Twisted Nether Blogcast » Blog Tip

Change has come to Azeroth

Matticus — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:51:13 +0000

Welcome to one of many regular installments from self acclaimed blogging “guru” Matticus. Learning about blogging techniques is one thing. Actually going through with them and carrying them out is another and that’s where I hope to help!

WoW blogging used to be rare. There were a lot of WoW players but there weren’t a lot of WoW writers. Over the past year, I’ve watched writers come and grow. I’ve observed their blogging evolve. I had the privilege of collaborating and corresponding with some of them. I was saddened when several of them decided to retire and throw in the towel. I rejoiced when they came back and resumed their work like nothing has happened.

And yet, in the months leading up to this new expansion, bloggers like myself have grown weary. There was a lack of material to write on. I had to get extremely creative to combat bloggers block.

Those of you that had the opportunity to participate in the beta are already aware of the thrill and danger that Northrend brings. Your audience, whether it’s in the tens or the thousands, will be looking towards you to help them and to guide them through these times of wonder and uncertainty.

Your classes will be evolving.

Your professions will be expanding.

Dungeons are waiting for you to enter them.

New weapons are waiting for you to use them.

The collective power of WoW bloggers, whether they realize it or not, is awe inspiring. It doesn’t matter what kind of a blogger you are. Creative, analytical, roleplaying, casual, hardcore, raiding, PvP and non-PvP bloggers will have a wealth of content to write about for months and years to come.

We will continue to pour our souls for fellow gamers to see. We will continue to educate and illuminate players that want more and crave more in the same way as we’ve always had: Word by word; Blog post by blog post; Cramped hand by cramped hand.

This upcoming Thursday, I want to encourage all bloggers to write one post. Don’t tell me that you won’t have time because I know you will have time. No matter how fast your computer is, you cannot install Wrath of the Lich King that fast. Use the installation time as a limit and let your readers know. Remind them who you are. Remind them what you’re about. Remind them what they can expect from you as a blogger, a player, and as a person.

Are you ready for change?

Blog Tipping: Writing for Reading

Anna — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:59:06 +0000

At its core, blogging is about writing things that people will read. Sounds easy, right? If only it were so simple. Figuring out what people like reading can take awhile (just as figuring out what you like to write can take awhile). In that light, here are a few tips to improve the readability of your posts:

Don’t just show, or tell – do both. Pictures are good. Stories are good. Both together are better. Tell the reader WHY something is interesting, and what about it caught your eye.
Write titles that catch reader attention. Matticus notoriously uses the supermarket rags as post title inspiration (as well as Cosmo!) – why? Because those titles are there to catch your eye, and used in a blog post, they’ll appeal to the reader as well
Make your point quickly, and don’t waste words. The first two or three sentences of a post will either draw a reader in, or send them clicking to the next thing in their list. Make your point early and obvious, and then back it up with details. If you thought filler was obvious in high school term papers, it’s even more obvious in blogs!
Explain jargon and acronyms. You can assume that most people reading a Warcraft blog will know what WoW is, but a new player might not know what TPS is, or HPM. (Threat per second, Heals per mana). It only takes a second to explain an acronym, and you’ll widen your audience significantly by doing so – especially if you’re talking about a very specific topic.
Edit, edit, and edit some more. A great idea doesn’t automatically mean a great post. Go back and edit what you’ve written, making sure that your post is clear and concise, and that it says what you want to say and how you want to say it!
Use active voice. Rather than “I have been blogging” say “I blogged”. Make the subject of your sentence DO the action. If you’re giving advice, give advice – you don’t have to worry about softening it.
Beware the wall of text. Blog paragraphs are shorter than normal paragraphs because they are intended to be read on a computer monitor. Formatting is especially important on blogs (and probably should be a Matticus post all in itself) – for now, be aware of what your text looks like when its posted. Is it easy to read, or is it a mind-bending, eye-boggling wall of swimming text on a screen?

