The Quarter in Review – 2009 Q1
Many of the blogs I read have quarterly, or even monthly recaps. Some of these blogs are personal some are professional, and the information in their recap generally reflects their orientation.
Personal blogs tend to focus on their best content, what keywords seem most relevant in their space, comments or discussions of interest, etc. The professional blogs definitely highlight their best content (that is after all their bread and butter), and many also go so far as to talk about their site metrics and income for the period represented.
Learning a lesson from my peers, taking some time every three months or so to reflect on a couple high points seems like a good thing. This is my third quarterly recap, so yes, DCO has been around for coming up on a year! As always – thanks for dropping by (and hopefully subscribing). We’re getting a few more comments here and there, which I appreciate.
Most popular content
- My full length article A Personal Branding Primer continues to be one of my most popular posts. For those of you writing a blog or considering starting a blog, take this as concrete proof of the “content, content, content” mantra for developing an online presence. It’s easy to get lost in the online jungle of SEO, SEM, analytics, backlinking, etc., etc. However, if you like simple rules to follow here’s one that truly works: consistent write dense, value-added, relevant content and your site traffic will grow.
- My entrepreneurial survey got pretty good traffic for a while. I was shooting for 100 responses this year and if you haven’t taken the survey yet, I’d appreciate your input. I’ve dropped my ambition to get 100 responses however. There are so many entrepreneurial surveys out there that to just be “one more in the crowd” didn’t seem like it was satisfying my goals of value-added content. The reponses I’ve had so far though, have got my creative juices flowing on how to make the topic not only more value-added, but more entertaining to boot. This one may take a while to germinate, so stay tuned.
- Periodically, I’ll write a piece centered on a lesson learned or singular example of entrepreneurship from my daily dealings with entrepreneurs. I call these Stories from the Field. One in particular that I wrote seems to get a lot of traffic “Passion and Commitment“. I’d love to think it’s because of my best in class writing style. More likely it’s because these two traits tend to generate a lot of search traffic. (It is a pretty nice read though.)
- Finally, the article on the One Page Strategic Plan also continues to get a fair amount of traffic. This one I’m not so sure on. I can’t tell from the search traffic it’s more related to general strategic planning, or the one page strategic plan specifically. Either way, a good overview on the process and the book that served as the inspiration.
Visitors
While visitors in general grew a bit over the quarter, traffic overall was down a bit. No mystery here, I did not post near as often as I wanted to over the quarter (content, content, content, remember!). While I’ve learned my lesson about posting too many personal details on the blog, my last couple months have been pretty busy. By the end of April, I will have:
- Refinanced my house
- Divorced
- Sold my house
- Bought a house
- Turned 50
- Moved into my new house
- Attended a 5 day out of town conference
So – NO excuses, but I have been a bit distracted during the quarter. Once I’m back from the conference and have my new house in order, I plan to get back into a regular posting schedule.
What’s New?
The past quarter saw two updates to the blog that I personally thought were pretty fun.
First, I updated the blog with a new theme. I’m now using the WP Premium Theme by R. Bhavesh. If this is of interest to you, feel free to follow the link over to my original post. I have lots of WordPress-related theme links. I really like the new theme and I’m thinking of upgrading to the paid version that Bhavesh just released.
The other update during the quarter I also really liked and fits the goal of offering value-added content. About a month ago, I added a “great posts” widget to the sidebar of the blog. Using an RSS feed ranking services, I combined several entrepreneurship- and leadership-related blogs, then picked out just the “great” posts from those combined feeds. The results I display in a tabbed widget; one tab for great entrepreneurship posts, one for great leadership posts. I check it out once in a while and there are truly really good posts in the list. Unfortunately, this content does not show for my RSS and E-Mail subscribers, you can only see it on the blog. As I wrote earlier, if you are interested in what’s showing up in the list, an easy way to check it periodically would be to just click through to the blog whenever you get a new post.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Way to go Dave! It sounds like this month will be one you will remember!
But which event will you remember the most?