Category Archives: Growing Blog Readership

Student Blogging Challenge – Time for teachers to register their classes

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Welcome to Student Blogging Challenge (March) 2010!

All about having fun, improving blogging and reflective writing skills while connecting with a global audience!

Now into our 3rd Year and 4th Challenge!

We provide weekly tasks for 10 weeks that are like a buffet — you pick and choose what works best for you while we guide you and your students through the process!

Your students don’t need their own blog! You can do the activities using your class blog or by commenting on other class and student blogs.

Blogging Challenge

The Student Blogging Challenge is coordinated by Sue Wyatt and Sue Waters.

You can read more about it  here:

  1. About the student challenge
  2. Student Blogging Challenge FAQs

Register Your Class!

We’ve opened registration for teachers to register their class to participate in the challenge which starts in March.

We’ll be inviting individual student bloggers to register next week!

Follow these THREE simple steps to register (Teachers Only!):

STEP 1:  Add your email address to our mailing list

Complete the form below.

We’ll be using this to send classes newsletters without Sue Waters or Miss Wyatt having to do separate emails.


join our mailing list
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STEP 2:  Register Your Class Using the Google Form

Complete the Google Form below by adding your Name, Class Blog URL, Country and Student Age.

Please register from home if you can’t see the Google Form on your school network.

STEP 3:  Check your class details!

Go to the March 2010 Classes page and confirm your class details are correct.

Please leave a comment on Miss Wyatt’s post or mine if you are having any problems or need to ask questions!

FINAL THOUGHTS

We’ll be inviting individual student bloggers to register next week!

Here’s some tasks that will help prepare your class blog for the Challenge:

  1. Week 1 – Create A Class Blog
  2. Week 2:  Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
  3. Week 3 – Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
  4. Week 4 – Add your student blogs to your blogroll
  5. Week 5 – Add Students To Your Class Blog So They Can Write Posts

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How To Set Up ‘Alerts’ To Monitor Conversations!

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An important part of my daily blogging routine is monitoring mentions of me or my blogs on the Internet.

Yes sounds very vain!  And this is why bloggers normally refer to this as ‘Vanity Alerts.’

I’ll tell you how I do it below — but first let’s talk about why it’s a common blogging practice.

How Vanity Alerts Work

Vanity alerts involve using email alerts and/or RSS feeds to automatically notify you of the use of specific keywords such as your name,  your blog’s name, and your blog URLs in blog posts, news articles, twitter…..

While this seem quite egotistical they are important.

It means you are automatically notified of any conversations relating to yourself, your blog(s) or any posts you’ve written regardless of whether a person has remembered to pingback your post or included you in a @reply on twitter.

My approach is to check all alerts to see what and/or why someone’s written about me, my blogs or a post.  Where appropriate I’ll engage in conversation with the blogger while also using it as an opportunity to build a relationship.

Vanity alerts also useful for:

  1. Tracking specific blog posts in terms of how successful they’ve been at generating conversations on other blogs.
  2. Monitoring plagiarism and inappropriate use of blog posts.

How To Set Up Vanity Alerts

The easiest way to set up vanity alerts is using RSS feeds in folders in Google Reader.

Here are the tools I use (and why) for my vanity alerts:

#1 Ice Rocket

Ice Rocket is an Internet search engine that specializes in searching blogs.

Other blog search engines commonly used for vanity alerts are Technorati and Google Blog Search. While I use both Technorati and Google Blog Search I prefer Ice Rocket as it’s more reliable.

Setting up Ice Rocket feeds is a simple as:

  1. Go to Ice Rocket homepage
  2. Add your search term — for your name remember to enclose with quotes
  3. Click Search Image of searching icerocket
  4. Scroll down the search results page to the Subscribe section and copy the Feed URL for the search term  Image of copying feed URL
  5. Open up your Google Reader account and click on Add a subscription
  6. Paste the Feed URL into the Add a subscription box
  7. Click Add Image of adding Ice rocket RSS to Google Reader
  8. And finally to keep all your subscriptions easier to manage – set up a folder in Google Reader for your Alerts Image of icerocket folder

You repeat this process for each search term.  For example I have separate Ice Rocket searches for:

  1. “Sue Waters”
  2. http://theedublogger.com/
  3. http://suewaters.com/

#2 Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a service offered by Google  which provides the option to be notified by email or subcribe by RSS feed.

