psilva's prophecies: blog tips

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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Best Day to Blog Experiment – The Results

Last week I did a little experiment to determine what is the best day of the week to blog, Monday thru Friday, that is. I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I posted a blog entry every day last week to conduct my own little brief, non-scientific experiment. So what is the best day to blog? Depends. Monday, Wednesday or Thursday all had the best results but in some cases, it depended on the post location. I even waited until mid-week to post these results, based on last week’s experiment. My primary blog is on F5’s DevCentral community site but I also push content out to WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, PodBean and Ulitzer. I usually track through Google analytics but some sites have their own statistical reporting. So let’s get to the charts.

This first one shows the results of my DevCentral blog from Subtext, a popular open source blogging platform. Here, Thursday was easily the winner but Monday also drew a good crowd. I also think Thursday might have been higher due to folks checking out the previous days they may have missed. I’ve noticed that when doing a blog series, if you include the previous entries as reference, those get good traction days after their initial post.

Next is the Google Analytics results of the same DevCentral blog. They count slightly differently but you can see that Thursday was still the most popular day by a smidgen, with the rest of the week holding it’s own along with the expected Friday drop. That’s one thing I can say with certainty is that Friday wasn’t the best day to blog. My weekly visits were up 22% which was somewhat expected and bounce rate down. One benefit of blogging every day.

This chart is from my Wordpress blog and as you can see, mid-week were all equal and contradicted the rest of the locations and my previous paragraph about Friday being slow. Here, Friday was the most attended day. It seemed people were catching up since there were reads on Friday of the previous day’s entries.

These are the numbers from Ulitzer (sys-con) and they keep the same trend – Monday and Thursday doing well with Tuesday sneaking in the middle. Historically I’ve done most of my posts on Tuesday or Wednesday but am now thinking that more like Wednesday or Thursday might be slightly better. I’m going to keep looking at these over the next few months.

This chart is from Podbean, yet another location that I syndicate to. I also host my Audio Whitepapers on Podbean. Once again, Thursday wins with Wednesday and Monday following. Seeing a trend yet?

And finally Posterous – which is actually a pretty cool blogging platform and also hosts a bunch of Audio, Video and other multimedia types. This one bucks the trend but these are overall views rather than just the daily, which might explain Monday being on top since it had been out there longer.

Conclusion? For me, during this very limited experiment it is clear that Thursday or Monday receive the most reads with Tuesday and Wednesday holding their own. I’d probably have to watch over weeks and months to clearly say which day is the best but this is a start. I’m not sure if the content was any better or worse for each day but next time, I’m going to try posting every day with various topics, not a ‘This is a Test’ blog every day. Regardless, I got some interesting data and hope this helps you when determining when to post. You might be wondering why I’m not waiting until tomorrow (Thursday) to post this since the data indicates I’ll have more traffic. One, I didn’t want to wait; two, this was ready to go today and; three, one of the main things I came away with is that it if you have interesting, timely, engaging content, it really doesn’t matter when you post. We blog because we enjoy it. We blog because want to share something interesting. We blog to provide insight about the latest news, whatever that might be. We blog to engage in a conversation with our social community. We blog because it is kinda fun – and having fun in life, no matter what day of the week is important to our existence. Thanks for playing along and participating in my first annual ‘Best Day to Blog Experiment.’ You, the readers, make this blog enjoyable.

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Friday, November 12, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 5

This is a test of the Emergency Blogcast System. The blogger in your area has developed this test to keep you informed in the event of a blog abnormality. If this had been an actual blog emergency, you would have been offered a highlighted link to click for further instructions. This concludes this test of the Emergency Blogcast System.

If you missed the past week, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment and thanks for your participation, I do appreciate it. I’m conducting a brief, non-scientific experiment. The idea was to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back. This is Day 5, the last day of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) got some good traction, Day 2 (Tuesday) grew with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday, Day 3 (Wednesday) was down 4% from Tuesday but still had a decent showing and Day 4 (Thursday) was up 5% over Wednesday. It pretty much follows the same pattern as other ‘best day’ studies have shown.

