The Most Important Blogging Tool
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Do you know what are the two things that every ship captain always carried along with him?
(Hint: Look at the picture above.)
1. A Compass
2. A logbook
Do you know why a captain carried those two things with him on all his voyages?
A compass is easy. Captains carry it because it guides them in the right direction. (But only if the captain knows where he wants to go.)
But why did they keep and maintain a logbook?
Choose from one of the two possible options…
i. To pass time on a boring voyage.
ii. To improve their speed and safety in the future.
Its a silly quiz - I know. Hopefully, you selected the right answer (option ii.)
Ship captains kept a logbook because by knowing and comparing how things worked in the past, they can improve their performances in the future. The captains would write down every detail: how was the weather, where did they start from, where are they going, how did they maneuver their ship.
“Everything that is watched, improves.” - John D. Rockefeller
- Most bloggers don’t keep a watch on anything.
- There are a few bloggers that do analyze and watch their “results”. They keep an eye on a few metrics that show how their blogs performed.
- But only a handful of bloggers maintain a logbook to watch their “actions”! And these are the most successful bloggers!
Do you watch and track your actions?
Starting a logbook of your actions isn’t hard. You could start with a sharp pencil and notebook. Or you could go hi-tech and use tools like twitter.com
The 2 Question LogBook
Just answer the following two questions at the end of each day:
1. What did you write today on your blog?
2. What did you do today to promote your blog?
Once, at the end of the week or month, open your web analytics software. And compare your Actions with your Results. Take a look at your metrics 2-3 days after your specific actions. Did your traffic increase or decrease? Did your profits increase or decrease? Repeat the actions that improve your results.
Action Summary:
- If your goal is to increase your blog traffic and build a business around your blog, you could use this blog as your compass. I’ll do my bestto guide you by showing what works and what doesn’t.
- Start a logbook to track your “actions” today. And then compare your actions with your results to find out what actions work better.
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Thanks for the reminder. I neither consistently keep track of my actions nor the results. (In fact I dind’t even know that I had actually made some money until someone asked me. THEN I went to check.
Low tech, pen and paper and a bound notebook is perfect. If I go high tech I would probably opt for Zoho. Have you used it? It’s FABULOUS!
Posted 15 Jun 2007 #
Thanks Nia.
Yes I’ve used Zoho before. And its quite good.
I think twitter.com makes a good simple tool for an action logbook too.
Posted 18 Jun 2007 #
You give all kinds of cool easy-to-use advice. I can see using your ideas and advice. Have you checked out the upcoming Postiecon conference in Las Vegas? It is a gathering of pro-bloggers sharing their skills on developing good blogs.
Cool writing. Thanks!
Saul
Posted 20 Jun 2007 #
Thanks Saul for commenting.
I’ve heard of the Postiecon. But may not be able to attend. Mainly due to it being held in the other part of the world… (I moved from USA to India some time back.)
Are you going to attend?
Posted 21 Jun 2007 #
I’ll be there!
Posted 22 Jun 2007 #
Carnival of Blogging Success - August 4, 2007…
Welcome to the August 4, 2007 edition of carnival of blogging success. This edition has ALOT of entries, and the ones below are only about 1/2 of the ones submitted. I went through every entry and excluded the ones that made no sense, were spam, or…
Posted 04 Aug 2007 #
It’s an entertaining concept, since (web)logs were the origin of blogs
Excellent suggestion. Another tool which some might find helpful is Google Notebook which gives you a quick link on your screen to jot down notes as you go.
Posted 06 Aug 2007 #
[…] on Blogclout, Ankesh Kothari provides some excellent advice in his post The Most Important Blogging Tool. Believe it or not, the answer is not […]
Posted 06 Aug 2007 #
Good point. Thing is, if you love blogging, you can spend so much time doing that, not enough actively promoting what you’re writing. And you can end up thinking that you’re getting nowhere.
So, this seems like a good way of getting the balance right and thereby conistently move forward.
Posted 13 Aug 2007 #
interestingly iam very good at maintaining these things.i always see to it whether there are any improvements in serp or not .
Posted 14 Feb 2009 #