It offers  six types of alert searches based on what it searches: “News”, “Web”, “Blogs”, “Comprehensive”, “Video” and “Groups”.

I use a ‘Comprehensive’ alert as it includes results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) and subscribe by RSS feed.

Please note, unlike Ice Rocket which immediately returns search results, Google Alerts take time to feed the search results through.

Image of google alerts

#3 Search Twitter

Search Twitter is a popular tool for monitoring keywords on twitter using RSS.

Using it is simple:

  1. Go to Search Twitter
  2. Add your search term and click Search Image of Search Twitter
  3. Copy the Feed URL for the search term Image of copying feed URL
  4. Add the Feed URL to Google Reader same as you did for Ice Rocket

#4 Backlinks

Backtweets is searches links on Twitter (including those that have been shortened) so it really useful for monitoring any tweets that have links to blog or posts (which Search Twitter isn’t very good at).

All you need to do is:

  1. Go to Backtweets
  2. Add your blog URL and click Search Image of backtweets
  3. Copy the Feed URL for the search term Image of Backtweets RSS
  4. Add the Feed URL to Google Reader same as you did for Ice Rocket

FINAL THOUGHTS

While I’ve shown you how to use these tools for Vanity alerts — you can also use them to monitor any keywords.

For example, you could create an alert on a current news event such as Hurricane Ida so your students can monitor the differences between updates on Web 2.0 compared to traditional media outlets.

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Tips For Measuring Post Success: Part 1 Bookmarking

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Image of targetAnalyzing blog metrics always gives me a headache!

But as a blogger it’s important to know ‘Is the content you’re providing is fulfilling your readers needs?”

Metrics provide you with insights into how your readers are interacting with your content and the type of content that interests them.

Trouble is there’s numerous metrics you can use,  each provides different insight and its meaning depends on what you’re trying to achieve from your posts.

So lets start by seeing how I use one metric, reader bookmarking, to analyze post performance.

My next post will demonstrate how another metric provides different insights.

Types of Posts

As I said the meaning of a metric really depends on what you’re trying to achieve from your posts.

I think of my posts in terms of three main types:

  1. Informative - ‘how to’ or information packed posts
  2. Conversations – posts that focus on encouraging readers to share their thoughts in comments
  3. Sharing – posts that share helpful links

All three types fulfill different readers needs and are an important part of achieving my goal of helping others using technology.

As a general rule informative posts are longer, more likely to be bookmarked and less likely to have a high comment rate.  While conversations posts are normally shorter with more comments but less likely to bookmarked.

Calculating Reader Bookmarking

Reader bookmarking shows the number of readers bookmarking your posts on social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Diigo.  It provides an indication of how much they value it as a source of information in terms of storing it for later retrieval and sharing with others.

When using this metric I’m looking to determine:

  1. What type of posts are being bookmarked?
  2. Are specific topics preforming better than others?
  3. Are the informative posts achieving my aim?
  4. What are characteristics of posts that are highly bookmarked compared to those that are less bookmarked?

I use PostRank because it’s an easy method for determining the number of reader bookmarking per post.

Moving your mouse cursor over a PostRank score displays all their metrics associated with that post including bookmarking on Delicious and Diigo.

Check out how easy this is on The Edublogger’s PostRank page.

Image of PostRank Metrics

Read  my Latest Statistics Say My Blogs Are……? post and comments to learn more about how the PostRank score is calculated.

Top Posts Based on Bookmarking

So here’s the top 20 Edublogger posts based on Delicious bookmarking — the numbers after each post is how many times the post has been bookmarked.