Friday, the end of the school and work week in many countries and even has it’s own catch phrase – TGIF. For those superstitious folks, there’s an interesting anomaly about Friday according to Wikipedia, ‘The use of the Gregorian calendar and its leap year system results in a small statistical anomaly, that the 13th of any month is slightly more likely to fall on a Friday than any of the other six days. The figures are 688/4800 (43/300) which is .1433333..., being greater than 1 in 7 by just 0.3%.’ Friday blog entries still get attention and statistically get about the same as a Monday post. What I did find interesting, is this study (pdf) from Carnegie Mellon which found that if efficiency is your goal, the very best day to read a blog is Friday. They say that the logic might be that since bloggers tend to blog less often on Friday, the content that is posted might be more focused and informative – either that or there is less to choose from and you find the really good ones.

Since it is Friday, I’m not going to babble on about blog traffic and just get right to the ‘Songs about the Day,’ a recurring theme for this blog experiment. All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and he has a decent Top 10 list for every day, including Friday. But for today, I found another list from PopCultureMadness which lists a bunch of Friday songs.

Another Friday Night - Chris Knight
Another Friday Night - Embrace Today
Black Friday - Steely Dan
Every Friday Afternoon - Craig Morgan
Every Other Friday At Five - Trace Adkins
Freaky Friday - Aqua
Freaky Friday Baby One More Time - Bowling For Soup
Friday - Autograph
Friday - Bowling For Soup
Friday - Daniel Bedingfield
Friday - Ice Cube
Friday - J.J. Cale
Friday - Joe Jackson
Friday Child - Nancy Sinatra
Friday Face - Richie Spice
Friday Fun - The Donnas
Friday I'm In Love - The Cure
Friday Night - Click Five
Friday Night - The Darkness
Friday Night - Kids From Fame
Friday Night - Lily Allen
Friday Night - McFly
Friday Night - The Monarchs
Friday Night Blues - John Conlee
Friday Night In Dixie - Rhett Atkins
Friday Night On A Dollar Bill - Huelyn Duvall
Friday Night Saturday Morning - The Specials
Friday On My Mind - David Bowie
Friday On My Mind - Easybeats
Friday On My Mind - Gary Moore
Friday Street - Paul Weller
Friday You Said Goodbye - Jerry Cox
Friday's Angels - Generation X
Get 'Em Out By Friday - Genesis
Good Friday - Guttermouth
Good Mourning/Black Friday - Megadeth
It's Finally Friday - George Jones
Keep Their Heads Ringin' (It's Friday) - Dr Dre
Living It Up (Friday Night) - Bell and James
Monday Like A Friday - Andre Nickatino & Equipto
Mr. Friday Night - DJ Cally
One February Friday - Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Party People... Friday Night - 911
She Left Me On Friday - Shed Seven
Thank God It's Friday - R. Kelly

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 4

If you missed the past three days, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant. If you are a returning reader, thanks for your participation and for the first time readers, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I’m doing my own little brief, non-scientific experiment. The idea was to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back. Mahalo for becoming a statistic, and I mean that in the most gracious way. This is Day 4 of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) got some good traction, Day 2 (Tuesday) grew with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday while Day 3 (Wednesday) is down 4% from Tuesday but still a decent showing – plus my week is up 37% over the previous.

Thursday, is the day before Friday and NBC’s ‘Must See TV’ for many years. As with Wednesday, the name comes from the Anglo-Saxons to signify that this is Thunor's or Thor’s day. Both gods are derived from Thunaraz, god of thunder. Supposedly, Thursday is the best day to post a blog entry. This article (different from the last link) also says that, ‘between 1pm and 3pm PST (after lunch) or between 5pm and 7pm PST (after work) are the best times…and the worst time to post is between 3 and 5 PM PST on the weekends.’ Those articles have a bunch of charts showing traffic patterns to indicate that this is the day. There is some wonder about this, however. Yesterday I mentioned that it might not be the actual day at all, but about knowing when your audience is visiting and making sure content is available before they arrive. Also, if you are only worried about traffic stats and how many subscribers you have, rather than timely engaging content, then you would worry about dropping words on a certain day. If you are creating insightful material, then the readers will find you no matter what day you post. Danny Brown points out that with social media tools like Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit, and sharing sites like Facebook and Twitter, the blog post can live much longer than the initial push.

