Blog Performance - November 2008

Navel gazing time again.

The Statistics

Total visitor numbers on my various blogs to end November follow. Taking into account that there were 30 days in November as compared to 31 days in October:

• total visitor number on this blog were actually down slightly, averaging 83 per day. This came as a complete surprise since the daily average has been over 100 for the last week or so, so there must have been some low days earlier.
• the big traffic increase blogs were New England Australia, up from 27 to 32 visitors per day, and Management Perspectives, up from 18 to 23 visitors per day.
• NEA has been on an upwards trend for a while, although the average this month was influenced by a big spike at the end on two particular stories. The rise in Management Perspectives reflects greater posting activity and especially the economics stories.
• Managing the Professional Services Firm fell slightly from 21 to 20 visitors per day. My posting here has been irregular and I did not get the blog up to date until the end of the month.
• Regional Living Australia fell from an average of 15 to 13 visitors per day. This poor blog has been much neglected lately.
• The remaining three smaller blogs have also been neglected, although I have begun some updating on two.

Blog	End October	End November	November Visitors
Personal Reflections	41,280	43,770	2,490
Managing the Professional Services Firm	18,585	19,174	589
New England, Australia	16,967	17,915	948
Regional Living Australia	10,994	11,383	393
Management Perspectives	6,606	7,290	684
New England's History	2,765	2,987	222
History of Australian and New Zealand Thought (joint)	1,307	1,382	75
Belshaw sans words	343	415	72
Total	98,847	104,316	5,469

Looking at patterns, the table below sets out total visitor numbers by month.

While the total number of visitors in November was slightly down from October, the daily average was up slightly from 179 to 182. This compares to a daily average of 120 last November. The mid year slump associated with low posting is now clearly behind.

December numbers are always down. I will be interested to see now I go this year.

Month	Visitor Numbers
November	5,469
October	5,552
September	4,857
August	3,991
July (average June/July)	3,962
June (average June/July)	3,962
May	4,296
April	4,536
March	4,294
February	3,710
January	3,656
December 2007	2,844
November	3,612

Total page views are not yet available. I will add these later.

The Month Ahead

I haven't really set myself any major objectives for December, although I do want to improve Regional Living.

Perhaps the most important thing that I would like to achieve is improved synergy and efficiency, taking into account my personal objectives for blogging in the first place. I need to do this for a number of reasons.

Increasingly, the actual writing and publication of posts for my own writing enjoyment and immediate read by those interested is only part of the blogging process.

There is also an update process, correcting obvious errors when I spot them and establishing cross-links, The blogs are also my own reference base for both factual material and past thinking at a personal and professional level. Here I want to consolidate, document and then extend my thinking. Beyond this, there is all the interaction associated with the blogs.

All this takes time. Hence the need to improve efficiency, working out the best balance given the amount of time that I have available.