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Marketing experts talk about conversions, Google Analytics lets you measure conversion goals but what conversion goals should you set for your blog?

Once you have defined your goals, you can track your performance in acheiving them. After that, work to improve with a little experimentation and a well-researched strategy.

Sales

Duh! No-brainer - if you sell online, this is the goal that matters.

If you don’t sell online but sell in a bricks-and-mortar shop you can still drive sales with your blog and measure them. Try giving out a printable coupon or discount code on your website and use that to track your goals.

Advert Click Throughs

So you don’t sell stuff but you show adverts. Cool, each click is a conversion and every ad network will let you measure your click through rate. A bit of internet research should reveal other people in your niche bragging (or complaining) about their click through rate, examine their sites and figure out what they do differently.

Feed Subscriptions

Those of us who do not sell online or show adverts still need goals to help us improve and getting more subscribers is an excellent one. Readers who use feed readers are technically savvy, often early adopters and opinion formers. Use Feedburner to measure the number of subscribers to your blog feed.

Comments

Bloggers love comments and interacting with your readership is one of the most important aspects of blogging.

Comment quality is an important factor too. It’s all too easy to get hundreds of spam comments but getting an inciteful conversation going with your audience can improve the quality of your writing. Another great goal.

Clicks To Other Articles

When a visitor comes across one of your pages do they stick around and read another of your posts or just jump straight back out again?

This metric is called “bounce rate” in Google Analytics and reducing it is one of the goals that I have for this blog.

Social Media Links

Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us allow users to share pages they have found all over the internet and can bring a significant boost to your traffic.

Consider each digg, stumble and bookmark and kind of conversion for your blog.

Personal Contact

If your blog has a contact form or you publish your twitter username then measure how often your readers actually use them to get in touch.

Get Measuring

You should have some ideas of what is an appropriate measurement for your blog so set up some spreadsheets and make some records of just how you are doing. When you find a weakness (and we all have them), there is a wealth of information out here on the net to help you improve.

Have I missed a conversion goal that you use? Leave a comment below.

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CC licensed Rugby photo by Éamonn

Do you find yourself checking the same handful of blogs and websites everyday? I bet your list of must-read sites is growing quickly and you want to get a fast, unfussy flow of relevant information at a rate that you control...

That’s exactly what RSS does for you!

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication but that’s not important. What is important is just what it can do for you... and that is save your precious time!

When you visit one of your regular favourite websites, look for an orange RSS icon a bit like this (there’s a huge orange one at the top right of this page) which means that the site provides an RSS feed. Click on it and you will be prompted to choose your feed reader...

OMG!

“I don't have a feed reader! And I don’t know what one is! It’s all too hard and techie!”

Stop being a drama queen, this bit is easy.

Just like you have email software to read emails, there is software to read RSS feeds. Like email, the software can live on your computer (like Microsoft Outlook) or on a website (like Hotmail). Relax.

So what software should you use? I use Google Reader and I love it, well mostly, but there are lots of others. If you use Microsoft Outlook for your email, you can get a free plugin to read your feeds from it too.

There now, that was easy.

But What Does It Do For Me?

RSS allows you to deal with web pages just like you deal with email. You can:

• Only see brand new pages
• Sort feeds into folders
• Flag entries for followup
• Read on your mobile phone
• Share pages with friends

There are loads of other cool techie things you can do with RSS feeds, but let’s start with the simple things.

Happy RSS Day!

This article was posted for RSS Day, an event dedicated to increasing awareness of RSS and getting it into the mainstream. I hope you enjoyed it and don’t forget to spread the word.

Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed for other great tips.

If you have any questions about RSS, ask them below.

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Photo by KellyK

Lots people use social media to find new and interesting content nowadays and clever blog authors can monitor those networks to find great promotional avenues for their content, join the discussion or react to head off bad publicity.

Social media moves fast, very fast - digg has around 100 popular posts per day - so you need to react quickly to catch the buzz before it moves on. This post will explain how to monitor some of the more popular social networks for your blog and get notified quickly.

