist is already out-performing Conservativehome.

It's still early days for Labourlist and it's difficult to compare with other months and other websites because it's only been live for a few weeks. However, people who have seen the stats (and our subsequent analysis) has suggested that in the first five weeks it's already on a similar scale to where the right wing sites were after several years. I predict that if it continues on its likely growth trajectory, it will be one of the biggest political sites in the UK blogosphere.

Using social networking

Although he's still finding his way around Twitter, Labourlist editor @derekdraper has been named as the third most popular political twitterer.

Labourlist key achievements

There are a number of key achievements on Labourlist in its first few weeks:
1. It has set the agenda on bigger blogs. A crude search suggests that Iain Dale's blog has mentioned Draper up to 1900 times whilst Guido Fawkes has referred to Draper on 9000 occasions.

2. It has ignited a chain of conversations on multiple websites - one key criteria for a successful blog - evidence by the rapid growth of sites linking to labourlist.org

Challenges for Labourlist

There are a number of further challenges facing Labourlist, particularly if it is to fulfil Draper's ambitions for a site that speaks to the population rather than the Westminster village.

1. Can it provide unique content sufficiently frequently to keep users and deepen their relationship with the site?

2. Can it provide the mix of content necessary to be controversial enough to get online attention but informative enough to keep users returning?

3. Can its posters provide more provocative and thoughtful articles which increase the number of comments - and demonstrate their authenticity by re-engaging with those comments?

4. Can it be sufficiently generous with its success so that it increases the infrastructure around centre left bloggers, which in turn will lead to the long term success of Labourlist?

I've deliberately left off any measure of electoral impact from Labourlist: even Iain Dale hasn't achieved demonstrated a clear relationship between a good blog and electoral success. When he stood for parliament, the Conservatives actually lost votes on the previous election, bucking the national trend.

As Labour used to say: a lot done, a lot more to do.

Self indulgent blogging must be done in moderation

2009-02-19T23:47:00.003+00:00

Self indulgent blogging must be done in moderation. I will continue to repeat that to myself over the next few days. And, out of respect for the people who I advise blogging, I now recognise how hard it is not to indulge now again. But I also recognise how damaging it can be if you over do it.

Let me explain:

As I may have mentioned, I had a good few days on Matthew Cain's blog recently. I increased my blog readership and got lots of visitors, lots of comments and lots of links. And I'm still dining out on that (traffic and comments-wise). I wanted to maintain that momentum. And then I relaxed. Rather than remembering what was good about my first few posts to make an impact, I wrote easy articles that I wanted to write. And not just one but two or three.

I still got an audience for my thoughts on behavioural economics, the challenge of text ads to newspapers' editorial independence and the relevance of political parties. But it wasn't as much as previous posts and although the last couple of days improved, the trend is from a lower base than last week.

I call these self indulgent posts because:
* they were about what I was thinking, not what the wider community was thinking
* nobody had asked my view and I had no expertise to advance this view
* I couldn't initiate a wider online debate about these issues and so my thoughts were in isolation to the rest of the online world

To put it another way, I was like a pub-bore. Yes, there is a place for posts about pet subjects. But not one after another for a week. And not when your audience is fresh and new and still getting to know you.

Increasing blog readership: first steps

2009-02-18T08:52:00.002+00:00

Key Lessons
• Write a post about an issue that you know will be of interest to a specific audience
• Leave a short comment on relevant posts with a hyperlink to attract readers
• Reply to comments in a timely fashion to continue the debate
• Write about similar issues to maintain a reader’s interest in your blog

The readership to Matthew Cain’s blog has increased exponentially over the last few days. This wasn’t a coincidence but a direct result or employing some simple, tried and trusted methods to recruit readers.

How I increased readership

Last weekend I received an embargoed copy of a report from the Media Standards Trust regarding the Press Complaints Commission. I’ve a long standing interest in this from running the right to reply service in 2006/07.

When the report launched, I blogged in support of the Trust, with a simple, relevant and obvious headline and a post of around 700 words. I then wrote a couple of lines in the comments section of all of the stories which criticised the report. It was just a simple two line comment, along the lines of: The Trust does not favour government regulation, just a better regulator. It’s a shame the PCC aren’t willing to engage in the debate: http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/the-press-complaints-commission-must-be-reformed

The next day I noticed a conversation between two people I follow on Twitter: @JTownend who writes for journalism.co.uk and @currybet who blogs at currybet.net. JTownend was asking for ideas of how the PCC should be reformed. I blogged with some ideas for reform and Twittered with a short link to my entry. @JTownend noticed it and kindly included a link to my article from journalism.co.uk – generating over 100 clickthroughs to my blog.

That evening, I had an email from a friend drawing my attention to a email newsletter from Compass. He pointed out an unfortunate proofreading error. I knew that fellow Hackney blogger Luke Akehurst had previously written criticism of Compass so if I was to also criticise Compass, I would need to get his attention. I didn’t think there were too many other bloggers interested.

