My Experience with Blogs so Far

For this week's blog, I will be discussing my experience so far with using blogs.

Was my blogging experience successful?

If successful means enjoyable, usable & useful for myself & my readers then I'd say yes. Blogging has become a medium to help self-meditate; to explore the different tones & ways I can express myself through text and blogging my ideas in response to a topic.

Will I continue Blogging?

It really depends in the mood that I'm in, but right now...no. I'm busy with studies & preparing myself to enter the workforce next year i.e. attending countless business interviews. But if I do want to provoke thought & put some ideas to paper to share with the world then yes, blogging is a great way of doing just that.

Difficulties with Blogs

As a reader of other blogs, it's quite difficult to understand the topic the other blog site is going on about & trusting whether what the author says is correct or 'true'. I could probably say the same for my blog site. How do readers know what I'm saying is legit. I could be making it up. The word 'blog' denotes to a researcher, an unreliable source of information. This is not what I want my readers thinking because I have gone to a lot of effort to find legit & backed-up information. 

Formatting within blogs is another issue. Blogs allow for a limited amount of formatting which is  improving. Obviously there's a lot more you can do if you can get "under the hood" & edit the xhtml code to do things outside of the normal blogging scope.

How easy is it to come up with new ideas every day?

Waiting for the light to switch on can take some time. Trying to come up with new ideas every day to write about is quite difficult. But this is an issue...why...because this is where bloggers start to go off & write things that are either controversial or are completely untrue. In other words when you don't have ideas you start to make up your own ideas. So I'd prefer not to blog every day but preferably every week or so.

So no, it's not easy to write about something new each day without having to make things up unless you're reporting the news or something very dynamic. 

My new perspective on blogging

I use to think blogging was just a bunch of nonsense, similar to posts in Facebook. However after starting this site I've found that blogging takes time...time to research & then to type it in your own unique way or tone. You need to find a good amount of spare time & a bit of motivation to write a couple of good paragraphs. But even then you still need to find evidence or something unique that would make your topic & blog stand out from other posts in other blogs.

The Rise & Rise of Social Networking

An article about comparing the social networking sites seems pretty useless considering it's probably a well known fact that Facebook takes the crown for the number of unique visitors. Nevertheless, let's see by how much Facebook dominates. And while we're at it, let's analyse the growth and why that is.


The Comparison Between Google+, Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn
Let's make this a bit more interesting...we'll pitch Facebook up against three of the other big social networking sites; Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn. We'll be comparing the number of unique visitors each site has had. To illustrate this, I created a graph (see image 1) - with the help of the software tool, Compete's Site Analytics - which should give us an idea of where each social networking site stands.

Image 1: Rate of unique visitors to Facebook (blue), LinkedIn (red), Google+ (green) & Twitter (purple).

Well...no surprises there. Facebook (blue) clearly takes the award however it's more erratic than say LinkedIn (in the ugly green colour). And Twitter (red) as well, is erratic...Google+ on the other hand are just starting & are still at an infant stage which explains the fairly straight line at the bottom. 

How has the growth in these social networks changed?
'User Engagement' are the key words here. The main strategies for social networks, according to Hazlett (2008) is to get users engaged with its social website and the applications they provide within. Arina (2010) has managed to identify the distinct type of users and the tasks they may perform on all types of social networking sites (image 2 summarises these categories). They are as follows:

• Creators create or perform a lot of blogging, & create video, audio & music.
• Critics are those that give ratings, comments, are frequent users of wikis & do a lot of edit-based work.
• Collectors, Arina (2010) describes as those involved in rss feeds, voting & tagging.
• Joiners are heavily involved in social networking (e.g. use of the mainstream social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo).
• Spectators are mainly readers of blogs/forums/reviews (Arina, 2010).

Obviously people are not constrained to just one of the categories mentioned above as people tend to cross between two or more of them. But the point of this list above is just to show the many different uses of social networking, and if you're looking at the tasks above you probably didn't know that some of them was a form of social networking. All these things contribute to the growth of social networking. Now you can probably see the 'user engagement' involved in social networking and there's a lot more than you probably realised before you started reading this article.

So to directly ask the question above, 'how has the growth of these social networks changed'...social networks have rapidly grown. They've grown because social networks have turned from the "only talk to a friend via a computer" to "talk to a person, exchange information, photo, videos and audio & create web logs" and distribute all this out to people around the world.

Image 2: The Social ladder of categorical uses for social networking.

What is the cause of these changes?
Another way of looking at this question is to ask "what has caused people to use social networks". The 3 main causes to social networking growth & the change that has occurred throughout its lifetime are listed below.

