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Recapping 2008 and the 2009 Game Plan

Kyle James — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:30:50 +0000

It’s taken me a little longer than I would have liked to get around to it, but I very much believe in looking back to review the past year and setting goals going forward. You do the same for your website and professional growth right? If not or even if you do hopefully you can get a few ideas from the notes below. Also leave a comment with any good suggestions for appraisal metrics that you use below.

2008 Recap by the Numbers

39,536 unique visitors
196 Blog Posts
1,200+ Comments
55,000+ Spam Comments caught by Akismet
600+ Subscribers
10,000+ Backlinks according to Yahoo! Site Explorer
Visitors from 154 Countries/Territories
Traffic from 829 sites – Top 5
1. StumbleUpon
2. Google – (Non Search)
3. Twitter
4. BlogHighEd
5. Social network
14,853 visits by Search Engines (over 93% from Google)
9,855 different keywords in those visits (talk about long tail)
370+ blog reactions on Technorati (I think that means that many blog posts linked to .eduGuru)

2008 Recap Results

When I first started this blog in January 2008 it was a one man shop. This site has come a long way so let’s look at some of those things.

From a staff of one to six writers
Inaugural member of BlogHighEd
Presentations and coverages at major High Ed Web Conferences including eduWeb, HighEdWeb and Stamats
Helped hundreds of readers network with each other
Launched Guru Gear

I’m sure there are lots of smaller details, but all in all what a wonderful and extremely successful 2008 for this site! Oh how could I forget this blog had a big impact in helping me get my new job at HubSpot!

Goals for 2009

So what do we hope to accomplish in 2009? Well lots of wonderful things but here are some exciting things to look forward in the coming year.

At least 200 posts in 2009
Redesigned site with easier access to the archives of excellent posts
Increased networking opportunity – we haven’t fully flushed out all the details, but in 2009 it is a goal to provide better ways to help our readers network with each other
More Social – along with better networking we would like to make the site more socially active and new ways to engage readers
More Presentations – We have a dream of every staff member presenting at a conference this year! So if you are planning to attend a Higher Education conference in 2009 hopefully you will get the opportunity to meet at least one of our excellent writers.
3,000 readers – Getting the ball rolling was the hard part. With six times the staff now we see no reason why we can’t grow our readership six fold.
Impact your daily work – at the end of the day this is why we write. Knowing that something you read on this site influenced your decisions at work for the better are the highlight of any writers day. Let’s keep that magic working.

So that is it. Pretty simple right? It is hard to be more concrete looking forward because we as a staff have many decisions to make, but just writing some ideas down provides a measuring stick to look back through the year to make sure we are on the right path and attaining our goals.

Hopefully you are as excited about 2009 as we are… The possibilities are endless!

The Top 10 Posts of 2008

Kyle James — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:00:15 +0000

So this blog was started the beginning of 2008 and since then we have grown to over 600 readers and hopefully helping you actually making a difference in college websites across the country. I absolutely love the higher education community and the environment this blog has become a hub for over the last year. I’ll have a post out the beginning of next week look at some of the numbers but right now let’s look at the top 10 posts of 2008, traffic wise, and some extra to toss into the fray.

