I've been asked a couple of questions about the 'Top of the Berkshire Blogs' chart I compile. Hopefully this will provide some answers.
Blog rankings matter for the simple reason that they help bring you more visitors.
This works in two ways.
Firstly, links from other sites may drive traffic as readers click through and make a direct connection.
And secondly, search engines measure the weight and volume of links - which means with each new link your site receives the higher it will be placed in search engine queries for relevancy. And this indirectly drives traffic to your site too.
So my 'Top of the Berkshire Blogs' chart is good on a number of counts - it tracks the recent moves of local blogs up search engine rankings while helping drive members of the local network forwards in the wider online community, as well as being a fun way of gaining feedback about the performance of your site!
Now get ready for blast-off!
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Thursday, 12 November 2009
The Trouble With... Blogging
...is that it can really do your head in!
Well, not always, of course.
For my own part I've set myself a pretty mammoth task of writing a sort of local current affairs news journal for my Reading List, and it can often get a bit intense. So it's good to escape over here to organise a few thoughts with some discussion.
My methodology is to use the collection of local blogs I've found and use them as a sources of news, somewhere between a news agency and a news paper. It can often be a bit of a stretch to find the hook which binds all the sources together and create a narrative which readers may respond to, but when it works the effect is a fascinating insight into the life around us - and it often surprises me!
I have a few of basic types of blog posts which I use, so let me describe a couple of examples from this week.
The first is a basic 'event' story - as here: Geeks Get Organised. This takes a couple of different sources and respins their reactions to what happened, thereby showing what is happening in the wider context. So, for example, this story was about the growing use of social media and how increasing connections made by people through SM is creating a political constituency by moving people to support related issues.
But the second is a more tricky 'multi-event' story - as here: Issues Of Equality. This takes singular sources regarding different events and notes the similarity between them, and thereby attempting to show how the deeper issues affect everybody. Thus race, gender, age, income or anything can be means by which individuals or groups can be discriminated unfairly against.
The juxtaposition of generalised and more specific stories has an additional effect, creating a connection between the two of them and hinting at how the lessons learned in one area can be used positively by cross-fertilising other areas.
So in this instance the conclusion offered about the way to further equality is to enable greater communication between people who can be included among that group and enabling them to speak about the issues that matter to them.
This facet of the art of journalism is largely a matter of luck - and it can cause big headaches if you try to fit stories together too neatly.
So just occasionally more committed readers may notice I've gone AWOL for just long enough to gain a fresh perspective on how to edit everything together.
Well, not always, of course.
For my own part I've set myself a pretty mammoth task of writing a sort of local current affairs news journal for my Reading List, and it can often get a bit intense. So it's good to escape over here to organise a few thoughts with some discussion.
My methodology is to use the collection of local blogs I've found and use them as a sources of news, somewhere between a news agency and a news paper. It can often be a bit of a stretch to find the hook which binds all the sources together and create a narrative which readers may respond to, but when it works the effect is a fascinating insight into the life around us - and it often surprises me!
I have a few of basic types of blog posts which I use, so let me describe a couple of examples from this week.
The first is a basic 'event' story - as here: Geeks Get Organised. This takes a couple of different sources and respins their reactions to what happened, thereby showing what is happening in the wider context. So, for example, this story was about the growing use of social media and how increasing connections made by people through SM is creating a political constituency by moving people to support related issues.
But the second is a more tricky 'multi-event' story - as here: Issues Of Equality. This takes singular sources regarding different events and notes the similarity between them, and thereby attempting to show how the deeper issues affect everybody. Thus race, gender, age, income or anything can be means by which individuals or groups can be discriminated unfairly against.
The juxtaposition of generalised and more specific stories has an additional effect, creating a connection between the two of them and hinting at how the lessons learned in one area can be used positively by cross-fertilising other areas.
So in this instance the conclusion offered about the way to further equality is to enable greater communication between people who can be included among that group and enabling them to speak about the issues that matter to them.
This facet of the art of journalism is largely a matter of luck - and it can cause big headaches if you try to fit stories together too neatly.
So just occasionally more committed readers may notice I've gone AWOL for just long enough to gain a fresh perspective on how to edit everything together.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Why Use JS-Kit For Comments
This post is in response to Tim Trent, who posed a question in a comment thread.
Tim said that he felt the JS-Kit ECHO comment app does not enhance the user experience and asked why I then decided to install it.
There are several points which I need to raise in explaining an adequate answer. Firstly, installing it was not entirely necessary and the reception he (and separately Elizabeth Thomas) gave it does show it isn't universally welcomed.
However I started investigating comment apps for my Reading List newsblog as it began kicking off various discussions. These discussions took advantage of Blogger's anonymous function to make partisan attacks, but at the same time I did not want to concede defeat and impose restrictions to limit and control the conversation.