Obviously this is just the surface of things that help make your blog more readable, but they are some of the most important. Some of them are easy, some of them are hard. For me, coming up with good titles is often the hardest thing to do. Writing and editing is easier (I have an academic writing background), but catchy titles? Eep!

And, so you don’t think I’m some kind of blogging whiz kid, some of these tips have been garnered from months of reading Lorelle on Wordpress – her blogging tip section is extensive and AWESOME.

Promise Yourself to Blog and Getting Ideas

Matticus — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:30:14 +0000

Welcome to a first of many regular installments from self acclaimed blogging "guru" Matticus. Learning about blogging techniques is one thing. Actually going through with them and carrying them out is another and that’s where I hope to help!

Several months ago, I wrote a public appeal to WoW blogs to keep blogging. I said that no matter what, writing is all that matters. What I failed to realize then is that I did not give specific ways to keep going. After all, it’s one thing for me to say to people to keep writing. But it’s another thing entirely for me to teach people to keep writing.

In other words, I explained what to do but not exactly how to do it. I’ve been extremely fortunate enough to have a balanced enough schedule to enable me to write as often as I can.

I can assure you, it is not an easy feat. I want to share with you a few writing and blogging techniques that I’ve used to help motivate myself to write.

Before I forget to mention it, blogging takes time. Some people take 5 minutes to write a thought provoking post. Some nut cases (like that Matticus character) spend 5 hours cranking out novel length posts. The bottom line is that blogging takes time to do. I can guarantee you that you will not be able to find time during a normal day between WoW, family and work (or in my case, school). In my case, I sacrificed WoW time during the day. During my fall semester, my classes would begin at 1130 AM. On those days, I would wake up, grab some food, and make it to school just after 930. This ensured that I would have 2 relatively free hours of time to write out an outline or a draft of a post. Sometimes I would just sit back and just mindmap my way into topics and develop them later.

I sacrificed my morning so that I could maintain my education, my raiding schedule and my blogging ability.

You have to make time to blog. Hand off your kid to your SO. Write on the bus. Do it during lunch or your coffee break. Even if you spend 5 minutes just scribbling something down on a set of Post-It notes, you’re still writing. It’s not something that automatically happens. You have to work at it.

The Mindmap

If you’re ever stuck for ideas, I suggest giving this method a try. Start off with a few key words in what your blog focus is about. In my case, I lean towards raiding, guild business and being a Holy Priest. This is one of my earlier examples. From that point, try to think of a question or a difficulty that is apparent in WoW that you have some knowledge in dealing with. Even if you don’t have the smarts or ability, write about it anyway and illustrate the main issue. Maybe someone else will come along and address it or come up with a creative solution. Sometimes I end up abandoning the idea because another writer gets to it first. Other times, it’s because I end up having difficulty articulating what I want to get across and end up shelving it for the time being. You might recognize some of these both on my blog and on my Spiritual Guidance columns on WoW Insider.

So give it a try! Don’t reject any idea no matter how bad or lame it may seem. The idea is to use one idea to springboard yourself into another concept and to chain into another thought and so on and so forth.

What about the writing?

I continue to get questions all the time via email, private tweets and occasional comments. One of the most constant questions I get is how do I stay so motivated to write with all the affairs and responsibilities that I have to do?

I have a large variety of ways to stay focused and to keep writing. One of the methods I used early in my blogging career was the "Promise" method. The point hers is to make yourself publicly accountable to someone. It could be your girlfriend, your dad, your guildmate, or someone else important in your life.

I believe that promising someone else would have the desired effect. Don’t let them guilt trip you. However, a healthy dose of disappointment can go a long way into jump starting your writing until you get into a groove. Find someone who believes in you and your message. Have them call on you once in a while or message you online to check up on your status. Exchange E-Mails with a guildie or IM addresses.

Let me give you a case study.

A few weeks ago, Breana (yes this Breana) made a comment to me on how she hasn’t written on her blog in a few days.

Big mistake.