There’s also a distinction between a personal and business blog. With a personal blog, much of the focus is sharing ideas or writing about some recent personal experience. I realize that’s an oversimplification and there’s much more to it than that, but the day you post might not really matter. With a business blog, often you are covering a new feature of a product, how some new-fangled thing impacts a business, reporting on a press release and basically extending the company’s message. In this case, timely blogs are important since your audience might be looking for just that – how to solve something today or to understand the ramifications of some new regulation or other areas of interest. It’s important for a company to get a jump on these stories and show thought leadership. Also, depending on your industry, most of your colleagues will also be on the Mon-Fri work schedule and you want to catch them when they are digging for answers. Of course, this is not set in stone but is the prevailing notion of those who cover ‘blogging.’ Personally, I only write what would be considered a business blog for F5 Networks with a focus on Security, Cloud Computing and a bit about Social Media but cover just about whatever I feel is appropriate, including pop culture. As a writer and a human, my experiences are gathered over time and influenced by both my upbringing and professional endeavors. I try to bring a bit of who I am rather than what I do to my posts and typically write when inspiration hits.

Going back to Danny Brown for a moment, he notes that it’s the writer who makes the blog and we do it because we like it. Communicate with your readers, share with the community and write engaging content and you’ll have visitors and readers no matter what day of the week it gets posted.

If you’ve followed this mini-series, you’ll know that ‘Songs about the Day’ is a recurring theme during this blog experiment. All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and for the 4th time in as many days, I’m ‘lifting’ his list for songs about Thursday.

Top 10 Songs About Thursday

   1. Thursday - Asobi Seksu
   2. Thursday - Morphine
   3. Thursday - Country Joe & The Fish
   4. Thursday The 12th - Charlie Hunter
   5. Thursday's Child - Eartha Kitt
   6. Thursday - Jim Croce
   7. Thursday's Child - David Bowie
   8. (Thursday) Here's Why I Did Not Go To Work Today - Harry Nilsson
   9. Sweet Thursday - Pizzicato Five
   10. Jersey Thursday - Donovan

I know it’s a stretch but my favorite Thursday song is God of Thunder – KISS.

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 3

If you missed the past two days, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant. For the first time readers, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment. The idea is to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back next week. Thanks for becoming a statistic. Yesterday, I noted that it was important to have a good opening line to grab your readers, yet I’ve repeated this exact opening 3 days in a row. I’m wondering if this will have any influence on the results. I guess that’s part of the test – follow the rules, break the rules and see what happens. I’m now on Day 3 of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) actually got some good traction and Day 2 (Tuesday) is trending well with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday. Bounce Rate and Time on Site are also in the positive day over day. I’m tweeting the post(s) a couple times a day to catch folks all over. I do this sometimes, especially if I post late in the day – I’ll tweet the link out early the next morning hoping to catch readers who might have missed it the previous afternoon or re-tweet late in the day if I’ve posted very early. Oh and by the way, I really want to thank those of you who are playing along at home – without you, I’d have no data.

