Thought Press.

The most important asset to a serious blogger is statistics. You have to know how many readers you have, what causes people to read, where they come from, and how they find you. It does seem like common sense.

Well, the infamous Grammar Vandal I’ve been speaking about has been popularized by BuzzFeed, and lately, The Boston Globe. “How many site views did you get?” I asked her after the newspaper article was published. “I don’t know,” she said. (!) She has no stats set up on her Blogger account! I was shocked since every day I check my stats, see what clicks have been made, what search terms bring people to Thought Press, and from where visitors are referred.

“I mainly judge it on how many comments I receive,” she responds. Both myself and a colleague said to her, in concert, “That’s a terrible way to judge it …” Though a bit too late, she finally added Google Analytics and is up and running.

Other important blogger to-do’s are regular pinging after posting. Sites like Pingoat can do the trick very well and increase your traffic. Also, keeping your posts short and concise will keep your readers coming back as they may not have the time or patience to read a lengthy post. Blog readers tend to have short attention spans.

These are the basics of blogging and it’s a shame that a serious blogger, who will soon be featured on NPR, has missed the essentials in running a blog.

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