How to use StumbleUpon for Higher Education marketing – With over a thousand more pageviews than number two this is by far the most popular post on the site in the past year. It also probably helped that this one experienced the most success on StumbleUpon which accounted for most all those pageviews. What’s funny is my exponential knowledge of StumbleUpon since writing and the fact I’m writing methodolgy for HubSpot about StumbleUpon and expanding upon this… go figure.
The Test Results after Comparing 11 Free Web Analytic Services – This post definitely took some of the most research and digging into to produce. It also was the spring board that began my well documented obsession with all things Google Analytics.
Google Analytics 101: Some Basic Setup Tips – During a couple of day training in Google Analytics at ROI Revolution this was the first true introdution post to Google Analytics for many people.
First Thoughts on Google Chrome: It’s Not What You Think – Technical guru Michael Fienen introduced us all to Chrome in this post that here we are four months after it was published and it remains an excellent introduction to Chrome from a technical standpoint.
The Presidential Election Race using Web 2.0 – yeah I know this post has nothing to do with Higher Education, but looking way back to January 30^th man we have come a long way in electing Barack Obama president. Looking way back at some of the numbers it’s quite obvious that Social Media easily picked this one correctly months ahead of time. This election also really brought Social Media into it’s own as a very powerful brand building and campaign tool.
The Use of Social Media in Higher Education for Marketing and Communications – I like to simply refer to this post as the “Reuben Awaking.” This was, now .eduGuru, Rachel Reuben’s blogging introduction to the world and still a wonderful compilation of research.
Comparing the Obama and McCain Emails – Email Guru extraordinaire Karlyn Morissette gave us a timeless peak into the email campaigns of the two candidates. Also getting this special look really helped us see what worked and what didn’t.
Google Analytics Filters: Helping you Better Segment, Clean, and Understand your Data – Google Analytics is quite a mess without applying filters. This post was definitely the favorite destination after presentations I gave on the subject of web analytics over the second half of the year.
How to Monitor your Online Identity – This post still hold relevant today nine months after being written. Well worth a first or second read. Are you monitoring your online identity?
The Right Way to Setup a WordPress blog and Why: Part 1 – One of my first posts slid in at number 10. This was the first in a two part series, but looking back man oh man have I learned so much since then. Part 2.

There are so many excellent posts over the last year… we almost hit 200 in our first year as this is post number 201. Here are a few other top posts worth a second look, but that didn’t make the top 10 list.

Thanks for such a wonderful 2008 and we hope to continue to prove awesome content in 2009! Keep reading Guru’s and we’ll keep posting.

5 new search engines that hope to challenge Google’s dominance

Kyle James — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:05:43 +0000

The search engine field sure is getting a whole lot busier the last few months and it looks like 2008 will be a busy year as we attempt to sort through the vast mountains of data that we continue to create and modify.

One of the things that has happened in the last few weeks is a new wave of search engines is beginning to emerge. Google controls over 57% of American online search and close to 66% of world wide searches in a market that really doesn’t have any other major player. Yahoo has a dwindling share and there is even rumors that they will outsource search to Google as they cut jobs. AOL already uses Google for search results. MSN/Live and Ask are the only two other large players out there. Here’s some of the newest entrants and soon to come:

ChaCha is a search engine that is powered by humans who are all supposedly experts in certain areas and answer your questions. ChaCha’s claims of strengths are it’s abilty to answer questions instead of just doing keyword searches. Because you ask a literal question and a human responds you can ask very complicated questions. Also it promises a mobile ability that will allow you to get answers texted to your mobile phone. If you want here is a video promo.
Mahalo is another new search engine that is completely powered and sorted by humans. Mahalo’s biggest claim is that it provides uncluttered results low on spam.
Earthfrisk.org is another entrant that is run by a community that vote and comment on results to get better results. Earthfrisk says that they take the best of the other search engines and social bookmarking sites, like Digg and StumbleUpon, and weed out the spam. Essentially it’s a social search engine on some levels.
Wikia is the most hyped new entry. It launched a few weeks ago and is by far the most famous of the new search engines. Wikia is the latest project of Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia. Wikia is an open source search engine and relies on the trust of a growing user community and the feedback that they provide.
Even Rich Skrenta, co-founder of the Open Directory Project and Topix is attempting to join the mix by creating his own search engine, Blekko. Little is known at this point, but I’m sure we will hear more in the coming months.

For Google to continue to dominate it’s going to have to continue to change and adapt especially against the onslaught of user created data in Social Networks and bookmarking sites. This new form of constantly changing and adapting data will continue to pose a challenge until it is figured out how to comfortably index and update it all. I see meta data becoming an invaluable way to keep up with all this data and the company that can do it the best promises to be greatly rewarded.

It looks like we are at the beginning of an extremely interesting period in the history of search as many companies attempt to tackle this giant beast of an issue.

I’ll close with this powerful video created by Michael Wesch at Kansas State that attempts to put into context how vast and varied the collection of internet data is and the need to be able to sort and search it. It’s actually sort of a cult classic in some higher education circles.