Welcome to Wednesday, hump-day, mid-week and originally Woden’s Day, for the Anglo-Saxon god Woden. Wednesday is also a very good day to post a blog according to a few reports and it happens to be one of the more likely days that a reader would comment. Like Tuesday, posting mid-week allows readers to find the entry even if they miss the initial syndication. I’ve read that both Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to post a blog, so sitting in the middle of the two should garner results, right? Lorelle VanFossen, who writes about blogging says that sometimes it isn’t about when you post but it’s about when the most people visit your blog. She notes that while certain days do draw more viewers in general, knowing when the best day/time to post is more about understanding which day of the week your traffic levels will be highest and making sure content is available during those times or; post your ‘most poignant’ content during that window. Another interesting angle is that we train our audience when to show up, so the actual day might not matter. If you blog every day and your readers have been trained to watch for it daily, when you miss a few days without notice, folks wonder what happened. I’ve mentioned that I usually post either on Tuesday or Wednesday and I’m guessing that is when my readers ‘look’ for content. It makes sense then, that a post on Friday probably won’t (and it hasn’t) gain views since my regular readers are not looking for it then. If they do come across it, it might not get the depth or engagement since the weekend is right around the corner. I’ll be watching for that 2 days from now. It’s interesting so far that what started as a simple test to determine the best day to blog, has generated more observations and additional questions along the way – meaning, things I didn’t consider at the start are becoming interesting to watch as this moves along.

The recurring part that’s also been fun is adding ‘Songs about the Day’ as a theme during this blog experiment – thinking it might be the one consistent part that ties this series together. All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and am going to once again ‘lift’ his list for songs about Wednesday.

Top 10 Songs About Wednesday

   1. Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. - Simon & Garfunkel
   2. Ash Wednesday - Elvis Perkins
   3. Wednesday - Tori Amos
   4. Wednesday Week - The Undertones
   5. Wednesday - Drive-By Truckers
   6. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting - Charles Mingus
   7. Wednesday Morning - America
   8. (April) Spring, Summer, And Wednesdays - Status Quo
   9. Wednesday Night Waltz - Chet Atkins
   10. Wednesday Week - Elvis Costello

and my favorite Wednesday song: It's Only Wednesday – Crash Kings

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 2

If you missed yesterday’s blog entry, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant. As I mentioned just one day ago, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment to see. The idea is to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back next week. Thanks for becoming a statistic. Smile

Tuesday, which can feel like a Monday to some folks – just read those Facebook entries – is typically a good day to blog and gain readership. The Monday blues are gone and folks are really getting into their work week. The day that you post can have a big impact on how many folks will read it. Tuesday is the day I usually post since I read that Tuesday is the best day to post a blog. It wasn’t in that linked article but I couldn’t find the original story claiming such. I can say that I’ve had good success posting on Tuesdays. I try to get it up early enough in the day to catch East coast readers and usually no later than 2pm PST. Posting on Tuesday allows readers an entire week to catch/find it along with time to bookmark, comment and respond to comments before the weekend – when traffic drops off. Depending on your blog topic, the weekend is usually a very slow time for blog readership, except for sports and other ‘weekend’ related events. The one advantage, as noted by Darren Rowse, is that it might be easier to crack the front page of Digg since there is less competition. Tuesday is also the most active day for RSS feeds, according to this story, which is a few years old. I looked for more recent stats regarding RSS with limited success but the notion (at least in 2005) is that since RSS is busy, then blogs are getting read – either a perusal or full engagement.

I alluded on Day 1, that the topic and content needs to be interesting, engaging and timely. You need a good title as a hook along with an inviting opening to draw your readers deeper. Not sure I’m accomplishing that with this test since the titles will be identical throughout the week, except for the ‘day’ notation. That’ll be interesting to watch – if similar titles still draw viewers or they’ll think that it’s the one they read the day before. Maybe they’ll just think I’m lazy but I do believe I’ve had some decent titles over the years. Who can complain about, The New Certificate 2048 My Performance, A is for Application, J is for Jacked, Dumpster Diving vs. The Bit Bucket or Yelling ‘WebApp Firewall’ in a Crowded Data Center. Blogs also need a point – why else would you read it? A good title and opening line with junk after, only makes your bounce rate jump. I usually try to include some bit of info that the reader can use today or relate it to a common scenario we’ve all faced. When writing about information security, sometimes it’s beneficial or easier to understand when explained in a manner that everyone, not just IT admins, would understand. I guess that’s it for today’s inclusion since it is 9:30am PST and I want to get this out. Day 1 got posted around 12:30pm PST and I want to stagger the times over the week to test that too.

