Fire Critic An Unadulterated View of the Fire Service
When it comes to blogs, it is kinda hard to measure success. I have been surprised by the perceived success of The Fire Critic Blog, but I am partial to the experience.
How exactly to you measure success of a blog? Here is a list of potential criteria:
- Traffic – the obvious is how many people are reading the site. You should measure daily traffic and weigh it over time taking into consideration the growth weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. The Fire Critic has seen a consistent growth over the past several months.
- Search Engine Traffic – Yes this traffic is included in the traffic from above. With proper search engine optimization (SEO) you can propel your blog to greatness in specific areas. Keep up with who is getting to your site with which search engines and which terms. Duplicate your success with other posts.
- Comments – Whether readers love to read your site or love to hate you they will return. Comments are the number one thing that make bloggers happy. This is the heroin! We love it when a reader takes the time to leave a comment. Be sure to reciprocate and comment on the blogs you like to read. The Fire Critic actually has more comments then there are posts. I believe you would call that success! 303 posts and just over 350 comments! Not bad if I might say.
- Trackbacks – How many people are linking to your posts. A trackback is a link to a specific url within your blog. This does not count links to your main url. The Fire Critic is getting there in this category. With the advent of new blogs whenever you turn around, many are encouraged by blogs they like to read and link back to them.
- Links – Links to your blog on other peoples link page, blogroll, or in their posts. This would include trackbacks and more. The Fire Critic has found itself on the blogroll of some very decent blogs!! Thanks guys and gals!!!
- RSS Feed Readers – This is the amount of readers who read your site through an RSS feed. They might read your posts without even visiting your site. Others read something and click through to your site. This is a great tool…you put your information in front of them without them having to go directly to your site. The Fire Critic is slowly building a following via RSS feed. Get our RSS feed here
- Email Subscription – This is somewhat like the RSS Feed Reader. However, instead of having the feed served up in a reader it is emailed to them daily. Another great tool for putting your information in front of your readers! The Fire Critic is slowly building its email subscription readers. Subscribe to our RSS feed here
- Twitter Followers – How many people read your tweets? This is compounded when you have your posts feeding directly into your twitter account. The Fire Critic has several hundred followers. Follow me here.
- Twitter Retweets – Retweets are when people retweet what you have posted. When they retweet your tweets about posts on your blog their friends view that and might click on it too. This builds traffic and readership. The Fire Critic has enjoyed success with retweets of posts!
- Facebook Fans – Facebook pages are becoming all the rave. Everyday thousands of people join Facebook. Build your army of fans through a Facebook page. Readers can follow the blog via the Facebook page, view the new posts, and click through to the posts that interest them. The Fire Critic Page has around 250 fans and we add a couple new everyday. You can view our Facebook page here.
These are just some of the criteria in which bloggers might measure their success. I have been very happy with my perception of the success of The Fire Critic! Thanks everyone and keep the comments coming!
The Fire Critic will be recreated in version 2.0 sometime today or early Thursday. Please bear with me during the rebuild! We hope to really boost the blog to the next level (whatever the hell the next level is). I have plenty more to say!!!