RSS

The secret sauce for this technique is RSS, a protocol for managing streams of information. As a blogger, you probably know all about RSS but if you’re not using it yet, get to it!

Almost all social media sites provide RSS feeds, some more comprehensive than others. This post shows how to monitor feeds from Technorati, FriendFeed, Reddit, Digg and del.icio.us.

First you’ll need an RSS reader or (better still) account with a feed agregator, Google Reader is perfect and it’s free.

The Internet Is A Series Of Pipes

Luckily, engtech over at Internet Duct Tape has done a lot of the hard work for us in the form of two Yahoo Pipes.

The first will monitor Technorati for recent mentions of your blog. Just enter your blog’s URL, run the pipe and subscribe to the feed.

The second pipe check Digg and Reddit for mentions of any URL in your domain. Very cool stuff. As before, enter the URL, run the pipe and subscribe to the feed.

FriendFeed Makes It Easy

It makes good sense to monitor FriendFeed for mentions of your blog because it incorporates information from many sources, like Stumbleupon and Tumblr that are not covered in this post and can be difficult to get information from.

By contrast, it’s a piece of cake to get the information you seek from FriendFeed. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to the public tab.
2. Enter your blog name in the search box at the top-right.
3. At the bottom of the results you will see a label “Other ways to see this search” with an RSS icon next to it.
4. Click the icon and subscribe.

Nice and easy.

A del.icio.us Pipe

Another Yahoo Pipe is used to find pages of your site tagged on del.icio.us, this time by Adam Boulton over at iCrossing.

The pipe can be found here and it works in the same way as the others - enter your domain, run it and subscribe.

Four Social Sites Tracked In Three Feeds

Now you have your site and/or brand monitoring setup, you can check the resulting feeds daily or even create a early warning system with Twitter. It’s nice to watch an article become popular on one network (and thank the original Stumbler/Digger/Redditor, of course) and you can be drafting a follow-up whilst it is hot.

Missed One!

How could I miss out the wonderful TweetScan?

TweetScan gives you a feed of any mentions of your name/brand/blog on Twitter, the microblogging runaway success.

Any more services that you think I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments.

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Photo credits to Brian Harrington Spier and Aubrey Arenas respectively.

I’ve been hunting down some del.icio.us power users to try and learn some new techniques with the tool and they seem to be a bit trickier to track down. I did discover one cool feature from kikipedia that was completely new to me - you can store colour palettes!

The process uses an extension to the URL format - specify a protocol of “color:” instead of the usual “http:” - and then the rest of the URL is a comma separated list of six digit hex colour codes. Here is the URL for the palette shown above:

You’ll be prompted for a description and can add tags as normal.

This is a great feature but I could find no mention of it of the del.icio.us blog. I’d like to see ColourLovers add this functionality to their application too, and maybe integration with the Palette Grabber or ColorZilla Firefox extensions.

So, I found one hidden feature of del.icio.us, do you know of any more? Do you know of any applications that use del.icio.us to store colour palettes? I didn’t test with Adobe Kuler because I hate Flash applications. Comment below if you have anything to add!

Oh my, what a brouhaha in the SEO community over the announcement that Googlebot can fill in forms!

Nobody should be surprised at this. Thanks to the experiments of SEOs and Matt Cutts we know quite a bit about Googlebot’s behaviour.

What Do We Know About Googlebot?

We know that Googlebot is pretty damn clever - it’s been working hard to separate the spam from the bacon for years and is part of Google’s core product.

We know that Google checks whether you are serving different content to Googlebot and human surfers - presumably by using a different user agent string.

We know that Googlebot will index NOINDEX pages, if it thinks that human searchers would benefit. We know that Googlebot can sometimes ignore a robots.txt directive in its eternal hunt to expose blackhats and spammers.

Googlebot is clever. Its programmers are clever and they are waging a battle against people who want to sell you unregulated medicine when you’re searching for Britney Spears latest single.