Many radio stations around the country use Tuesday to play double-shots of our favorite artists and dub it ‘Two-for-Tuesday.’ I’ve somehow shoved ‘Songs about the Day’ as a theme during this blog experiment – thinking it might be the one consistent part that ties them together. We’ll see. Yesterday I used The Y! Radish’s blog about Monday songs and am going to ‘lift’ his list again for songs about Tuesday.

Top 10 Songs About Tuesday

   1. Ruby Tuesday - The Rolling Stones
   2. Tuesday's Gone - Lynyrd Skynyrd
   3. Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon) - The Moody Blues
   4. They Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday's Just As Bad) - T-Bone Walker
   5. On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago - Counting Crows
   6. Tuesday Heartbreak - Stevie Wonder
   7. Tuesday's Dead - Cat Stevens
   8. Tuesday Morning - Michelle Branch
   9. Tuesday Morning - The Pogues
   10. Tuesday At Ten - Count Basie

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Monday, November 8, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment–Day 1

Welcome to Monday, typically the day most workers dread but with that extra hour of sleep yesterday, you’re amazingly refreshed aren’t you? I don’t mind the ‘practice Sunday’ for the spring forward event but wonder with the fall back, what if you waited and changed the clocks on Sunday eve – how early everyone would be for work! But I digress. Also, Welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant. I toyed with The Great Blog Experiment, but ‘great’ might be stretching it. Nevertheless - I do hope to get some decent data to report back next week. I’ve read various stories about when is the best time and day to get the most readership exposure from a blog post. Now of course, content plays a big role in what readers are interested in but, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve found that something I think is awesome, sometimes doesn’t always translate to a huge pick up in the blogosphere. So I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment to see. I’m curious that way. I’ll probably just use Google Analytics to track trends. The idea is to blog everyday this week and track the results. I normally only blog once or twice a week so this will be interesting – not like Mrs. MacVittie who can crank out 9 or 10. You go Lori! Maybe I’ll ask her to compare data when this is done since she does have a wide readership. We participate in a lot of social media activities here at F5 and like most SM conscious companies, we analyze our content and look to ways for increasing our reach.

Statistically speaking, Monday is not a bad day to post a blog. I would have thought that Monday might be challenging to get an audience since folks are focusing on the work week, catching up on things that got left behind the previous week and going through email. It might also be a time when people are looking for stories or solutions to the things they need to complete that week. You might also be checking your favorite blogger, one that you read often or subscribe to since it is part of your weekly reading anyway. As far as times, some feel that after lunch (Pacific Zone) is one of the best times to post. It’s toward the end of the day out East and maybe those West-coasters need some reading dessert before cranking out the afternoon. The other thing about Monday is depending on your worldwide audience, Monday might be their 2nd day of work for that week since some countries start the work week on Sunday.

Well, that’s about it for Day 1 and I’m really not sure yet what I’ll write tomorrow, except that I was thinking of including the best songs about the particular post day – yeah, maybe that’ll generate traffic. So, here are the top 10 songs about Monday according to The Y! Radish, who also says that the average person will experience 4040 Mondays in their life.

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,macvittie,silva

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Now ReTweet After Me! Ah, Never Mind.

There is some interesting research over on Sysomos Inc. which indicates that 71% of twitter messages get no reaction at all, like a reply or retweet, 85% get one @reply and 92% of the actual retweets happen within the first hour. Over the last two months, they examined 1.2 Billion tweets and found that 29% beget a reaction and only 6% were retweets. Heck, even my tweet about the story only got 1 click according to http://j.mp:

While many will take this as and argue that twitter is useless, but Tom Webster at BrandSavant has a different take in this blog. He notes that measuring click-stream data alone will never give accurate results, you need to measure both online and offline exploration to gauge audience participation. We already know that most people don’t really engage on twitter and Tom makes the comparison to a newspaper editorial page. You can’t measure the circulation of the New York Times just by how many people write letters. His follow up blog also looked at it another way – instead of 71% not responding, how about ‘Nearly 3 in 10 Tweets Provoke a Reaction.’ That actually sounds better and depending on the number of followers, could be a huge number.