Instead I felt a more sophisticated bolt-on would be more attractive to my needs.
Blogger's main advantage as a publishing platform is that it is highly intuitive, and as the main free blogging platform it dominates the sector thereby setting the basic standard for online behaviour.
But I wanted to raise the standard on my main site to discourage petty partisan sniping, which I feel is not in the wider interests of constructive debate. Although I will accept accept anonymous comments I know the basic rule of thumb is that people are lazy and all I had to do was find a prompt which would eliminate all but the most persistent trolls and tarquins.
The main alternatives I considered installing were JS-Kit ECHO, IntenseDebate and DISQUS.
As you can see from their frontpages the difference in approach is immediately apparent: DISQUS requires a complex registration and installation procedure and IntenseDebate has numerous registration and notification verification pages. By comparison once I decided it was for me I got JS-Kit up and running on my blog in slightly less than two-and-a-half minutes.
JS-Kit offers additional functionality by providing automatic links to URLs, as well as cross-platform communication - so if you sign in with a Twitter account then your comment will also be published there.
This offers the potential to connect disparate discussions in multiple locations happening simultaneously. It's something that I've only experimented with, partly because it requires greater discipline in restraining the length of comments, but also because it is only likely to start having a significant effect as more sites install JS-Kit (interestingly Technorati has favoured it).
So far the most interesting function has been the automatic comment history. This demonstrates the benefits of identity when viewing the details of each individual commenter.
And this leads into the second big advantage of JS-Kit: the massive simplification of comment moderation. Although I tend to be opposed to any restriction on discussion I have moderated an occasional piece of spam which obviously has nothing to do with anything and I've found the comment history has enabled me to distinguish more easily between suspected and real spam.
I accept there is an issue with its' clunkiness and JS-Kit may not offer sufficient benefits to make it worthwhile for every blogger, but it does suit my purposes and I am pretty well satisfied with the results.
Now all I hope is that growing familiarity will breed trust and my visitors will find themselves more able to comment in a constructive manner.
Tim said that he felt the JS-Kit ECHO comment app does not enhance the user experience and asked why I then decided to install it.
There are several points which I need to raise in explaining an adequate answer. Firstly, installing it was not entirely necessary and the reception he (and separately Elizabeth Thomas) gave it does show it isn't universally welcomed.
However I started investigating comment apps for my Reading List newsblog as it began kicking off various discussions. These discussions took advantage of Blogger's anonymous function to make partisan attacks, but at the same time I did not want to concede defeat and impose restrictions to limit and control the conversation.
Instead I felt a more sophisticated bolt-on would be more attractive to my needs.
Blogger's main advantage as a publishing platform is that it is highly intuitive, and as the main free blogging platform it dominates the sector thereby setting the basic standard for online behaviour.
But I wanted to raise the standard on my main site to discourage petty partisan sniping, which I feel is not in the wider interests of constructive debate. Although I will accept accept anonymous comments I know the basic rule of thumb is that people are lazy and all I had to do was find a prompt which would eliminate all but the most persistent trolls and tarquins.
The main alternatives I considered installing were JS-Kit ECHO, IntenseDebate and DISQUS.
As you can see from their frontpages the difference in approach is immediately apparent: DISQUS requires a complex registration and installation procedure and IntenseDebate has numerous registration and notification verification pages. By comparison once I decided it was for me I got JS-Kit up and running on my blog in slightly less than two-and-a-half minutes.
JS-Kit offers additional functionality by providing automatic links to URLs, as well as cross-platform communication - so if you sign in with a Twitter account then your comment will also be published there.
This offers the potential to connect disparate discussions in multiple locations happening simultaneously. It's something that I've only experimented with, partly because it requires greater discipline in restraining the length of comments, but also because it is only likely to start having a significant effect as more sites install JS-Kit (interestingly Technorati has favoured it).
So far the most interesting function has been the automatic comment history. This demonstrates the benefits of identity when viewing the details of each individual commenter.
And this leads into the second big advantage of JS-Kit: the massive simplification of comment moderation. Although I tend to be opposed to any restriction on discussion I have moderated an occasional piece of spam which obviously has nothing to do with anything and I've found the comment history has enabled me to distinguish more easily between suspected and real spam.
I accept there is an issue with its' clunkiness and JS-Kit may not offer sufficient benefits to make it worthwhile for every blogger, but it does suit my purposes and I am pretty well satisfied with the results.
Now all I hope is that growing familiarity will breed trust and my visitors will find themselves more able to comment in a constructive manner.
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Spice Up Your Earning Prospects Online!
