This is my final blog post that will be assessed for my Networked media production unit, it is designed to assess the success of my blog through the use of google analytics and will hopefully show my blogs success.
Over the course of the semester I made 43 posts, these were done during the months of February-mid May. My blog managed to achieve some success towards the end of the unit, achieving 20 views on one of the days.
I found that little of my success was achieved throughout the meatier part of the unit, probably because I didn't chose to advertise the blog through conventional means. I didn't start following friends, liking other people's Tumblr posts, or re blogging until the end of the semester, however when I started committing to these things traffic has begun to come. One of the tricks to hosting a successful blog would be publication of new material followed by a brief "awareness campaign" that is simply liking more people's things in the community, in the hopes that they in turn like your content back. I did manage to achieve a bounce rate of 50%, I guess the content needs to be more grabbing for people to explore the site, not such a good point here but a lot can be taken away from it.
On the topic of content however when I reviewed my previous blog posts I noted that a lot of my content is text based. I don't think there's anything more intimidating to a web surfer than the classic wall of text, so it is possible that is where I'm having some trouble attracting new viewers, at the same time however if my blog was to become a photo journal I don't think I would be able to convey the core ideals of thinking about design, which involves a lot of reading.
One of the things I took the most satisfaction from in my blog was the opportunity it provided me with to publish my own content. I used it as one of the three platforms (moodle and typophile.com) to publish my online Zine about grids. I would like to continue to use it as a platform for self publication, as it is convenient to refer friends to. This would mean dropping off on the amount of posts per week, which is not necessarily a good thing, but it would increase the personable nature of the blog and allow users easy access to my publications that I think are smart design in a much more concise manner than weekly posts.
If this graph is anything to go by my Audience seems to be spending a lot of time on my site. I can't remember the last time I spent 17 minutes on a website, let alone a blog, so possibly someone really, really likes my website or they really like drinking coffee and leaving the computers on. I suspect this traffic will be reduced over the course of my blogging experience, as users revisit my site there will be less need to spend so much time reading back logs of information.
If there's anything I should take away from this experience of blogging it's probably to rework my content structure. There should be more depth to my posts, encouraging users to look further into my site to reduce the bounce rate, however, the content seems to engage users well, keeping them on my site for a long time. Also putting myself out more would be a good idea, following more blogs and liking more posts to encourage more traffic to my blog. I would love to redesign the blog with a background that changes varying on the traffic of the day, which would be a really interesting way of engaging consumers. Google Analytics can lead to a lot of varying theories but the only way to create conclusions is to test out different approaches to content. Hopefully after analyzing these stats I can begin producing a more successful blog.
izzy806
stormborns
blakekathryn
discoholicmusic
ellievsbear