The other question is not necessarily how many responded to your company’s tweet – but do you watch and listen to what’s being said about YOU – which is probably one of the biggest benefits of micro-blogging. You can engage your audience by responding to their needs rather than blasting what you think they need. Quickly responding to a dissatisfied customer (who may not follow you at all) can transform them into a huge advocate. We’ve seen that here. Someone might be having difficulties with a configuration or simply expressing frustration and we either provide some guidance or a link to the solution and voila! Their next tweet is about how awesome we are. That’s how we humans operate. It’s not so much that we get what we want when things go bad, it’s that someone actually listened and had empathy to our situation. We gravitate to those who care, are willing to help, or just lend an ear to our grief.

This NYT article talks about small businesses can take advantage of twitter. Many small businesses don’t have a lot to spend on advertising and their inventory may change often. They can use twitter to update their customers about new flavors, colors or a weekend sale for free. The key is not to be boring. With any advertising, you need to stand out amongst all the other billboards fighting for our attention. Add a touch of attitude without arrogance and folks will notice. Interesting and entertaining.

Other ways to take advantage of the medium is use it like a live FAQ as Whole Foods does. Use it as a portable focus group like Kiss My Bundt. Don’t just sell but pique interest or arouse curiosity and include a link. Throw some trivia out there. Create the intimacy as if you’re the neighborhood corner store. The age-old notion that people buy from people still holds.

Technorati Tags: F5, infrastructure 2.0, integration, cloud computing, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, application delivery, cloud, context-aware, infrastructure 2.0, web, internet

twitter: @psilvas

Thursday, April 1, 2010

How Terms Have Changed over Time

Meanings and terms often change or get adjusted over time, especially with Information Technology. While never walking 5 miles to school in two-feet of snow, I did live during an era of TV’s without remotes and vinyl record players. I tend to include many ‘remember when…’ type stories in my blogs so just chalk (or chuck) this one in the nostalgia pile. A few are a stretch and most still hold their old definition but come along for the ride anyway. :-)

When I was a kid:

An Appliance was a fridge, oven, toaster, etc.
You Breached a contract not a network and used a Buffer for shiny car polish.
A Cloud was in the sky, Cache was money, and C is for Cookie – which is good enough for me.
A Disk was made by Frisbee.
An Engineer drove a train.
A Firewall was an actual physical barrier in a building or vehicle.
Googol meant the highest number before infinity.
Bears went into Hibernation
Inter and Intra described personal relationships.
Java was coffee.
Keys opened the house, started the car and got lost.
Your Local Host was your guide when traveling to foreign places.
When someone got too close you told them, ‘Get out of My Space.’
The Networks were ABC, NBC and CBS.
An OASIS was your own personal paradise, tropical for many.
You could stand on a Platform, I turned my head for my Profile and Port was a sweet wine.
QWERTY is still the same.
RAM was a male sheep & the NFL team from Los Angeles.
Spam and eggs, Hawaiian style.
There’s a game called Tag, and you are IT.
Utility had nothing to do with computing but could be a belt.
Viral meant a doctor visit.
Rode a WAV on the North Shore.
802.1X flipped is an extension in Idaho or maybe Vermont.
A Yahoo was a local yokel.
Finally, Zip up your pants!!

Come on everyone, play along! I’m sure you got your own entries to add.

Technorati Tags: Pete Silva, F5, security, application security, network security, business, education, technology

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The State of My Blog Address

Readers, distinguished bloggers, various feeds - A year ago this week, I crossed over into double-digit blog entries (a whopping 10 stories at the time but a relative blog newcomer) and was wondering what magical rant would make this Blog Go to Eleven. Fidgeting with the keyboard and watching the blinking curser as nothing came to mind, I decided to dedicate January 30th as ‘Blog About Your Blog Day.’ The day that all bloggers would share stories, tips and other musings about their own blog. Since I don’t see it as a #trendingtopic on Twitter, it might not have stuck. Annual rituals often need a few years to take, so here’s the State of My Blog address in honor of my own made up writing holiday.