I told her right there and then that I wanted to see a blog post by her at some point tomorrow or else I would be disappointed. Alternatively, blackmail is also an option especially if they say something on Skype that’s not meant for public ears. Of course, this is just hypothetical. I would *never* blackmail any of my blogging colleagues. =)

Wording your commitments is important

How you word your promise is important. It can have a profound effect on your attitude.

The wrong way

I would like to write 3 blog posts per week.
I want to wake up at 10 AM daily to write.
I hope I will never cheat on my girlfriend.

To me, all of those sounds like things you are not fully committed on. Think of the last one on that list especially. How the heck do you think your girlfriend’s going to feel?

The right way

I will finish my blog post before dinner.
I choose to spend 30 minutes a day writing after my raid is finished.
4 blog posts will be finished and published per week.

Don’t use words like want, plan or hope. In fact, lets make like Emeril and kick it up a notch. Here’s a few of my personal and outrageous promises:

I will not stop blogging until I become a writer for the New York Times.
I will keep blogging until I am well known enough to appear on the Tonight Show.
I will keep writing until I am noticed by WoW Insider.

Keep your short term goals realistic but keep your long term goals high. I never expected to meet any of them.

But you know what? 1 out of 3 ain’t bad.

This is a motivational guest post written by Matticus. What the heck are you even doing reading this footer? GO DO SOMETHING!

Blogger Tip: Writing an Article Series

Anna — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:47:00 +0000

One of the key ways to build your blog is to give readers a reason to come back. One of the ways you can do that (and build up the body of work that will define your blog) is to write a series of connected articles.

These can be either a step by step process, like Bellwether has been doing with her raiding guild posts, a related progression, like Matticus’ healing strategies, or simply a collection of posts that make sense together, like Jagerbombz Karazhan healing guides.

Unfortunately, however, writing an article series is about more than just posting on a whim and linking some of your posts to other posts. Planning ahead can help you create a fantastic series that will draw your readers in and have them coming back for more.

There are a few things that will help make a successful article series:

Come up with an idea. Often the best article series happen when you have a post idea that is just too big to fit in one post.
Plan out the series of posts. This doesn’t have to be anything more than a rough outline on some scratch paper. The idea here is to get the continuity established. Do your posts make sense in this order? Are they too broad (and should be two posts) or too narrow (and should be combined)?
Figure out how many will be in the series. If the number isnt’ defined for you (there are 6 bosses in Serpentshrine Cavern), try to fit the posts into an “established” number – 3, 5, 7, and 10 are all pretty standard. Once you get above 15 or so, try to stick to 5 number increments.
Make a table of contents and use it in EVERY post. Then, as you fill in the posts, go back and edit the previous ones to include links to the entire series. That way, if someone finds post #3 in a 5 article series, they can easily find the other articles (or go back and read from the beginning).
Stick with your articles. Sometimes slogging through the 4th post in a series just gets you down. You might need to let the ideas incubate a little (or work on post #5 first) before what you really want to say comes through. If you plan to publish the articles every Tuesday for a month, plan ahead and write in chunks (not just on Monday nights).

The more connected articles are, the more readers will be waiting for the next installment, and the easier it will be for them to follow the entire series.

Writing an article series takes time and patience and requires a little more planning than a normal blog post, but it can be extremely rewarding – both in terms of traffic and commenter feedback. Give it a try!

Every Thursday, one of the Annas from Too Many Annas stops by with a mid-week blogger tip. If you have questions or suggestions for future tips, email Anna ( tips at twistednether dot net ) with a message titled “Blog Tipping”.

* image courtesy of Lusi

Blog Tipping: Creating New Content

Anna — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:37:04 +0000

Hey everyone! Given the glut of Rash of the Itch King posts recently, I thought I’d tackle this as a blog tip here on TNB.

When you’re working on a blog post, it’s easy to get very excited about something you saw in game and write a post about how you just discovered it! And given all the new things releasing about Lich King lately, there are a LOT of new things to discover.

