This document outlines a workshop focused on basic blog monitoring and analytics aimed at increasing website traffic and engagement for bloggers and podcasters. It covers using tools like Google Analytics and various blog monitoring techniques to understand visitor sources, interactions, and content effectiveness. Additionally, it provides insights on maintaining a routine for monitoring metrics and making informed decisions based on the collected data.

1. WHERE DO YOUR VISITORS COME FROM & WHAT DO THEY DO ON YOUR SITE? Nicole Simon crueltobekind.org twitter.com/nicolesimon friendfeed.com/nicolesimon

2. Housekeeping

3. Session description Basic Analytics & Blog Monitoring 101 BlogWorldExpo 2008 , Intro To New Media Track - Do you know where your traffic comes from and how you can use this information to increase traffic? Who is talking about you in the blogosphere? Or how many feed subscribers you have? In this workshop you learn the basics about blog monitoring and analytics: how to set up a simple blog monitoring (also called Ego or Vanity searches) and how to set up and use Google Analytics, a free yet extremly powerful tool for all your website traffic. This is also a good session for Podcasters to learn how to increase their listenership / viewers.

4. What we will cover today simple DIY strategies to look at your blog / podcast to determine the different visitors Blog monitoring Google Analytics your toolkit all done from a more personal point of view but can be easily applied to companies and products

5. Goal demonstrate on examples of some services how they work in principle, as later you choose the ones you like to work with for you to understand how your goals influence the choice of tools to use

6. Collect figures … even if you do not need them right now, they might provide useful to you later build a simple spreadsheet (monthly) links in google to your page feed subscribers / mail subscribers technorati numbers friends in social networks build a checklist on what to collect each month including links

7. Useful for you to know about me I love spreadsheet, analytics and log files. You don’t need to but you need to understand the prinicples and mechanisms behind it – and then you can outsource it. I am blogger and a podcaster and a twitterer and a social media addict. For me there is no either or, but whatever is best used as a tool should be used. Go have a look at what is out there, it might prove useful.

8. These slides have more text on them to be useful afterwards do not have a lot of fancy pictures will be up on crueltobekind.org are simplified in several areas use examples not to promote me but because I have access to them and can use them 

9. Defining Analytics & Monitoring

10. What is blog monitoring and analytics? can be a variety of tools and possible reports the task of doing the reporting acting on the results better described as “show me where do they come from”, “what do they do on my site”, “who talks about me” and “am I successful?” should be part of your routine as is producing the actual content

11. Examples to monitor and look at comments / trackbacks backlinks and entries on bookmarking services amount my name or company was talked about ranking in search engines for your site / keywords also: monitor your competition or leaders in the field learn from their successes on what works

12. How is this relevant to podcasters? successful podcasters use their blog as a mechanism to distribute information and keep readers and listeners more engaged the blog is not a necessary evil but integral part of your podcast getting aquainted with how bloggers think will give you an advantage over pure podcasters nearly all tools work with text, not audio / video

13. A typical day for me …

14. Check the Ego searches go through the subscribed ego searches in my newsreader or email client to see new backlinks to me and my projects check in on the lifestreams (twitter / friendfeed) have a look at the statistics (new backlinks or referrers? ) Make a guess about the time used

15. Showing some of the most common, not all of them, choose your own preferences Ego / Vanity Searches

16. What are Ego / Vanity Searches? Who does NOT search themselves? Really: It’s just being professional about it. Call it your personal clipping service done by yourself (or somebody else) Being talked about means being noticable to readers / listeners - and search engines

17. Technorati http://technorati.com result: links back to you in the last 180 days only covers blogs it knows about (and crawls) has become heavily unreliable but is still considered to be ‘the’ measurement of importance you can check other blogs there as well bookmark the page or subscribe in your feedreader

18. Backlinks on blogworldexpo.com bookmark / subscribe

19. Tip: Reverse Ping Technorati if you find a new backlink not yet in Technorati, ping them about it! use the webform and submit the page hope that it will show up and increase your ranking http://technorati.com/ping

20. Google Blogsearch http://blogsearch.google.com enter term you are interested in (or more) or site choose settings to your liking bookmark the page or subscribe in your feedreader

22. Advancec options

23. Google Alert additional to Blogsearch for News and the Web often more reliable than blogsearch use settings for “as soon as they appear” or “once a day”

24. Twitter Search use http://search.twitter.com to search for your name / term understands search parameters like OR and “-from:blogworldexpo” bookmark the page or subscribe in your feedreader careful – tinyurl problem!

27. Tips & Tricks double content will appear, rather than trying to put it through Yahoo Pipes or alike, just ignore it use all links in one folder in your browser toolbar and open them with one click make separate folders for each project add events to your calendar on when to check your data with links in it

28. How to set up a Project Folder main site backend to the site the feed (ping feedburner) --------------------- Technorati search on the site Google Blogsearch on the site [special pages I want to watch] advantage: all projects are set up the same!

29. before we dive into analytics Not all traffic is equal

30. Why you need a 360° view Traffic (amount of pageviews of your website) can be highly misleading as can other metrics It can be a basis, but needs to be accompanied with other reports to show for example interaction with your site first you need to understand the types of users

31. major traffic sources

32. Type: Subscribers Subscribed to your content / your feed through an feed reader or an email subscription do really read / listen to your content are genuinly interested in you / your brand / your products / your offerings have a more personal relationship with you more inclined to leave comment and share / bookmark / recommend your content ignores everything but the content

33. Type: Search Engine Visitors came on your site by accident through a search engine and are interested in finding what they where searching for could care less about your blog but may be interested in looking around acts on targeted advertising as this could be a better information than your blog post

34. Type social bookmarking user comes to your site by discovery in a social bookmarking service either through random choice or friend recommendation more interactive than search engine users as they might reshare your content

35. Type: Life stream users Services where I as a user can enter ‘my lifestream’, i.e. add my twitter, my bookmarking, my blog, my pictures all in one place Friends follow me and if they encounter something interesting go to the link. Highly interactive, but if it scrolled past me in the timeline, I will not see it

36. Balance is different

37. Question: Where do I get the data needed to make better decisions in regard to my blog and my content? Answer: depends on where you want to go – but let’s start with some simple things everybody can use

38. Analytics

39. Feedburner & Feedflare use feedburner to track numbers (and export) not perfect but everybody has the same numbers subscribe to your own feed to check if it comes through

40. Analytics tools google analytics / sitemeter are different tools for different purposes – choose the one you like sometimes paying money is good

41. Google Analytics free tool (you pay with your data) easy to install and variety of reports can mail reports to dedicated addresses

42. Daily Dashboard

43. Where does it come from

44. where do users come from

45. surprisingly …

46. search engines

48. browser usage

49. screen resolution

50. Referring sites

51. Harry Potter last year

53. Add a new profile to Google Analytics

57. Random stuff if there is still time

58. Be careful with these tools “ My Alexa number is …” “ My comscore data says …” “ I am a leader in …” “ I was voted best in Little Town of blogging contest”

59. Alexa counts only when toolbar is installed heavily towards american usage only (how much of your visitors do come from elsewhere?) only fully available for IE – Firefox and co have up to 50% of the market share

60. THANKS FOR LISTENING QUESTIONS? Nicole Simon http://crueltobekind.org http:// twitter.com/nicolesimon http:// friendfeed.com/nicolesimon