I was a bit shocked to see that today is this sites 4th Birthday. Doesn’t time fly?

So a quick thanks goes out to Chris who helps with some of Design and Wordpress tweaking. www.1steasy.com for hosting the site and finally anyone who contributes by leaving comments or subscribes to the RSS feed for updates.

I do my best to share knowledge and have published 110 posts containing tech tips. These are posts with some practical guidance on the given topic (see Tech Tips).

Also I hope the Screencasts are informative, I have published 29 of those (see Screencast).

I hope the rest isn’t just Internet noise (although sometimes that’s unavoidable).

As part of my job I give advice to companies about blogging and publishing content so I walk the walk in that regard.

I have learned a lot over the last 3 years, in fact I learn something new every day so that in itself makes it all worth it.

There is an old Kevin Costner movie in which he has a dream about building a baseball field.

In the dream he hears a voice. “If you build it, they will come“.

I’ve not got to the stage of hearing voices (yet) but committing to creating content on the web everyday is either a a leap of faith or a big waste of time.

So if Blogging is a social experiment in communicating and raising the profile/awareness of myself and my business. Is it working?

In the above chart I am comparing the number of unique people who visited the site in January 2007 and January 2008.

In the above chart is the number of page views, again comparing  the same period January 2007 and January 2008.

The “If you build it, they will come“. doesn’t sound so silly now.

Background Context: in January 2007 the site was 18 months old with 500 posts.

RSS: Really Simple Syndication

The use of RSS continues to grow. It tends to be the more technically astute user who will use RSS.

An RSS user is like a subscriber to the site, a person who wants to be updated of new things. So a fair demonstration of engagement.

I don’t use any other promotional techniques just the content I create each day.

Here are some of the things I consider a success:-

1) Growing the number Visitors.

2) Internet Search.

2) Sharing Knowledge (Through Tech Tips and Screencasts and now Recommended Buys.)

3) Helping People Directly (Like the chap Acer were tormenting).

4) Communicating with Dell on my terms.

5) Getting equipment to review from Toshiba.

6) Making contact with people.

Conclusion

I have no idea what this picture will look like in January 2009 although I am fascinated to find out.

I hope I have demonstrated with some commitment, thought and determination it can be done.

For Small Businesses looking for help and advice on technology – give me a call on 01606-841587 or bookmark this link to see all my posts filed under that category: View all posts filed under Small Business

Every year Google publish their Zeitgeist, a snapshot look at the search trends in the year.

The main link is here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2007/index.html

You can spot some interesting trends for example:

HD-DVD is more popular than blu-ray in Google searches.

Basically the Google Zeitgeist is a fun way to learn about the importance of search and does contain some surprising results about the other humans on the planet.

When I talk to Clients about Google the biggest problem  area is around creating web content that can be found by real people. You would be amazed how people actually use Google Search in the real world.

I boil it down to “You have to write, how they search”.

Other funnies in the 2007 Google Zeitgeist: the most popular how to list:-

1)  how to kiss
2)  how to draw
3)  how to knit
4)  how to hack <<< (hello, warning, warning)
5)  how to dance
6)  how to crochet
7)  how to meditate
8)  how to flirt
9)  how to levitate
10) how to skateboard

It was all going to so well up to number 4.

In other Google news eWeek are reporting that Google’s dedicated blog search (http://blogsearch.google.com/) is to be integrated into the main Google search page. Just like Images, News, Groups, Products are today.

If you ever wonder what all this blogging stuff is all about, check out the above video.

It is one of the clearer explanations available. Lets face it, video is so much easier to digest than me writing a thousand words.

Bonus: I don’t have to write a thousand words.

Clearly I am an advocate for this type of communication as I do it every day, but why do I it?

Well last month (Nov 2007) some 6,681 unique people visited this site consuming some 33,582 pages.

I know for a fact I help people (they e-mail me or comment on the site) and I also get to show the world as I pass from being a Whizz kid into a Seniority Citizen that I know my stuff.

I also don’t have the marketing budget to reach these kinds of numbers through traditional means.

I have helped clients integrate blogging into existing web sites and can measure accurately the positive benefits.

So there are lots of reasons for businesses to consider blogging, watching the video above would be a good start.

This video was created by: http://www.commoncraft.com/

See further down the post for the Screencast.

Microsoft has just released the latest non beta version of their blog writing tool called Windows Live Writer.

I have been using Windows Live Writer since June 2007 and it really is a delight to use compared to the editing capabilities available inside of Wordpress.

If you blog you should at least try it out. Its free, I like to think of it as the Microsoft Word of Blogging.

Link: http://get.live.com/WL/config_all

Tip: In the above link for Windows Live Writer you can also download other Live.com items, if you only want Windows Live Writer just untick the items you don’t want.

This Screencast below runs for 2m58s and is a video demo of how I created this post.

Click the Screencast to Play.

This screencast requires the Flash plug in. You can get it here

If you liked this Screencast, see more here

http://www.colindiponio.com/category/screencast/