Posting about hot topic items is fun! It’s “cutting edge” and helps get you and your readers excited about new things that are coming up in game. But MANY bloggers are also doing the same thing. Especially right now, with so many people tracking every punctuation change in the beta patch notes, original content is hard to find.

However, many of the warcraft blog readers are not single-blog readers. They read LOTS of our blogs, especially because we’re constantly linking to each other and building up our community.

So, you ask, does that mean I can’t talk about the expansion in my little, newer blog and must let all the “Big Dogs” take all the glory? Of course not! What you should do is present your OWN side of the story.

Blogging is half news and half commentary. The news might be similar to what people are seeing everywhere – if your commentary is interesting, they’ll still read what you have to say. Taking the time to create new content that is completely your own not only draws in your readers, but it helps to develop your voice as a blogger and invites conversation in your comments.

Individual content post are also ripe for link-love from blogger friends. If someone else really likes your ideas, they’ll respond to them, either in a comment, or in a response post of their own – which builds up your traffic and gives you an opportunity to respond back!

So remember – when blogging about Warcraft, we’re in a limited medium with a lot of audience overlap. What makes great blog posts isn’t lists of news items, it’s what we as bloggers have to say about it.

Blog Tipping: Resources for bloggers

Kestrel — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:37:02 +0000

Welcome to another edition of Blog Tipping. I’m your host, Kestrel, subbing for Anna this week.

Many of us blog because we read other blogs, thought “I can do that!” and started blogging. Eventually, because most of us are inveterate link-clickers, we visit other blogs—even non-WoW blogs.

If you’re like me, you look at a few of these and start to wonder, “How do they do it? How do they get 50 comments per article? How do they get thousands of subscribers to their RSS feed?” Clearly, some of these other bloggers are true professionals: mainstream authors or journalists who blog. Others are just very, very good amateurs.

What I want to do today is introduce you to some resources that can help to give you, and your blog, more polish, more “professionalism,” and (we hope!) more readers. Yes, Virginia, there are people “out there” who simply want to help you become a better blogger. So why not use those people and their wisdom?

Lorelle on WordPress: Lorelle Van Fossen is one of the most prolific, most respected, and most widely-read “professional bloggers.” While her focus with respect to platforms is obviously WordPress (she uses wordpress.com hosting, you’ll notice), the focus of her blog really has more to do with blogging in general. To fully appreciate the breadth of Lorelle’s work would take much more space than I have; suffice to say, if you only read one blogging resource, you won’t go wrong if Lorelle on WordPress is that one.

Another outstanding resource is ProBlogger, written by Australian Darren Rowse. The tagline for the site is “Blog Tips to Help You Make

Money,” but don’t be put off by that. While the site certainly has plenty of information on how to use your blog as an income stream, there are also myriad articles on how to make a better blog and how to become a better blogger. Darren also publishes “breaking news” of interest to bloggers, and writes on the integration of blogging into social networking.

Finally, for WordPress users, a resource I read every day is Weblog Tools Collection. This is an invaluable resource to stay up-to-date on the latest WordPress happenings, news, tips, plug-in releases, and new WordPress themes. I appreciate that the articles are short and sweet, yet give a lot of information in an easy-to-digest form.

The great thing about all three of these resources is they are simply portals to even more destinations, through blogrolls and links, all of which are intended to make you a better blogger, and yours a better blog.

Till next time, happy blogging, and enjoy this week’s blogcast!

Blog Tipping – best posts

Anna — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:48:27 +0000

Hello Thursday TNB Readers!

Another Statistics blogger tip for you this week (aren’t statistics fun!) – this time having to do with your best posts.

One of the things you can look at when you’re reading through your stats are your Entry Pages – these are the pages that people either typed into their browser, bookmarked, or clicked a link to directly. Obviously the #1 entry page will be your blog homepage, but other entry pages will give you an idea of what people are finding interesting about your blog.

Another thing to look at are your google searches, though, much like your entry pages, these can contain weird flukes and sometimes provide amusement.