I wholeheartedly support Googlebot being clever and bending the rules sometimes, so long as the end goal is to provide human searchers with the information they seek.

What Don’t We Know About Googlebot?

There are a couple of technologies that might be used by Googlebot to some extent but not be publicised:

• Cookies - Googlebot might be able to store and provide cookies. Hardly a difficult coding problem.
• Javascript - Some basic javascript interpretation might be used in Googlebot. Nothing super-fancy, but it could determine whether a page’s text is hidden after loading and replaced with adverts for unsavoury products.

Both these techniques are useful to catch blackhats but should have little effect on organic search results for legitimate sites.

The Bottom Line

Don’t sweat the form filling. Google (and Yahoo! and MSN) know about blogs and search pages and do not want to lower the quality of their search results by including the results of filling a search form with random words. As Matt said in his post, the form-filling technique is used sparingly and carefully and I believe him.

The technique is not meant to penalise anyone, it’s about improving Google’s search results. If your site goes down in the rankings as a result, I will be very surprised.

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Photos by jenn_jenn and peyri

Blern is pretty cool, it’s a web-page recommendation tool that attempts to learn from your RSS subscriptions, social bookmarks etc. to provide you with articles that are likely to interest you. I’ve only just signed up and so far it thinks I have an unhealthy interest in subversion, but that’s OK because, compared to most people, I do.

So I got my email of my daily recommendations from Blern with four out of ten posts that covered version control systems (not a problem, I realise I still have to train it) and one post caught my eye. Jim Priest has posted a great article on SVN that I clicked through, read it and wanted to bookmark it for later in del.icio.us.

This was Blern’s first triumph! An article they had recommended that I wanted to read, then wanted to keep and share. Go Blern!

But Wait, It’s Wrapped In A Frame!

I don’t want to bookmark Blern’s recommendation, I want the recommended page itself.

This is the kind of trick that was used to build a “sticky site” in the 1990s and resulted in the kind of bloated portal pages that we still see at Yahoo today. Luckily, as a Mozilla Firefox user, I could right-click and select This Frame -> View Only This Frame to get to the page I wanted. Still very annoying, though.

There Are Lots Of Fixes...

The reason for the frame is obvious - Blern want to know what I like and dislike. So they put some buttons at the top of every page with voting options. I want to give them this information, otherwise they cannot improve their recommendations for me.

Using an IFRAME is not the way to do it. The typical Blern user must be web-savvy since they need OPML files and/or del.icio.us/FriendFeed data to get any hope of having a good guess at recommendations in the first few weeks. This is a demographic that is willing to experiment, it’s willing to give away personal data - it’s GOLD!.

Two obvious alternatives to the IFRAME are a Firefox plugin and cross-browser bookmarklets. Either of these could also be clicked to let Blern know when I like something that wasn’t recommended by them. More information makes for better predictions.

Blern knows which links I have clicked through a link on their email (or my Blern page) and from that it could infer that I like the title and snippet. If I do not click the like or dislike buttons, it could ask me next time - but only for a few items, please! This kind of feedback shows concern for the user.

Blern Learns

The tagline for the website is “Blern learns”, I hope they do. I want them to succeed. They seem to be aiming for the right results without being evil, and that’s exactly what the semantic web needs right now - results for the user.

Blogging inspiration can hit at any time, but spending a little extra time and thought will make the difference between a also-ran and a hit. Don’t let the rush to capture your muse overshadow the need to create quality content.

There is a simple formula to introducing a great, lasting blog post: describe it in just two sentences. The first sentence must say why your a casual reader should click on your post. The second should summarise the content.

The process of turning an idea into a blog post takes time: only when it can be summarised in two sentences can you say that the post is ready for release. If your idea is too woolly or incomplete, you’ll be proved wrong by your commenters. If your post has no obvious benefit to the casual reader, they’ll skip your blog after reading the first paragraph in their feed reader or social network.

Great Ideas

Most good posts come from the metaphorical lightbulb appearing above your head. DING I should blog about this!