1. Enhanced Knowledge includes the appropriate distribution of information. It's a great way for experts, in their respective field/s to apply their knowledge for others so that they fill in that 'gap'. This is still a unappreciated domain but is growing through more specialised sites such as Wikipedia, LinkedIn and other similar sites.
2. Basic Human Need to Share; unlike the first point, this second point refers to people who want to share their experience and make their opinions heard. This point is aligned with the basic human nature to share information, videos, photos, audio and friends to other friends. Facebook and Twitter are social sites that best fit this profile.
3. Basic Human Need to Connect...a fundamental social aspect and characteristic that all humans acknowledge and need. This point is the root of all social networking sites. Expanding to other networks of similar interest, geographical roots or just in-difference makes up the need for humans to simply connect to the world (TNL, 2006). 

Reference List:
Arina, T. (2010). Social Networking: Trends & Applications. Retrieved September 1st, 2011 from http://www.slideshare.net/infe/social-networking-trends-and-applications?src=related_normal&rel=973171. 


Hazlett, B. (2008). Social Networking Statistics & Trends. Retrieved September 1st, 2011 from http://www.slideshare.net/onehalfamazing/social-networking-statistics-and-trends-presentation. 


TNL. (2006). 5 Reasons Why Social Networks Can Succeed. Retrieved September 2nd, 2011 from http://www.tnl.net/blog/2006/06/22/5-reasons-why-social-networks-can-succeed/. 


For more information related to this article, check out these sites:
http://blog.compete.com/2010/02/17/we%E2%80%99re-number-two-facebook-moves-up-one-big-spot-in-the-charts/ - Facebook - Moving Up


http://www.tnl.net/blog/2006/06/22/5-reasons-why-social-networks-can-succeed/ - Why Social Networks Can Succeed. 

Search Engine Optimisations (SEO) for Your Blog

How to (& how not to) Optimise Your Blog for Search Engines

This article is about improving your blog's 'searchability' (if that's a word) by a search engine, giving it a better chance to be ranked higher on the search engine's results page (SERP). However we want to improve our blog's searchability in a search engine-friendly way so that our blog won't be blacklisted from a SERP. To do so, we want to employ the White Hat SEO techniques ONLY and not the Black Hat SEO techniques.
To learn more about White Hat SEO techniques visit Blog-Maniac here and for more about Black SEO techniques jump onto ABCSEO's website here.

But just quick run-down on what white hat and black hat SEO techniques are...if you want to run a quality blog and stay on Google's good-side, you'll want to avoid black hat and keep to the white hat techniques.

Why? Well, White Hat techniques are seen as the right way of employing techniques onto a blog or website in order to be ranked higher on a search engine's results page and...

...Black Hat techniques on the other hand are seen as the wrong way of employing techniques onto a blog or website in order to be ranked higher on a search engine's results page. So if you employ black hat SEO techniques, there's good chance you might get blacklisted from ever showing up on a SERP. Now on to the important stuff.


Best SEO Techniques to Use to Enhance Your Blog
1. Keyword Effectiveness: Ever heard of the acronym K.I.S.S; Keep It Simple Stupid. This acronym, for this article applies to your headings & titles. When a user types in a keyword or keywords in a search engine, they would more likely use simple terms. So making sure your titles and the content within your articles are simple (no advanced, over the top synonyms), will give your blog a better chance to be pulled up on a search engine's list of results or SERP (PushOn, 2011). 


2. Quality Inbound Links: Besides a search engine, the second best way to receive potential users is to have links coming in from other sites or referring sites to yours (SEOMethod, 2011). By increasing the amount of sites that refer to yours, search engines like Google would place more emphasis on blogs that contain more inbound links thus increasing your rank on a SERP. 

The more inbound links you have the better. Google uses this  info to sort its Pagerank results (Su, 2011, slide 36). 

3. SEO Tools or Software: There are so many SEO-based tools & software out (some free) that you can use to your blog's benefit. For a more comprehensive list of SEO tools see SEOBook, a website which has compiled a list of great SEO tools & software. Two of my favourite SEO tools to use are listed below.

• SEOMoz's Ranking Checker: This tool is allows you to view the most typed-in keyword (up to 5 keywords) in your embedded search function. Using this sort of information, you can then re-arrange the content on your blog to suit the level of punctuation your users are using to find content on your blog, plus many other reasons (SEOmoz, 2011).

• WeBuildPages' Strongest Subpages: This tools allows you view those pages which viewed more frequently or have more activity than others. You can do the same thing for your competitors' blogs (WeBuildPages, 2011).

