In the 6 months that SSC has been trialling this blog, we have received thoughtful, intelligent and considered comments from the blogosphere - and we would like to thank you for that. Not one comment has had to be deleted because it breached the comment policy. As mentioned at the outset, the blog would be assessed at this point to gauge what we have done well and what needs work.
Assessing the value of a blog is a notoriously difficult thing to do. No single metric gives and overall view, thus our approach it to be holistic, considering many factors together. The one that we really need help with, is user feedback.
Some key statistics:
Visitors and incoming traffic
The blog was been visited by fewer than 9300 visitors, averaging around 50 visits per day. Each visitor averaged 3.47 visits.
The top ten search phrases that landed visitors at the site were:
- what is identity
- government
- social
- services
- ssc blog
- broadband
- standards
- richard best
- laurence millar
- igovt
There are 406 pages on external sites which link to the blog. The top ten site referrers were:
- http://www.e.govt.nz/
- http://computerworld.co.nz/
- http://www.publicaddress.net/
- http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/
- http://news.meta.ua/
- http://norightturn.blogspot.com
- http://www.bloglines.com/
- http://newzealand.govt.nz/
- http://hippity.8tt.org/
- http://www.netvibes.com/
Contributors, posts and comments
There have been 43 posts from 15 SSC contributors and one guest contributor. These 43 posts generated 40 comments from within the Commission, 44 from outside of the Commission, and were mentioned at least 12 times on other blogs (trackbacks).
There were no comments received that were slanderous, offensive or objectionable.
The blog has reached an “Authority rating” of 27 on Technorati, and is ranked 262,935th out of the approximate 112,000,000 blogs in the blogosphere.
Look and feel of site
Early on, it was proposed that maybe a little bit of lipstick wouldn’t go astray on In Development. Others have reinforced this proposal in less polite ways when I have shared the link with them in person over the months. I am curious how much of an issue this is. What percentage of readers find the site ugly? Of these people, who finds it an impediment to reading the content? Perhaps the content itself leaves a lot to be desired for.
This is your chance to tell us what you think. We would appreciate your comments.
16 Comments
“43 posts from 15 SSC contributors and one guest contributor” in six months?
Is that a typo? Because I would be looking to add zeros to that figure if you want to give people a reason for coming here.
Hi Don,
You’re right, that’s not a huge number of posts. Updating more often is one of the challenges that we’re working on. I view having more frequent blog updates and more contributors as part of a whole sweeping change for the organisation - I think you can point at people and say “Oi you, blog now!” but if it’s new territory for them, it’s going to take a while for it to become a natural response, and that’s why with the blog in pilot mode it’s been a bit of a struggle. We’re hoping that as time goes by, people will immediately think of the blog when they have thoughts to communicate, but it’s a work in progress.
Absolutely agreed Don and Joanna. There are two separate issues for this kind of change: the people in an organisation and the organisation itself.
It reminds me of being at primary school, most kids in the class will not raise their hands to answer questions from the teacher as you can only ever be right or wrong. The embarrassment of being wrong in front of people is perceived to be infinately worse than the reward of being right. I think this may be analogous to the lack of posts. As for organisations, I’m not sure of anywhere that has seamlessly woven blogging into the fabric of what a day’s work consists of.
The Commission is quite an old dog, and blogging is quite a new trick.
Agreeing with the others that more frequent activity is a must - “3 and 2″ is a great rule - three posts a week and two comments outside the site (and as many as needed here) on relevant subject matter.
Participating here, for the SSC staff that want to, needs to be a regular part of their day - not an afterthought. For the others, less inclined to post, getting an occasional guest post from them is the obvious target. Surely there are lots of interesting activities being undertaken by the SSC and other parts of the NZ government that could be discussed here?
I’ve done some work recently with a large Australian department facing similar issues. It’s about finding the champions, mentors and participants and then developing the right strategy. Implementation in the right way is critical.
Hi Stephen,
Good to hear from you again.
Even harder than getting constant contribution to the blog, is getting contributors to interact on others’ blogs. I think the discomfort may be caused by this traditionally was the job of the communications team.
As Clay Shirky writes on page 107 of Here Comes Everybody “all businesses are media businesses now”, which in turn means that all professionals should be media savvy.
These comments don’t fill me with hope as I try to set up an internal work blog. Although this:
is good
I have to say though, as someone who read In Development through RSS I was quite surprised when I clicked through to see pictures and colours.
Do your stats count RSS subscribers?
That’s not a “lipstick on a pig” reference is it?
Hi Hadyn,
How about a happy story for you in terms of contributors? Jamie Horrell hadn’t blogged before, but when his manager found out about our blog, he got delegated to do the job, and now he’s one of the most frequent contributors, and I’m sure you’ll find someone similar in your own work.
Regarding RSS feeds - at present we’re just using AW Stats and also Wordpress’s stats, and neither are very good for counting RSS users. Getting more info using Feedburner is definitely on the plans. I can tell you that 12 people are subscribed using Bloglines - because that’s how I subscribe myself.
But it’s not just because it’s his job right?
ps. I am totally jealous of someone who has blogging as their job
Checking this blog has become part of my job. I’m fairly happy with the number of posts, as long as they’re meaningful. I use RSS feeds for a number of blogs and I can only read so many posts a day.
As far as the look and feel, I can’t say I had thought about it much.
Hi Gina,
We take it as a real compliment that you see it as an essential part of your job to check the blog (I think that means we’re on the right track). I do hope there are several other lurkers who are in the same position. Out of curiosity, do you work at a New Zealand government agency?
Matt, I do indeed.
I know what you mean about having to push for posts - we’ve had a blog most of the year but I still often have to pick up the phone and say ‘Oi I want a post…now!’ : )
I wonder whether the writers lack a sense of individual ownership?
So we’re thinking about trialling some staff with their own blogs so they can get more detailed. We’ll still have an overarching blog but will get them to publish to both.
What do you think? Have you discussed this or are you happy with the over-arching model?
BTW Good on you guys for blogging - it is much easier to convince senior managers of the benefits of blogging when you can point to SSC’s blog and the guidelines you have published.
@Lucy,
I quite like the Te Papa Blog, but is there anything else you could blog about beyond squid? Or are the marine biologists just the best at blogging?
The Wellingtonista did a good review of Our Space for example.
Lucy,
I am certain that individuals lacking a sense of ownership is a big problem.
Your idea of individual bloggers, sanctioned (or at least not silenced) by the organisation is I think the approach that Microsoft have taken. We have not had that discussion here. I personally feel that the over-arching model absolutely can work for us.
The question may become irrelevant once our web feeds have sufficient semantic markup attached to them (you could then only subscribe to individual authors, or aggregate desperate authors as you saw fit).
Editor’s note: This comment was moved from “SSC wins Open Source award“
Yes, it is pretty ugly and yes, that matters. if you want people to look at a screen, navigate their way through your words and ideas and find the whole experience interesting enough to nmaybe do it again sometime, then you have the pay at least some attention to the aesthetics.
That having been said, it’s a great piece of work. I’ve read several of the posts and simply scrolling through gives you a real sense of the ’stuff’ bubbling along in the NZ public sector scene. And posts from Laurence Millar especially set the tone - direct, personable, honest and informative. One might even say authentic. And we all know - largely because Jason Ryan has been so eloquent in his advocacy on this, as on many other matters relating to public sector blogging - authenticity is the only sustainable currency of the blog venture.
Well done…I will be taking the RSS feed…
Thanks Martin. You are the first person in this thread to support my fear that we have an ugly baby. As you mention, the child is less grotesque via RSS.