I wrote a brief post criticising Compass. It was nearer 700 words but I used bullet points to make it easier to read and chose a pithy title. I then put a link to my blog on one of Luke’s old posts – about the direction for New Labour. Luke moderates his comments so I knew that he would read it himself if he had time, but it wasn’t as intrusive as an email to his work address.

I then did a search for Compass using Google blog search and made a similar comment on a couple of other sites, along the lines of: I’m disappointed at the lack of new thinking produced by Compass. If that’s the future, we’re all doomed: http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/compass-old-ideas-for-new-times/

Luke picked up on my post and wrote a new blog entry. At Newscounter we estimate this happens about every 1 in 20 times you leave a comment on a personal blog (excluding newspaper sites or forums). After Luke wrote about it, premier parliamentary blogger Tom Watson (an offline friend of Luke) saw his post and welcomed me to the blogosphere – the last time I will ever be mentioned in the same breath as Sir Tim Berners Lee and the Queen. I found out that Tom had written about me because his blog appeared in my pingbacks window in wordpress. I then posted on Twitter to express my surprise that Tom had posted about me.

At this point, the blog started to take off. The post currently has 18 comments and has had over 600 views. I replied to each comment as quickly as I could, which not only encouraged most people to post again but actually elicited more considered views from three or four people, which was rewarding.

I kept an eye on my pingbacks box and left a comment on the site of everyone who wrote about me. I tried to be as polite as possible and engage people in the substantive issues.

On Sunday I noticed remarks by David Cameron about the funding of political parties, published on ConservativeHome, which appeared on the PoliticsHome ticker. Given that this is my specialist subject, I wrote a quick post urging Cameron to do the right thing and left a comment on the ConservativeHome article, something like ‘Cameron will regret it if he fails to reform party funding: http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/cameron-mistaken-on-party-funding-reform/

This post attracted over 500 readers, 17 comments and a few returning commenters from the previous post.

The challenge now is: how to sustain the readers through this week.

Internet psychology

2009-02-16T10:41:00.002+00:00

Thanks to @rodsloane I have come across the internet psychologist: Graham Jones.

Take a look at his site. He has some really interesting stuff.

http://www.grahamjones.co.uk

Improving my blog using plugins

2009-02-12T08:37:00.005+00:00

The content management system I use for Matthew Cain's blog is wordpress - my favourite blog provider. Having now generated some traffic, started to get some comments and got a few blogs linking to mine, I now want to improve the blog itself. I'm going to try using a few plugins - optional extras provided by the wordpress community.

1. Managing spam

I've installed the Akismet plugin to deal with spam. It's free, has a good algorithm which (apparently) also learns from all the other users so when spammers develop a new method, the system updates quickly to correctly flag new spam. It's not actually yet identified spam - a signal that my blog isn't getting particularly wide attention!

2. Using a site map

Lots of SEO experts say that you should have a site map. Apparently a site map helps search engines crawl through all your pages (rather than just the homepage) and it can even tell the search engine how frequently each page is updated. So I downloaded the Google sitemap generator (it works as well for other search engines) to create a site map.

Currently Google has indexed 57 pages on my blog - which appears to be all of them. I've posted 29 times and together with the tags and about pages, it adds up to around 57.

Google last visited my site at 15.30 yesterday - shortly after I published my last post. So it's visiting often enough.

I've got 10% of my traffic from search engines, thanks to people searching for my name (Hi Dad).

I'll be looking closely at these figures to see if there's any positive change as a result of the plugin.

RSS

I've added an RSS subscription widget. RSS isn't well used proportionately but heavily used be techies. What it does is take your blog posts and publishes them in the user's chosen interface - a bit like their own newspaper page. It's an easier way of monitoring updates on your favourite blogs than visiting each through your bookmarks. And it's a way of keeping readers who visit once.

I'm starting with a base of 0 so we'll see if my blog is popular through RSS subscriptions.

SEO

I've installed a search engine optimisation tool. My URLs and headers are already optimised for search engines, because I do that when writing them. However, this tool allows me to define the meta content description. I won't bother with the keyword tags as it doesn't make any difference any more.

New content feeds

I'm experimenting with 2 plugins which generate new content. One will take all my Newscounter Tweets from Twitter and publish them - ensuring 2 or 3 new pieces of content in between blog posts. The second, postalicious, takes feed from my bookmarking site. So every time I save a bookmark in Delicious, I can produce an aggregated bit for my blog - passing on articles that I find interesting. Currybet does this particularly well with his recent links feature.

Increasing interactivity

I'm trying a meet your commenters tool. This plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network. I don't know how well it will work, frankly. But because I'm trying to build a community, hopefully this will involve people more closely in my blog.

Monitoring loadtimes

I'm going to be keeping a close eye on the site load times. This is what they are currently:

And I need to make sure that it doesn't get too slow. I want my blog to be accessible to people with a dial-up modem. After all, if you want to build a community you need to be inclusive.