Reference List (for further reading, you can follow up on the links below):

1. Google. (2011). Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Retrieved August 24th, 2011 from http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291

2. Internet Empire. (2011). SEO - The Difference Between White Hat & Black SEO. Retrieved August 24th, 2011 from http://www.internet-empire.com/seo-the-difference-between-black-hat-and-white-hat-seo.htm

3. PushOn. (2011). Top 5 White Hat SEO Techniques. Retrieved August 25th, 2011 from http://www.pushon.co.uk/articles/top-5-white-hat-and-black-hat-search-optimisation-techniques/ 


4. SEOMethod. (2011). The SEO Method. Retrieved August 25th, 2011 from http://www.theseomethod.com/


5. SEOmoz. (2011). Rank Tracker. Retrieved August 25th 2011, from http://www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker.


6. WeBuildPages. (2011). Strongest SubPages Tool. Retrieved August 25th 2011 from http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/strongest-subpages-tool.php.


7. Su,Veronica. (2011). 3623ICT Information and Content Management: Week 05. Retrieved from Griffith University, School of Information Communication Technology, Learning@Griffith Website: https://learning.secure.griffith.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_100323_1&frame=top. 

What Search Tool to Embed in Your Blog; Swicki or Google?

When embedding a search tool into a blogging site, you need to step back and analyse your user’s needs for what they may want to search for and retrieve from your blog. Answer, use a customisable or specialised search tool; either Swicki or Google.

After researching for some of the best search tools to embed into a blog, I finalised the list of search tools down to Swicki and Google mainly because both can be specialised towards blogs and function in a way that could optimise a user’s searching experience.  The next section will talk about each of the search tools and their advantages & disadvantages.

Eurekster's Swicki – Its Drawcard

• The Swicki platform harnesses the knowledge & behaviour of online communities to increase search relevance & value for site visitors i.e. social search engines (Leaman, 2009).
• Swicki allows for a deep customisation of the design, the search behaviour of the search tool & folksonomic indicators or tags (Leaman, 2009).

Google's Custom Search  - Its Drawcard

• According to Google, custom search “…enables you to create a search engine for your website, your blog, or a collection of websites. You can fine-tune the ranking, customize the look and feel of the search results, and invite your friends or trusted users to help you build your custom search engine. You can even make money from your search engine by using your Google AdSense account” (Google, 2011).

Similarities Between Google & Swicki

• Both Google and Swicki allow users to produce customised search engines.
• The final result, where both search tool are able to sort the results by topic are similar.
• Both support keyword searching.

Differences Between Google & Swicki

• Swicki lets you create a tag cloud of search terms.
• Swicki’s search results are more topic focused i.e. the search zone is much more narrower than Google's.
• Furthermore, because of Swicki’s narrower search zone, results come ‘recall-based’ where all information is returned regarding a certain keyword whereas in Google, results are returned based on relevance or ‘precision-based’.
• Google contains a nifty feature of word suggestions in a form of a word wheel (see image 1 below).

Image 1: A list of word suggestions would come-up after typing a few letters.

• Swicki’s order of search results are directly influenced by social preference whereas Google’s order of its’ search results are based on popularity i.e. number of clicks a website receives.
• Google allows you to exclude sites you don’t want in the search results.
• Google has a proven search system in place with more to access than Swicki.
• Because Swicki have been in the business of customised search engines longer, it’s rightly assumed that they have a better insight and experience into the whole ‘customised-search-engine’ market niche (if there is such a niche).
• Swicki allows users to vote on the usefulness of a website for rapid ranking changes whereas Google does this but based on a per-click status.
• Google supports more query languages for use when searching whereas Swicki supports some & the others, not so much or not at all.
• Google’s ‘natural language search’ capabilities are far more advanced & proven than Swicki’s ability or lack thereof.
• Swicki’s logical connectors within its’ keyword searches are not developed as it is in Google’s custom search.
• Swicki notifies when you’ve had a click activity, finding what others think are interesting, to improve the search optimisation.

The Verdict

The question of which search tool to use really comes down to user preference. My preferences however are based on this blog which I believe is assorted by topic i.e. the questions each week I have to answer for my university course are topic based. Therefore Swicki, which allows me to customise searches by topic and has a stronger emphases on topic categorisation, would be my choice.

Reference List:


1. Leaman, R. (2009, February 10). Top 6 Popular Site Search Widgets [Web Log Post]. Retrieved from http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/archive/2009/02/10/top-6-popular-site-search-widgets.aspx.

2. Google. (2011). Google Custom Search. Retrieved August 16th, 2011 from http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/customsearch/docs/start.html. 

For further reading on either Swicki, Google’s custom search or search tools check out  the websites or blogs below:

Znitchit's Utimate Search 2.0 Showdown: Want to compare the major search tools? This blog shows a chart & a simple video, displaying where some of the major search tools compare against each other.


Blakeman's Search Tool Comparison: This another search tool comparison but in an easy to read, table form.

Google's Custom Search vs. Wordpress's Search Tool: Once again, another search tool comparison but between Google's Custom Search & Wordpress's version...just in case you want to use Wordpress to create your blogs.