The potential for hyperlocal newsblogs to attract a highly defined audience creates plenty of opportunities for targetted marketing.
Jeff Jarvis writes in the Guardian that this may offer a good economic model for the future of journalism, but Phil Szomszor is cautious about how this translates across the Atlantic while media consumption habits are limited by technology, although he also thinks those who pioneer the techniques required to make a success online will have a headstart once it does become more viable from an economic perspective.
From my point-of-view the commercial prospects of blog-journalism are still somewhat distant, but I've already started attracting some direct interest from local companies who see value in a targetted audience.
I was recently approached offering a voucher for a free burrito (to be redeemed by September 30th, ie tommorrow) by Mission Mexican Grill to help promote a new food outlet they are opening in Reading's Oracle shopping centre.
It's obviously only a very small example, but worth mentioning nonetheless as it makes it clear that my blog is a platform which can offer opportunities worth exploiting, and by extension the possibilities for new media forms to carve a profitable niche in the market.
Jeff Jarvis writes in the Guardian that this may offer a good economic model for the future of journalism, but Phil Szomszor is cautious about how this translates across the Atlantic while media consumption habits are limited by technology, although he also thinks those who pioneer the techniques required to make a success online will have a headstart once it does become more viable from an economic perspective.
From my point-of-view the commercial prospects of blog-journalism are still somewhat distant, but I've already started attracting some direct interest from local companies who see value in a targetted audience.
I was recently approached offering a voucher for a free burrito (to be redeemed by September 30th, ie tommorrow) by Mission Mexican Grill to help promote a new food outlet they are opening in Reading's Oracle shopping centre.
It's obviously only a very small example, but worth mentioning nonetheless as it makes it clear that my blog is a platform which can offer opportunities worth exploiting, and by extension the possibilities for new media forms to carve a profitable niche in the market.
Friday, 25 September 2009
Housekeeping and the dog which didn't bark in the night
Any readers of this blog may have noticed the slowdown in output on the main page recently. So it's worth giving you loyal few an insight into what's been going on.
Firstly I'll get my excuses in early by explaining that I've been a bit under the (surprisingly sunny) weather - not that that means I've been preferring to top up my tan rather than to neglect my keyboard!
Not in the slightest. No, I've recently discovered a range of blog resources which have uncovered an untapped treasure trove of local blogs. Previously I could only guess at the sheer scale of the online world in Berkshire and environs, but now I've got a handle on it the volume of information and opinion out there it has taken me aback somewhat.
I've suddenly discovered a hidden well of over 1,000 identifiably local blogs to this area, and the number is growing beyond my ability to count!
The prime difficulty in this is in finding an adequate method of collecting all the sources together in a single place.
Then a bigger challenge mounts its' head: how to keep track of everything in order to collate relevant information and then synthesise it into a narrative where each side of the story can be exposed.
So what I've had to do is to take a step back and look at the problem in a different way.
This page was a starting point, in that the action of writing these things down has helped me give order to my thoughts, as it has also given me space to separate them.
The task I've set myself has quickly expanded and it's clear that some major evolutionary-scale changes were required if I was to avoid losing control of it.
While this may not initially be apparent from the main entry path, the lack of activity there should be an indicator that something is up - a matter, not of what is happening, but more one of what should have happened but has not and therefore why not - just like the dog which didn't bark in the night.
So keep your eyes wide open... changes are afoot!
Firstly I'll get my excuses in early by explaining that I've been a bit under the (surprisingly sunny) weather - not that that means I've been preferring to top up my tan rather than to neglect my keyboard!
Not in the slightest. No, I've recently discovered a range of blog resources which have uncovered an untapped treasure trove of local blogs. Previously I could only guess at the sheer scale of the online world in Berkshire and environs, but now I've got a handle on it the volume of information and opinion out there it has taken me aback somewhat.
I've suddenly discovered a hidden well of over 1,000 identifiably local blogs to this area, and the number is growing beyond my ability to count!
The prime difficulty in this is in finding an adequate method of collecting all the sources together in a single place.
Then a bigger challenge mounts its' head: how to keep track of everything in order to collate relevant information and then synthesise it into a narrative where each side of the story can be exposed.
So what I've had to do is to take a step back and look at the problem in a different way.
This page was a starting point, in that the action of writing these things down has helped me give order to my thoughts, as it has also given me space to separate them.
The task I've set myself has quickly expanded and it's clear that some major evolutionary-scale changes were required if I was to avoid losing control of it.
While this may not initially be apparent from the main entry path, the lack of activity there should be an indicator that something is up - a matter, not of what is happening, but more one of what should have happened but has not and therefore why not - just like the dog which didn't bark in the night.
So keep your eyes wide open... changes are afoot!
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