How Can I Do Better? Five Quick Questions

Sep 19, 2011

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Beach Cafe, Muscat, Oman

I’ve been running this website for over two years now. I update it religiously every Monday and Thursday morning at 7am.

Google tells me that more people are reading it than they used to but maybe that’s just an artefact of being online for a while. Beyond that my only measure is how many people ‘Like’ my posts and that doesn’t seem very insightful.

So, tell me, how can I do better?

Since the internet breeds lethargy, I thought I’d prompt you with five very short questions that I’d love to hear your thoughts on:

Is this your first time here / you’ve been a couple of times / or are you a regular?
Does the speed with which my site loads ever put you off reading it?
Which posts do you enjoy? e.g. my adventures, 10 tips, advice, opinion, creative stuff
Which posts don’t you enjoy? (as above or anything else)
If you could change one thing about this site, what would it be?

Please leave your comments below. Any broader suggestions are, of course, also welcome.

Comments

5 responses to “How Can I Do Better? Five Quick Questions”

Alastair Humphreys

September 19, 2011

1. Regular
2. I read on RSS so not relevant
3. Inspirational stuff and opinion
4. I think you’re doing well at picking your niche and sticking within it, so I don’t think there’s any negative points.
5. Very, very occasionally do something totally off-piste and different. Something that catches your eye or sparks your spirit. But better to do no posts like this than too many (which is my prob!).

Reply
Julian

September 20, 2011

1. regular
2. rss
3. motivational posts, and the ones about tips
4. sometimes the pictures of your posts are not very eye catching or not relevant with the content
5. narrating a story in a way that will engage more the audience, more dramatic or showing the actual hardships and feeling you go through in your expeditions

Reply
Tim Moss

September 24, 2011

Al, thanks for the kind words. I’m pretty paranoid about writing things that aren’t directly relevant but I’ll try to summon the courage.

Julian, you are right about the photos! I’m not much of a photographer and do often scrape the barrel. I’ll try again to encourage some input from other people.

I’m a bit prickly about exaggerating hardships on expeditions but I’ll try a more dramatic narrative for a post and see how it feels.

Thanks guys.

Reply
Edward Morgan

September 24, 2011

1. Once a week/fortnight.
2. No.
3. All of them.
4. None. If I had time to read them all I would. I tend to skip over articles that are simply expedition accounts and prioritise things like tips, advice or the wacky articles.
5. Perhaps have a ‘Expedition Opportunities/looking for a team-mate’ style section? This would be very similar to Explorers Connect I know.

Reply
Sarita

September 24, 2011

1. A frequent visitor
2. Quick loading site, never had any issues with pages or navigation
3. Tips/advice, opinion and I quite like that you have (relevant) guest bloggers
4. I can’t really find anything to complain about – maybe I should look closer!
5. I don’t know if hardball stories are necessary, really. However people always want to learn through someone else’s experiences, so taking different approaches on the dramatic could be useful. i.e. how to get over mid-adventure doldrums; how to tackle rejection during sponsorship bids; how 5 adventurers kept their cool during a rough/crazy/unsure part of the project (or a capsize/flat tyre/big wave). That sort of thing could be just the right amount of ‘drama’.

Reply