What blogging means to me...

And why my blog isn’t popular…

The Integral - http://blog.aditto.info © 2009 Aditya Marathe

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Agenda

About my blog - The Integral Blogging platforms

– Moving from Blogger to Wordpress– Multi-platform blogging, comparison of various platforms

What have I blogged about and what people generally read on my blog Blog analytics

– Some numbers and trends of visitors on my blog– Relevance of statistics to me– Analytics tools

What I must do to increase the visitors hit count

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Started blogging in my first year at engineering…

Registered on Blogger for a free blog (April 2005)– http://adityamarathe.blogspot.com

Fascinated by Calculus, the blog was named “The Integral”– The place where Life is the curve integrated over various elements that we

see in and around us. Wrote mostly on life in hostel and college Migrated to wordpress.com during final year Registered domain for a website and a blog

– http://www.aditto.info– http://blog.aditto.info

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Why did I move from Blogger to Wordpress?

Wordpress had and still has more blogging tools– Import feature from multiple sources– Static pages apart from posts– Password protection on posts– “Cleaner” look, though Blogger has almost infinite customizable themes!– Ad-sense was not a feature that could stop me from moving from Blogger– At some point of time, I would like to move to externally hosted Wordpress

blog

Wordpress is ‘cool’ for blogging– Comments handling is far superior

• ‘Reply to’ comment email and end with !END straight from Inbox!– Wordpress.com is always adding newer features

Blogging Platforms

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Multi-platform blogging, does it make sense?

Maintain personal blog on Wordpress– http://blog.aditto.info

Photo blog on Tumblr– http://photos.aditto.info

Micro blog on Twitter– http://twitter.com/aditto

Which is an easier option? What factors influence the decision?

• Find a good paid host• Install Wordpress• Add some plug-ins• Integrate everything

Blogging Platforms

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Twitter and Wordpress are like the two extremes of personal blogging

Trust Wordpress / Tumblr to preserve my data more than any paid host, and then I don’t need to pay to host

Feature Wordpress Tumblr Twitter

Platform Full feature blogging Limited blogging capacity

Micro blogging

Ease of use Not so difficult Fairly easy Very easy

Features Always growing Limited Minimal

Customizability Complete / Limited Complete Very limited

Domain mapping Paid Free N/A

Spam management

Good No spam You can spam!

What I use it for Articles, incidents, and basically anything substantially / worth

sharing

Photography Quick opinions / sharing links / get

quick news / killing time

Blogging Platforms

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So what have I blogged about in about 4 yrs?

Travel– South Korea [2007]– East Sikkim [2008]– United States [2008]

Photography

Childhood– Memories

• Phantom Sweet Cigarettes

People and Life– Eccentricity– Conversations– Humours

Inside The Integral

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Why do people land on my blog? And what do they check out?

Most commonly visited post (since 2008)– #177 East Sikkim Trip - April 2008– #156 Busan @ 300 kmph... KTX

Most common search engine terms (since 2008)– Bibimbap – South Korean food – Seoul

Random search terms reaching my blog…• cute girls• specs frame• birthmark in center of palm• shock laga laga laga advertisement

Inside The Integral

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Few basic statistics about The Integral

Number of posts – 258 Comments – 786 Categories – 14 Hits (since 2007) – 36,000

But these are not the only trends I love to observe…

49%

27%

3%

3%

2%

2%

14%India

USA

South Korea

Canada

Singapore

UK

Others

Blog Analytics

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Does the number of hits matter to me?

Average hits per day at The Integral: 60 (current)– An ordinary blogger gets anything between 10-100 hits a day– A very popular blogger gets 100-500 hits a day– Marketing blogs can get anywhere from 1K to 1M hits a day!– Theme based personal blogs end up getting 100-1000 hits a day

Number of subscribers – Whats that?

Blogger vs Wordpress when it comes to search results– Google indexes Blogspot blogs instantaneously– Wordpress.com users always suffer indexing issues

But it’s ok!

Yes it does matter, but I wont stop blogging even if nobody reads

Blog Analytics

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Spikes in the visitors trends?

Blogged something PERSONAL

Blogged something VERY INTERESTING

No blog, hyper active search!

Blog Analytics

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77 % of visitors to my blog give it no more than a glance…

Less than 5 secs   

From 5 secs to 30 secs   

From 30 secs to 5 mins   

From 5 mins to 20 mins   

From 20 mins to an hour   

Longer than an hour   

Blog Analytics

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For a very famous personal blogger too, 57 % visitors stay for less than 5 secs

Less than 5 secs   

From 5 secs to 30 secs   

From 30 secs to 5 mins   

From 5 mins to 20 mins   

From 20 mins to an hour   

Longer than an hour   

The key however is to increase the number of visitors who spend more than 5 minutes on your blog!

Blog Analytics

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There are a lot of free tools to perform good analysis of visitor statistics

Wordpress Stats

Google Analytics

Blog Analytics

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To make my blog popular, I must…

Visit tons of other blogs, and comment!

Write stuff that people want to read…– Politics– Entertainment (Movies, music)– Humour– Geeky technology!!– Sex

Register my blog on tons of social networking and bookmarking sites

Write less of personal and more of general stuff

Isn’t that what a personal blog is meant to be?

more less

some

But I…Blog Popularity

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Creating content, and creatively sharing…

Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may exercise your copyright rights—such as the right of others to copy your work, make derivative

works or adaptations of your work, to distribute your work and/or make money from your work.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org

Creative Content Sharing

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Thank You!

The Integral: http://blog.aditto.infoPhoto Blog: http://photos.aditto.info

Email: aditya.ee@gmail.com

Aditya Marathe