SMUG is Global

One of the benefits of self-hosted WordPress is the ability to run Google Analytics. The statistics package on WordPress.com is nice, but in Google Analytics you can get much more in-depth information about your blog visitors.

Here’s a map from Google Analytics, which shows the location of visitors to SMUG during March (click to enlarge):

 

The Global Reach of SMUG
The Global Reach of SMUG

While we definitely have some gaps in countries that have not yet enrolled SMUGgles, it’s neat that we’ve had visitors from every continent except Antarctica.

I’ll have a future post with more about Google Analytics as an advantage of self-hosted WordPress, but when I saw this map I thought it would be fun to share.

Thanks to SMUGgles across the globe for your participation!

Book Review: What Would Google Do?

I’m almost done listening to the Audible version of Jeff Jarvis’ new book, What Would Google Do?  I’ve long been a reader of Jeff’s Buzzmachine blog, and so had eagerly anticipated his book. 

I wasn’t disappointed.

As a former media critic for People and the founding publisher of Entertainment Weekly, Jeff knows “old media” and has been thinking in public on his blog for several years about newspapers and other mainstream media can adapt to the realities of the Internet age. In WWGD?, he applies the new rules he’s observed to various other industries as well. I haven’t gotten to his recommendations for health care yet. That might deserve a separate post.

(As an aside, check out Jeff’s post on Buzzmachine today, in which he estimates that today’s print edition of the New York Times is $2.6 million short of the paper’s target for display ad revenue. That’s for a single day! And the Times reports today that the Boston Globe is losing $85 million a year.)
Continue reading “Book Review: What Would Google Do?“

“Best of Blogwell” Presentation

I’m doing an update of my presentation to BlogWell at noon CDT today. Here are the slides. You can still register for the FREE audio conference here at the GasPedal site.

Here are a few links to highlight:

The relevant Twitter hashtag is #gaspedal, so please follow the conversation and feel free to tweet your questions or comments.

View more presentations from Lee Aase.

FREE “Best of Blogwell” Conference Call Thursday

On Thursday, April 2 at noon CDT, I’ll be offering a recap of the presentation I did at BlogWell in Chicago, through a free conference call sponsored by the Blog Council. I hope several SMUGgles will be able to join the call and discussion of what we’ve learned about applying social media to our work at Mayo Clinic. Register here.