Day 14 of 31 days to be a better blogger
These past few days can be categorised as know your blog, and know the blogs in your niche. This has meant becoming familiar with Technorati and Google blog search.
Technorati is fascinating. You put a URL into it and it will tell you the number of people linking to it (known as reactions)and who they are. It will also allow you to add your blog to the list to get the same information on it. This meant that I could look at blogs that were similar to mine and find out what their key tag words are and who is linking to them. it is then worthwhile looking at those blogs. Google blog search allows you to set up alerts in Google Reader of blogs that use key words you have identified. Through this I have identified a couple of blogs that are similar to mine and linked up with them.
I have also set up Google Analytics on the blog Literacy Resources to see who is visiting and where from. I don’t have many visitors so the data is not overwhelming but I can imagine that it could become so.
From looking at the style of blogs in the same niche, there are several things coming through. (I am looking at the Masters here). Most of them have a regular feature such as Chalk Talk from Angela Maiers and from Jenny Luca , School’s Out – Friday. These people post every day, and are also frequent tweeters. I can’t manage such frequent posts but could manage a regular post every month. I had thought of videos that are useful in the literacy classroom. They also both have a friendly, informal style and I think I have too formal a style and too many How to … posts which just become a series of instructions with little personal input. So, a slight style rethink and a little more inspiration!
Image An Old Mirror by Storm Crypt licensed under the Creative Commons Licence
Add comment January 24th, 2009
