The Benefits of Full-Text…

September 12th, 2005

I’ve been going back and forth on this subject for a few years now. Should my feed be full-text or summary-based (or both - Jenny has advocated in the past to let the reader choose)? For most of my blogging life, it’s been full-text. When I signed with ITI, I decided to go with summaries to maximize the exposure to the site (I wanted hits and eyeballs, can you blame me?).

But, I realized something about a month ago. While my stats have increased since January, the number of people leaving comments and linking to my posts had decreased (no stats to prove this, I’ve just noticed a trend). So, I decided to experiment. On August 24th, I went to full-text (did you notice?) and the changes happened overnight. More bloggers were linking to my posts and there were more comments than before. Also, in checking my Site Stats with my boss the other day, we saw that since the full-text feed was implemented, my LinkRank decreased (that’s a good thing!) Take a look at the daily InLinks chart and you’ll see what I mean. It’s subtle, but definitely there.

I rely on my SiteStats a lot. I want to see how my work is viewed in the blogland (especially in the library blogland), on which days my blog gets the most action, and which days I’m not “influential”. A sharp decrease in my LinkRank means that I’ve said something that has sparked an interest (my link to Library Thing last week created a big spike in my InLinks, which meant that people found it interesting enough to blog about and point to me). A sharp increase can mean that I’ve not blogged that day or that nothing I posted “meant anything”.

What am I getting at? If you care about your work as a blogger and want to get the most out of the time spent posting to your blog, then take a look at the trends for your blog. Spend a few minutes looking at the graphs and your ranking. When was your ranking high and when was it low? Why was it high/low? Did something you say spark an interest? When were your “dull days”?

One of the great things about SiteStats is that a feed is available (charts and all) so that you don’t have to go back and check it everyday.

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