Turning that initial revelation into an effective dialogue with your readers takes a bit more careful thought. The steps for creating a good post go like this:

1. Something happens to you
2. You think “I’ll blog about this!”
3. You put your ideas into a post in 20 minutes
4. You post it
5. You respond to comments

The problem is, someone takes your good post and turns it into a great post. So how do they do that?

Hard Work

Sadly, a bit of work is needed to move ahead of all the other bloggers.

You must read and re-read your entry. Ideally, read it aloud to yourself and others. Get someone to check for spelling errors. Move paragraphs around. Check for false or libellous statements.

You must be your own copy editor.

How To Make A High Quality Post

Just as before, it starts with an initial revelation:

1. Something happens to you
2. You think “I’ll blog about this!”
3. You put your ideas into a post in 20 minutes
4. You put in your “drafts folder”

Most bloggers have a drafts folder (I use the drafts facility of GMail) but Wordpress has its own facility. Just take a deep breath and don’t post immediately - unless you’re breaking news with competition from other bloggers.

A break of a couple of hours should give you enough time to consider whether your post is really as good as first thought. If you still love it, research whether your idea has already been discredited, embellished by others, needs more work or is good to go. So, you think you can publish? Then, follow this plan:

1. Read through your post from start to finish
2. Check for spelling and grammar mistakes
3. Verify any assertions, and if possible, provide citations
4. Can the post be improved by inserting pictures or graphs?
5. Consider the best time to post - is it likely to get buried under items from your rivals? Lost because your audience is asleep? If you’ve posted on a similar topic before, check your statistics
6. Come up with ten alternative titles, choose the best
7. Post
8. Publicise your post. Tell your friends, social networks, similar blogs
9. Ping all of the usual services, Technorati, Pingomatic etc
10. Comment on other blogs using the URL of your new post to fill in the homepage field

As you can see, there are a load of stages to making a successful blog post and writing it is just half the battle. That’s why I recommend taking a break in between writing and reviewing/posting.

Lots of bloggers talk about how they get inspiration for their posts, but the hard work afterwards is too often ignored. Do a little hard work and watch how your statistics climb.

A new service, called Skribit provides a blog widget to allow readers to suggest topics that your blog should cover.

It’s supposed to go in your blog’s sidebar, but since I am incredibly picky about my sidebar it’s going to get embedded into a blog post, for now. It uses an IFRAME so RSS subscribers will need to click through to the original post, sorry.

Read the full text of this article...

Wordpress is the most popular blogging software in use today and a new release is scheduled for March.

Version 2.5 has been eagerly anticipated by many bloggers, especially as release 2.4 was abandoned to concentrate on improving security in the existing codebase. I predict that there will be a lot of early adopters for the 2.5 release - will you be one of them?

Gather Information

If you are going to upgrade your Wordpress installation, you need to make a plan. It’s a fairly complex operation so invest some time in learning what you need to do and what can go wrong.

Make a list of the important information about your current blog:

• The FTP address, username and password for your web host
• The database connection name, username and password for your Wordpress database
• The software version of your current Wordpress installation
• The name, version and author of your blog’s theme
• The names, versions and authors of all your installed plugins

I recommend maintaining this list over the lifetime of your blog. You are likely to upgrade several times over the years and collating all this information can take up valuable time. Do it once, really well.

Ask Some Questions

Go through each of your plugins and check that they will work with Wordpress 2.5. You can find most information in the codex. Don’t forget to check the version numbers too.

If some of your plugins are not listed or have been found incompatible, it’s time for a little detective work...

Find out:

• Is the plugin redundant? Maybe 2.5 includes this functionality by default
• Is it still in active development? It is probably worth waiting a week for a popular plugin to be fixed and re-tested
• Is there a (better) alternative? Google around for recommendations

You might need to go through a similar process with your Wordpress theme. Theoretically, few changes have been made that affect the theme engine and all those tested have passed but its worth a check.

Practice Makes Perfect

All professional bloggers should practice the upgrade procedure on a private copy of their blog - and most amateurs probably should too.