Last week, my good buddy Michael Sheehan of GoGrid (@HighTechDad on Twitter) wrote about the detailed process he goes through when creating a blog post. I gotta give him credit for both having a process and actually documenting it since I typically just see a topic/story, fire up Live Writer and tap away. Often stories come to mind while I’m walking the dog the evening before I post. I think it has to do with clearing my mind of all the day’s clutter and suddenly it’s like, ‘There it is!!.’ I’ll get home, quickly jot some notes or create a title, sleep on it and write it the next day. This was one of them. I typically try to post at least once a week and it’s usually around mid-week. This blog talks about how Thursday is the best day to post and this one backs it up with some statistical charts. I’ve read a couple that indicate that Monday’s are not great since everyone is getting back into the work routine, at least for business blogs. And speaking of Personal vs. Business blogs – Michael’s entry describes his method for personal blogs. I really don’t have a ‘personal’ blog since most, if not all, my entries are work related and published on F5’s DevCentral. I do feed WordPress, Ulitzer, Blogger, Posterous and others for greater coverage but our DevCentral community is my main audience. Even with a business blog, I do tend to incorporate personal stories since what I do as a career does mix with who I am as a person. I still remember years ago when I worked at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater an Art Director saying, ‘I am not my art!’ Always thought that was funny but interesting.

Even though this is a F5 branded blog, I do try to keep it focused on technology, trends, ideas and other industry topics instead of a ShamWow ad for BIG-IP. Most of our readers are familiar with BIG-IP (and learning about the new BIG-IP Edge Gateway announced this week) and I just like to compliment what they already know, offer some new ideas or bring attention to market/technology trends and how F5 solves some of these. Nothing too technical, security focused, a bit of humor, some personal insight and our daily lives – that’s the State of My Blog 2010. How about yours?

And here are a few other stories I considered writing about this week:

Until next time…
ps

Technorati Tags: Pete Silva,F5,security,application security,network security,blogging,blogs

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Post-Blog Report: 26 Short Topics about Security

Aloha and welcome to the post-blog report. Over the last 5 months, I’ve been writing a blog series called, 26 Short Topics about Security and wanted to share some observations. First, I went about this since there are so many IT challenges when it comes to security and it’s virtually impossible to cover them all. Plus, I’m always looking for interesting stats and stories pertaining to security and thought I’d gather them up in one place. It’s sort of a 2009 ‘Security Greatest Hits’ (or Misses, if you’re a Devo fan).

If you are a blogger and sometimes have difficulty producing a consistent stream of valuable conversations, a blog series will do the trick. You’re not alone since Perseus reports that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, "representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned.” I had a daily urge to continue my quest and keep the flow going rather than jumping on ‘whatever the topic/crisis of the day’ was and writing about that. Interestingly, the timing of many of the topics coincided with a recent event, so it worked out well. Specific keywords in the titles, like Firewall, Virtualization, Twitter or any other term that’s hot (frequently searched) drew the most readers even if the title was a little ‘out there.’ And like any writer, I was a little surprised by the entries that got the most attention. You know the routine, you think something is fantastic but nobody cares and the ones you feel are a little weak get massive reads. Go figure.

The other thing I tried during this series is to both include a ton of links (Don MacVittie called it a link-fest) to referring stories along with links to the previous stories in the series for easy perusal. When one got read, so did multiple others which positively influenced Pages per Visit and Average Time on Site – key metrics for any website. Finally, I’m thinking about recording the blogs to offer an audio version (à la Audio Whitepapers) of the series.

Now to put a bow on this – All 26 Short Topics about Security:

Bonus blog: Bit.ly, Twitter, Security & You

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Post-Blog Report: 26 Short Topics about Security

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