I will report back on progress shortly.

Blogging in pictures for the RSA

2009-02-11T11:36:00.003+00:00

Matthew Taylor of the RSA (a Newscounter client)has developed the notion of a framework to judge the credibility of an apology. It's particularly appropriate, given the apology of senior bankers to the treasury select committee.

We've developed it into a graphic for him, so that it can stand alone as a reference point for judging future apologies. Matthew's already done media interviews on the art of the political apology so hopefully it will further reinforce his insight in this area.

My blog lessons - generating an audience

2009-02-10T21:41:00.002+00:00

I've been developing a Matthew Cain blog. As I wrote recently, it started with a wave of excitement and frustration that I had so much to say but hadn't setup the blog so far.

Post every day

I then stopped posting each day. Of course, there's no search engine reason to post every day. But I still tell people to do it because if they don't they will stop posting. It's just what happened to me.

Getting the posting habit

I started to talk about the snow in Stoke Newington. After the initial post, I needed to follow it up and did several days later. But then I found something else on my internet travels that I wanted to talk about. I'm one of the UK's few experts on political party funding.

Building an audience

I made a comment on Labour List about party funding. It didn't generate any interest. But now that I started, I got the bug. The more I post the more I want to write. So I wrote about the T-Mobile inspired flash mob. I followed my own advice and put links on 4 other sites, which generated a couple of comments - to which I replied (of course).

Generating comments

Then today, I made a quick post for the sake of putting up something new. But then I was thinking about blogging. So I posted twice more. Suddenly, I'd convinced myself that my view on George Monbiot was really important.

To build an audience, I:
1. put into Google Blog search Monbiot AND Blears
2. Clicked on the top 12 results
3. Re-wrote my headline to make it more provactive
4. Left a comment on 10 of them - 9 were anti Blears
5. Started replying to the comments

I now have 12 comments and have added those commentators blogs to my blogroll.

Key lessons
1. It's difficult to get into the habit of writing unless you do often
2. Being an active commentator on a live web issue does generate traffic and comments
3. The issue has to be of interest to a number of sites
4. Respond to the comments to open up further discussion, not close it down
5. Find ways to build the relationship with the commentator further
6. Have your analytics package configured. I didn't have - so can't measure the success of this!

I'm not trying to suggest this is best practice - but it's my experience and I'll record how I build on this.

The story of Counterpoint

2009-02-10T19:49:00.000+00:00

Expensive printers

2009-02-09T16:49:00.002+00:00

Newscounter has recently changed its printing suppliers. It will no longer be using Matbaa in Stoke Newington for emergency jobs because they are just too expensive and the charging policy is unfair and not transparent.

From now on, we recommend Hanway Print in Islington.

This is the full details in Matbaa is too expensive.

British Bankers Association engages with blogs

2009-02-09T13:02:00.006+00:00

Well done to the British Bankers' Association for engaging with blogs. I came across this article on A View from Middle England.

The BBA has left a comment clarifying its position and informing readers what it really thinks. The way they've done this is to be applauded:

1. The BBA has been monitoring its online reputation
2. The comment is clear, concise and the contributor transparent
3. There's a link to more information for readers who want it
4. The BBA has engaged in the content of the article, accepting where it went wrong but putting the blogger straight

The only other suggestions we'd make are:
1. The username could like to an identifiable person at the BBA. This would help users (and particularly the blog owner) check the authenticity of the comment
2. If they provided a link to a specially created landing page, they could track the clickthroughs and thus learn more about the site and the views of its readers. This would help develop the BBA's blogging strategy further.

Otherwise, a good effort from which others can learn.

Professionalism: the minmum standard

2009-02-06T07:27:00.002+00:00

Until now, I was pleased with myself for overseeing the production of a very professional piece of marketing. It's certainly the most professional thing we've produced this year.

Then I read Seth Godin's thoughts on professionalism. He argues that professionalism is really the minimum acceptable standard. That smaller startups like us, need to reach that level of professionalism to be accepted - then argue for our niche. Not excuse our lack of professionalism as a tradeoff with our niche.

It's well worth reading.

Printer Charing Cross - Don't

2009-02-03T12:07:00.002+00:00

I won't be using the services of Printer Charing Cross. The company is not in Charing Cross and is not called Printer Charing Cross.

Instead, they appear to have stuffed Google as a misleading search engine optimisation attempt.

I wanted a printer in Charing Cross. I'm currently sat in Charing Cross. So I googled printer Charing Cross. I clicked on the first link and went to call them. Then I noticed they are based in Basingstoke.

I'm not impressed. The first three results in Google all link to this company which is called Branded Print in Basingstoke. But claims an unethical association with Charing Cross.

If it's not their fault, I encourage them to give up the domain names, relocate or make clear on their homepage that they are based in Basingstoke. In the meantime, I encourage bloggers to make clear that they are not based in Charing Cross.