What’s the point of looking through this kind of stuff? Well, one of the things that will keep people coming back to your blog is how accessible the information is. If you know that the majority of your readers keep coming back because of your blacksmithing tips, you might consider adding a widget or blogroll section of “All Star Posts” – things that have proven popular over time.

The other kind of “best posts” are the ones that you like best from your blog – don’t be afraid to include those as well! These are things that you either know you did a fantastic job writing, or like to go back and re-read, or are particularly proud of. They’re the “condensed” version of your blog.

Sometimes your favorite posts and your readers favorite posts will line up – and sometimes they won’t. That’s ok, both you and your readers make up important parts of your blog!

Anna’s Blog Tipping: Timing

Anna — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:44:22 +0000

It’s Thursday again – Blogger Tip Time!

Know Your Readers (part 2)

So a few weeks ago we talked about using your statistics to track referrals, learning who was reading your site and who was linking to it from other webpages. This time, I’d like to look at another feature of using a statistics tracker – knowing when your readers are on your site.

This information is likely to be *similar* across the blogosphere, since many of the people that read one WoW Blog will read several, but I’ve found through looking at the statistics for Too Many Annas that my visitors come in something of a weekly cycle.

Usually I get the most hits on Tuesdays (hooray server downtime), with a slow taper for the rest of the week. Sometimes I’ll have a small spike on Thursday as well. Weekends usually have half the hits that weekdays have.

What does that tell me? Well, most people are visiting Too Many Annas on weekdays (very likely from work, since most of my hits are before 5pm pacific time). A lot of visitors will show up on Tuesday during server maintenance.

My response to that is to try to tailor my weekly posts to my readers. If I know that LOTS of people will show up every Tuesday, I try to make sure they have a good post to read! If I know that there are very few people that make it to my blog on weekends, a crazy busy weekend day doesn’t stress me out so much if I have to miss a post, or delay one for a day or two.

Admittedly, this can require a fair amount of planning ahead – more than just writing a post and hitting publish. Sometimes if I write a really fantastic, awesome post on a Saturday at 2am, I’ll save it for Tuesday, knowing that more people will read it then, and that my “Downtime Readers” will get a really awesome thing to read on their boring Tuesday morning. It’s certainly not all consuming, but it’s a nice little tidbit of information to keep in mind when planning posts that you know will have good content.

Know your readers – and know when they’re visiting!

Blog Tipping: Help Your Readers

Breana — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:48:21 +0000

Hello, everyone! Kestrel here, attempting to fill in for Anna this week.

One of the things I look for when I visit a blog new to me, is how organized the site is to help a new reader feel at ease. I’m going to make the assumption that increasing your regular readership is a goal. So here are a few tips on how encourage new readers to return, or at least add your blog’s feed to their feed reader.

Umm…you do have an RSS feed, right? That’s one of the very first things every blogger should set up. Sure, we want people to visit our sites, but even more importantly, we want what we write, to be read. So be sure you have an RSS feed; at the Twisted Nether, we recommend FeedBurner. In fact, that was last week’s blogging tip!

Alrighty then…RSS Feed, check! Many blog themes, including almost all WordPress themes, have a teeny tiny RSS link in the page footer. Now if you happen to look at my site, and many, many others, you might be scrolling for a verrrry loooong time before you reach the bottom of the page. A lot of readers may not want to spend that time searching for your RSS link, so make it easy for them: Put it in a prominent location, at or very close to the top of your home page.

Generally, the RSS icon and clickable "Articles" or "Subscribe" will suffice. If you use WordPress with a widget-capable theme, you can incorporate your RSS link into a widget, as I’ve done (I’ve gone a bit above and beyond with this, but you should get the general idea. You can also incorporate the link as part of your overall theme, as Lady Jess recently did with her new theme.

There’s just no way anyone will miss that lovely pink button!

So now you’ve made it easy for readers to follow your blog. Readership is increasing daily. But communication—effective communication—is a two-way street. Have you made it easy for your readers to get in touch with you? I don’t mean through comments, either. What if someone has a question that doesn’t pertain to any of your articles?

