The last few weeks have been quite stressful for me as I’ve been involved with the marketing of our business, as we carried out several promotional activities to increase enrolments. Unfortunately for this blog, that meant that I haven’t been posting as regularly as I was before.

Why is this important? Well, it has encouraged me to think about the goals for this blog, and the timescale that I have available for developing this website. Even if you come out with the same decisions, the process of re-evaluating your current goals and timescale can uncover some valuable considerations that led you to the goals in the first place. Occasionally, a deeper insight into your original motivations will confirm that you were right in the first place.

Some questions to consider:

1. what are the goals for your blog in the short-term and longer-term?

2. how much time do you have to devote to the blog: its design, marketing and content creation?

3. at certain times, you will be required to do more than at other times, such as at creation, when you have other commitments, before vacations, so how can you cope with such surges in activity?

4. what posting schedule do you think you can keep on a regular basis? it doesn’t matter what the schedule is, but regularity is a blessing to your visitors

5. are you happy with the levels of traffic you are getting? do you have sufficient time, resources and skills to create further traffic?

6. are you content with the direction, content and feedback that you are getting on your blog? if you aren’t, can you clarify what the underlying weaknesses are?

It’s wise to consider these questions as part of your review of your blog’s situation. Writing is very much a recursive process, even though blogging isn’t necessarily so. In our blogs, it’s quite likely that we will revisit the same topics again, and again, as our circle of competence grows. This is part of the natural ‘blogging’ environment.

Alexa has long had a toolbar available for Internet Explorer. However, when it came to Firefox, almost no direct support was available, and so several enterprising individuals created toolbars themselves for Firefox. These solutions were usually to be found at Mozilla in the extensions section.

Now, however, Alexa’s got Sparky. To get this, simply open this page in Firefox and you’re taken straight to the plugin. Its webpage cites:

* Related Links: Find sites that are similar to the one you are currently visiting.
* Traffic Trend: A sparkline showing the traffic trend from the last four months.
* Reach Meter: A neat little indicator that shows the site’s Reach.
* Traffic Rank: Shows the current site’s Alexa Traffic Rank.

Once installed, it can be found in the bottom of the right hand side of your browser screen.

Clicking on the ‘a’ in the middle of the bar brings up a list of options for the extension.

I don’t know exactly how it compares to the IE Toolbar, but you can find that out for yourself. For FF users, though, it represents an improvement over Alexa’s previous support! Let’s see what happens.

CashQuests and John Chow have been discussing whether to shut off comments on their blogs. Click on the links to see what arguments they make:Kumiko says:

• RSS subscribers will increase.
• There will be more incoming links.
• Better relationships will be built.
• Every page will convert better.
• Search engine traffic will increase.
• Posts will be more viral.
• Review orders will increase.
• Less time will be spent deleting spam.
• Productivity will increase.

John replies:

• Your No. 1 Communication Tool With Your Readership.
• A Blog Without Comments Isn’t A Blog.
• Without Comments, Your RSS Readers Have Very Little Reason To Visit.
• User Generated Content Means Less Work for You.
• A Blog Is A Community.
• Comments Enhance The Value of a Review.
• It Doesn’t Take That Long To Read Comments.
• Getting Comments Is Very Rewarding

It is an interesting debate. I would encourage you all to visit both of these blogs to find out their full points of views. Both make good points.

In general, I’m in favor of comments on most of my posts, but not on my pages. I think that I tend to agree with most of John’s points, though I don’t doubt Kumiko’s points: comments do require additional effort and time managing both the expected comments and the unexpected issues that arise. But having read through a number of blogs and many of the comments: a lot of comments just aren’t worth the bother. Most reiterate main points of the article without adding anything new, or are compliments without furthering the discussion much.

How do you manage your comments? Do you leave a lot of comments or not? Do you like to read other people’s comments?