  1. 50+ Ways To Create Digital Stories With Students — 117
  2. How I Use RSS To Make My Life Easier — 79
  3. What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part I –77
  4. Creating Student Accounts Using One Gmail Account — 73
  5. Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours? –73
  6. Are You Twittering? Here’s How I Use Twitter — 72
  7. Embedding Jing Screencasts Into Blog Posts –71
  8. Quick Start Tips For Student Blogging Part I: Setting Up Your Class Blog –59
  9. Quick Start Tips For New Skype Users — 59
  10. Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts — 56
  11. What Everybody Ought To Know About Podcasting: Part II — 48
  12. Here’s My Top Five Mistakes Made By New Bloggers — What Are Yours? — 39
  13. Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog Posts — 38
  14. Setting Up iGoogle For Your Personal Learning — 37
  15. Quick Start Tips For New Flickr Users: Part I — 31
  16. Ideas For Student Bloggings From….How Do You Do What You Do! — 29
  17. Adding A Voki Speaking Avatar To A Post or Page of Your Blog — 29
  18. Managing Comments and Posts On Student Blogs Using Google Reader — 28
  19. What Are The Different Roles Of Users? — 27
  20. What’s The Difference Between Tags and Categories, You Ask? — 27

Definitely there are posts in the  list that have ranked considerably higher than I’d expect and others that haven’t done as anticipated.

What does it mean?

Not sure but I know my headache is getting worse :(

So I would love to hear your thoughts on:

  1. What topics are readers finding more valuable in terms of bookmarking?
  2. What are characteristics of posts that are highly bookmarked compared to those that are less bookmarked?

Meanwhile I feel the headache may continue as I ponder which metric we should look at next?

What is your thoughts?  Page views?  Linking? Comments rate?  And what tool(s) should I use to obtain the metrics?

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I’m Up A Creek Without A Paddle…Can You Assist?

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Image of a paddleSorry!

I really tried to come up with an idea for this post but I’m totally stuck!

Every blogger knows that feeling.  Especially new bloggers.

Can you help us out by sharing your secrets?

  1. Where do you get your ideas for blog posts from?
  2. What are your thoughts on how often a blogger should write posts?  And why?
  3. What are your tips for maintaining a consistent blogging routine? What works well for you?
  4. What other advice would you give to new bloggers?

Image by Caveman 92223 — On the Road Again! licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike.

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Tips For Writing Commenting Guides & Guidelines

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Much of the learning from blogging happens as a result of commenting and interaction between commenters.

But how many of your readers know how to even leave a comment?  Or what are your comment approval guidelines?  Or how you interact with their comments?

In case you forgot to tell them here are some ways to help your readers.

#1 A Newbie Guide

Providing a guide that includes how to leave comments is always helpful–  not everyone knows how to write comments on posts.  The key is to think what does some one new to reading your blog really need to know.

Here are some examples of Newbie Guides:

  1. This is my Info For First Time Visitors! – explains how to subscribe using RSS or email and how to leave comments
  2. Michele Martin’s A Newbie Guide to The Bamboo Project – highlights purpose of her blog, what is a blog, how to leave comments, how to participate and important pages on her blog
  3. Tony Karrer’s First Time Visitor Guide – purpose of  blog, how to interact and an index of his posts

#2 Commenting Guidelines

Unfortunately not everyone knows what is/isn’t appropriate to write in comments on posts — this is where commenting guidelines can help.

Use your class blog as an opportunity to educate students, parents and other readers on appropriate commenting practice such as:

  1. Types of identifying information that is appropriate in a comment e.g. What are your rules about use of last names, IM and personal information?
  2. What sort of comments will you approve?
  3. What are you looking for in comments?

It’s also worth reminding readers that blogs are works in progress — they need to remember this when writing comments.  Check out how Jan Smith’s does this in the left hand side bar of Huzzah Blog.

Why not get your students to help write the commenting guidelines for your class blog? You might like to also include examples of good and bad comments.

Check out:

  1. Lisa Hill’s Mossgiel Park PS Blog Commenting Policy
  2. Abbey’s Blog Guidelines for ideas on how a student can add a comment guideline to their blog

Using Pages and Post For Your Information

Approaches taken by bloggers varies.  Some prefer to regularly inform readers on how to comment and/or their comment policy using posts while others use pages.

Larry Ferlazzo uses posts really well to inform readers about commenting.  Here are:

  1. His comment policy posts
  2. His leaving comments on this blog posts

Bloggers who use pages will either:

Final Thoughts

Remember I’m looking for examples and ideas to share with others.

Please a comment with links to any ‘About pages’, ‘Commenting Guidelines’ or ‘Newbie Guides’ you create so I can check them out!

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