Survey Summary : How to popularize your blog?

Summary
The findings are based on analysis of survey responses achieved over a period of a week from 26th April to 2nd May 2010. The objective of analysis was to help new bloggers in figuring out what are medium adopted by bloggers to popularize their blogs and what is the current status of usage of wizards in blogosphere.

Here are the top level findings:
•42% of bloggers usually prefer blogging once in a week vs 41% of them blogging once in 3 months when asked about their regularity of blogging
•Nearly 50% of bloggers prefer posting 1 to 4 photographs per blogpost and when asked would they prefer showcasing their photographs in a sidebar, 75% of them answered positively
•When asked about which photo-sharing devices they use, 75% preferred Picasa followed by flickr and Photobucket
•Nearly 66% popularize their blogs through Facebook and Twitter, while 49% preferring Commenting on others blogs as a tool to popularize their blog

Methodology:
Lifeblob surveyed 120 bloggers over a period of one week. Respondents were asked to fill a small online questionnaire consisting of 10 questions and while carrying the survey no incentives were offered.

A detailed analysis of Survey:
Demography of respondents (Age): Nearly 85% of respondent’s lies in range of 20-30 years which indicated that majority of them were young bloggers.

Regularity of blogging: It indicates the level of activity of bloggers in blogging domain. Results clearly indicates that majority of bloggers actively blogs at least once in a week.

Number of photographs posted per blogpost: It helps in understanding bloggers whether they prefer using Photographs along with text while writing its blog or pure text. It has been revealed through this survey that some bloggers do use photographs as a medium to popularize their blog.


Number of widgets on your blog page: From this one can directly infer how much technology savvy a blogger is. Nowadays there are plenty of widgets available in the market that can actually help the bloggers to make their blog page more engaging like Flickr, Picasa, Twitter etc.

Showcasing your photographs: When asked if they would prefer showcasing their photographs in a sidebar widget, 75%responded positively. This widget is quite common these days as it helps in adding personal touch to a blog and it also allow the readers to quickly browse through photos in an engaging manner. It is also used these days in order to pull traffic.

Most common Photo-sharing service: Picasa turns out to be the most common photo-sharing service used by the bloggers followed by flickr and Photobucket.

How do Bloggers popularize their blog: When asked this question directly, it came out that people prefer using facebook and twitter as a means to popularize their blog followed by commenting on others blogpost as a means to get backlinks to their blog. The Comment section is a simple yet effective tool to bring traffic to a blog. You just need to respond to your readers comments to show how actively involve you are with the blog and the opinion of your readers. This two-way conversation between you and your readers will also increase their loyalty.

Conclusion:
From findings of the survey we can conclude that bloggers prefers showcasing their photographs through different widgets and also use this as a tool to popularize their blog.

Note: Last two questions had multiple choice options.

Tirupati/ Tirumala Trip -2

Our next day journey started around 10am. The view around from the first check post at the bottom of the hill was quite beautiful and as the journey started we observed that there is some wildlife sanctuary on other side of the road. We really enjoyed the whole trip up to the hill as the roads were quite well maintained and we were thrilled to see one Deer group grazing nearby.

I also loved watching windmills for the first time in my life and I also tried to capture them through my camera.
We were able to reach at the top of the hill in half an hour. Reaching there was easy but deciding where to go was difficult.
I would love to give you few tips based on my experience:

Firstly, you should know that you cannot worship god in shorts. So either carry a trouser with you or get a lungi for yourself.
Then be patient as queues are quite long at any point of time and they travel in shifts with long zig-zag trail. But don’t worry as there is lot of places where you can purchase frooti/ coffee to drink.
There would be personal checking of you at more than three points in the process of worship which was quite annoying for me. Can’t they just do it once and for all?
Queues are very congested which can horrify young children and also there is chances of getting lost in between.
You are not allowed to carry mobiles and cameras inside. So, you can deposit that outside the temple.
No needs to purchase prashad as you are given 2 ladoos for every Rs 300 ticket and 1 ladoo for Rs. 50. Though for that also you need to stand in a long queue. But I must say it’s worth standing in a queue for these famous ladoos.

What really shocked me most was the act of some member of Temple, who first asked us to take shortcut to visit as Guggu was crying like anything. Then later he asked for money. My Bhaiya tried to give him 50 bucks but he demanded 100 bucks, which obviously was refused by my brother. Still he kept on bugging us in the whole Temple premises.

Worshipping the god inside the temple was an exhilarating experience as the whole journey in queues took us around 2 hours to finally reach there in front of god. We fel blessed when we got Prashad and felt like in heaven after eating that and got some of the ladoos back for our family and friends.
But outr journey was not yet complete as we had to search like anything to find exactly where people are getting Tonsuring done. We finally got one man who said he know such place and took us around 500 m away from the place to the hair cutter and he also asked for some money as he was the mediator. We were o tired by then that we happily gave him 50 bucks and got done tonsuring of my niece. She remained very calm during entire process and I as her Aunt did all the rituals of the Mundan. Finally, after the whole hectic day we came back to our hotels and packed our bags to leave for Bangalore.

Overall, the whole experience was quite memorable as this was my first visit to any temple in South India. Looking forward to visit some more till I am in South India.

Tirupati/Tirumala Visit-1

One sunday morning I lesiurely got up around 11 am and was just stretching myself when my Bhaiya told me we are going to Tirupati for Guggu's Mundan . I exclaimed what Tirupati!!! It's not that Tirupati is very faroff from Bangalore, it was the expression for the last moment plans. We quickly packed our bags and left around 1pm for Tirupati. After coming out of the shock we were quite excited as it was my Bhaiya's 6 month old baby's Mundan and that too we are going to Tirupati. The whole journey took us some 6 hrs as we reached our Guest House around 7pm.

After such a long and tiring journey we decided to take a bath and postpone the worship to early in the morning. As we all were coming for the first time we were quite unaware of the whole ritual to worship Tirupati. For that you need to have passes that are available as free / Rs50/ Rs 300. We enthusiastically decided to get up around 4 in the morning to stand in the line to get Rs 50 passes but our all attempts were failure in front of thosands of people standing in multiple queues. I thought how is it possible to have thousands on people in a queue that too on Monday. But what we wondered most was that all people are standing in queue to visit Tirumala, which is about 20 km above a hill then where do we go to visit Tirupati.

We finally decided to take the passes at Tirumala only. So we climbed some 15-16 Km journey and managed to reach at Tirumala and then started our whole journey of confusion. That I would be sharing in my next blog!!!

I hope you all liked my first attempt. Do comment on my Blog Post.

Flower day @ Hel(L)

Life is as colourful Hel(L) as this beautiful flower