Friday, December 25, 2009

Breaking off the business

Over the last 45 days or so, I've used this blog to see if I could change my focus. Specifically, I wanted to know if I could write posts tailored to entrepreneurs, organizations and businesses. I've been encouraged by those entities, whether at speaking engagements or as a consultant, to talk more on business topics. And as this is my primary vehicle to communicate, I went deep down the rabbit hole.

I used a site called Wordle to track how I've been doing. I feed Wordle the my blog's feed and it did the rest. As my feed only contains posts from November 30th on, it's a true picture of what I've been writing about.

[caption id="attachment_1267" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Word cloud based on the content of this site for the last month."]Word cloud based on the content of this site for the last month.[/caption]

With the exception of the "fishing" post I made for fun, this rings quite true with what I was trying to do. It clearly shows emphasis on doing business in the web-world of today.

But does that match what people actually want out of the blog? I don't get a lot of traffic here from search engines. It never was the goal. But that means that any key words that are used to actually bring people to the site might be more "pure" than if I had embarked on a huge SEO campaign. With the magic of Google Analytics, I can easily export the keywords used to bring traffic to the site. And when I export that list over to Wordle, the picture changes:

[caption id="attachment_1268" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Word cloud for keywords used to find this site"]Word cloud for keywords used to find this site[/caption]

It would appear that my reputation precedes me. There are few "business" words here, and a fair amount of social media. But the key terms seem to be all about me. And that makes sense, since this blog was all about me and the fun things I was doing. Until about a month ago, that is.

So it's time for some changes. Yes, again. Those who were missing the old me will see more of that. Those that liked the new me and didn't even know that apparently I'm an asshole shouldn't fear too much. I'm keeping the near-daily posting going. Hopefully here and there. But most certainly there. Where, you ask? I've revived an old brand I created -- A Simpler Way -- and am repurposing it to fit my modern needs. The site isn't close to done, though I hope to be spending some quality time with it over the holiday breaks. If you want to keep up with my digital business content, I'll be posting it over there.

This site will also go through some changes, going back to it's original intent -- things I'm doing that are fun. So if you want to subscribe to both, feel free. Or if you want just one side of me, that's OK. Expect the occasional cross over. And I'm pulling lots of archives from here and posting them over there. If you think you're seeing double, you're not. It's just me moving things around.

Thanks for hanging out with me through the experiment. And hi to all the new people!

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4 comments:

  1. As a reader both before and after... I think both are really you... Like most people worth following you have many interests and are complex in your tastes... I will welcome back a little more of the personal side of Evo, but will be happy to see the business side of Evo keep going strong as well.

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  2. Thanks, Derek. But first I have to heal up after a weekend of skiing. I've just discovered that I'm not as young as I used to be. They say you are only as old as you feel. I'm feeling it.

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  3. Really cool use of analytics on brand messaging... I especially like the further insight you gained from running through Google's search analytics. Made me want to run a couple of sites through the way you did and get the results!

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  4. Thanks, Ken. Data visualization is one of those things I wish I had discovered 25 years ago. Now I just dabble and try not to spend countless hours finding amazing ways to look at information!

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