Putting together a private copy of your blog is pretty straightforward. Get an old desktop machine and install Ubuntu Linux on there. Hook it up to your home network, install Apache, MySql and a backup copy of your live blog.

Having a private copy of your website is invaluable for testing large upgrades, new themes and its well worth the effort spent.

There is a great resource taking you through a Wordpress upgrade by Blog Herald which covers pretty much everything you need to know. Keep a pen and paper handy in case something non-obvious crops up, so you can refer to your notes when you do the installation for real.

Everything OK?

So you’ve upgraded your private copy. Is everything working?

Go through the site with a fine toothed comb. Check every single form twice - once as a logged in user, once as a browsing guest. Post an entry. Delete it. Post a comment. Delete it.

Testing exhaustively on your private copy means you don’t have to do so much on the live copy. Make a list of any issues you find and keep testing - do not get distracted trying to fix the problem, that comes later.

When you have tested as much of the functionality as possible, it’s time to run some qualitative checks:

• Is the site valid? Use the W3C Validator to check
• How fast does the page load? Time it in a variety of browsers, about four seconds is an acceptable time over a fast connection
• Is it optimised for search engines? There are lots of great tools that can help you
• Does it display OK in all the major browsers?
• Is your site easy to use? Count how many mouse clicks a reader must perform to post a comment

Don’t be disheartened if you end up with a long list of issues to fix from your testing. You need to prioritise by decreasing order of importance:

1. Security problems - increased liklihood of your blog being hacked
2. Fundamental problems - if you cannot post or your readers cannot read your posts, that’s a showstopper
3. Functional problems - search not finding the right pages, or readers unable to comment
4. User Interface Problems - if you want cosmetic changes or ease-of-use improvements
5. SEO Problems - a low priority because search engine placements are very fluid

Any problems in areas 1 or 2 should be fixed before upgrading your live blog. As for other areas, check against your live blog, is the new functionality worse than the old? Use your analytics to find how many users actually use the affected functionality. Make a judgement call.

Upgrading The Live Blog

Find a quiet time for your blog (2am perhaps) and pick a date a few days from now. Tell any other bloggers that contribute to your blog that you are planning to upgrade on that day and ask if it will cause them problems.

When zero hour comes, follow the upgrade instructions from earlier together with your notes. You should find that the process is a lot easier second time around.

Don’t forget to blog about your experiences and ask your readership to contact you if they spot any problems.

The best of British luck to anyone upgrading!

This article is about a phenomenon that has taken me by surprise - auto-responders for blogs.

I first encountered these when commenting on a couple of blog posts and when the first email arrived I was suckered in - I thought the blogger had noticed that I made an inciteful comment and had sent me a personalised email to encourage me to participate more.

When the second comment elicited a similarly boilerplate email welcoming me to their blog, I got a bit sceptical.

Please don’t think that this post is an attack on either StayGoLinks or Mr Javo, it is merely a discussion of the technology used.

The Shock Of The New

The first email piqued my curiosity - I almost replied - but as always with unsolicited emails, I decided to wait. Maybe I shouldn’t have, have you replied to one of these emails? Leave a comment and let me know.

The second email also ellicited a sharp spike of excitement but it reminded me of the (now deleted) first email. The text was different, but the meaning was the same - “Thanks for your comment, please subscribe.”

I did a little research, not much, but some and found that for WordPress, there is a plugin that automates this sort of thing.

It me left feeeling rather disappointed, and not a little naive. I was very close to being suckered - feeling suckered by the individual attention.

It’s Not Mainstream Yet...

Thankfully.

If this plugin should become mainstream, it’s emails will be marked as spam very quickly and that can only hurt bloggers.

That’s not to say that I don’t like being welcomed to your blog, just make the welcome personal. Bloggers are well aware of generic spam comments saying things like “That is a very inciteful post, I wrote about this before on my blog v14gr4.com”.

Keep it personal and build a relationship with the 2% of your readers that bother to comment.