In Part 1, I ticked off the blogger's main considerations in deciding on his blog template. For this post, I'll continue with pointers that may seem obvious now that I know my way around the blogosphere, but these did not come naturally to me and I had to learn these lessons from actual experience. I'm not saying that we are in the same boat as newbies, but just in case we are, then read on.
2. Install a blog counter as soon as you have settled on your blog template, if your blog host or blog platform doesn't provide one.
My main worry as a newbie blogger then was content, or what to write about. As for visitors to my blog, I presumed that, as a matter of course, those whom I personally invited--the immediate members of my family, my other relatives, my investment banker friends, the friends of my friends, etc.--would come and read my posts. After the initial comment or two from some of them, however, I started doubting if I still had readers. Sometimes, over dinner, I would test if my wife had seen my latest post by talking her into it. But believe me, since reading blogs is a voluntary thing and we live in a democracy, I've learned not to expect too much even from the wife, much less other people.
So, back to what I wanted to say, a blogger needs to install a monitoring system that is passive and non-intrusive. There are many free blog counters available on the Web, ranging from the simplest (a plain digital read-out installed on your blog) to the most sophisticated (a statistical gathering system that monitors not only the number of unique and returning visitors to your blog but also your RSS feed readers and email subscribers, duration of their stay on your site, country of origin, and many other details). Simply Google the term, "free blog counter" and you'll be rewarded with a long list blog counter providers on the Internet.
My very first free blog counter was provided by BlogPatrol.com. Registering for a free account is a simple, hassle-free process. Insofar as keeping track of direct visitors to my blog is concerned, I was happy with the level of detail that it provided. However, since it could not count those who did not directly visit my site, the stats it reported was obviously understated. For this purpose, I needed a system which could count both the direct and indirect visitors of my blog. One of the most popular, which was recently acquired by Google, is Feedburner.com. In addition to BlogPatrol and Feedburner, I also signed-up more recently for Google Analytics to enhance my statistical monitoring of my visitor traffic.
I'll probably devote a separate post just for the mechanics of setting up your blog for the said visitor traffic monitoring systems, for the benefit of bloggers who, for example, might get intimidated by terms like, "Burn your feed" (I couldn't comprehend then what it took to "burn" my feed, and I didn't know how to get my blog's feed address, so it took me a while before I decided to install Feedburner in my blog).
TO BE CONTINUED...
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