There are a couple rather easy ways to enable this sort of feedback. The first is through a simple e-mail link. Of course, there’s the risk of spammination when you do that, so a solution many people are using is to create an image of their e-mail address and put that in a prominent location. Nexodyne provides this service for free, and the graphic looks like this:

Another option is to simply write out the address: kestrelsaerie AT Gmail DOT com. In either case, the contact information or link should be prominent and close to the top of the page.

But the option I prefer (and one that may be easier on WordPress than on Blogger) is to have a contact page. There are several WordPress addons to help develop such a page, and it’s really quite a simple process. There’s also no chance of compromising your email account (although the one I use for my blog is used only for the blog). Of course, you still need a link to the page somewhere on your blog. Many bloggers have it in the top level menu, just below their banner; others put it somewhere near the top of a sidebar. (Mine is just below the RSS links you’ve already seen.)

By now, your blog is set up so readers can subscribe and they can correspond with you. But how do they know the beauty of your blog isn’t merely skin deep? In other words, they were attracted to your blog by a particular post (probably linked by a fellow blogger). What can you do to show them you’re not a one-trick pony? My answer: A post calendar. Show readers how prolific you are by adding a small calendar to your site, with the dates highlighted to correspond with days on which you published. Yes, I know most bloggers have an Archives link; that simply means more scrolling. To me, that seems like more work than looking at the number of highlighted days on a couple months in a calendar (but I realize I’m a visually-oriented person; someone else might prefer looking at your archives).

I hope I’ve given you some fresh, effective ideas on how to build your blog readership, and how to make your blog a more effective platform for you to tell the world what you have to say. Of course if you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them, either through the comments here, or by e-mail. I think my address is here somewhere…

Blog Tipping: Feedburner

Anna — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:38:22 +0000

Hey everyone! Anna here, as usual.

I’ve gotten a bit of feedback (hee hee) regarding my Feedburner blog tip, and wanted to offer a bit of a walkthrough for setting up your burned RSS feed.

First – go to www.feedburner.com – you’ll see there’s a big blank box in the middle of the page under Start FeedBurning Now. Type your blog address in that box, and feedburner should be able to auto-discover the feed URL for you!

If when you type in your address and push next it comes up with a list of options, choose either the one labeled RSS 2.0, or the one that ends in /feed or RSS (not Atom, which has been causing issues lately).

The next window will have a place for you to name your feed and the feedburner address for it, and also your registration window where you pick your username and password to access your FeedBurner stats.

Congratulations! You have a feedburner feed! You’ll want to turn on clickthrough tracking like this:

And then you’ll have a big page of options for the various different blogging services – you’ll want to go to the appropriate page for your blog type (Blogspot, Wordpress, etc) and look up how to publicize your blog’s new feed using FeedBurner. For most this is under the Publicize tab, the option “Chicklet Chooser” – but the actual steps vary based on your blogging platform. Fortunately, FeedBurner has nice step-by-step walkthroughs for each type.

Individual Blog Types:

I highly suggest you use the standard RSS button (that looks like this: ) because it is widely recognized. If you’re clever with editing, you can create your own – but try to stick to the same template. Siha, over at www.bananashoulders.com, has an individualized (purple!) rss feed button, for example.

Hopefully that helps walk you through the setup process for creating a FeedBurner feed – that will, in the end, help you better serve your readers by allowing them to maintain ONE feed address even if you change URLs, and will give you tasty webstats on how many subscribers you have to your blog!

Happy Blogging!

Episode 6- Chicks Dig Kodos

Breana — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:06:07 +0000

This week we have all the ingredients for a great party, one Chick GM, a tip, one shared topic and kodos, lots of kodos.

General News

From MMO-Champion News:

PTR up and running
WWI opened today and we have some great info about WoTLK and a the teaser now has been relieved…Diablo 3 is in the works.
Blizzard Account Authenticator announced.

Blogger Tip of the Week:

Anna, from Toomanyannas, tells us how to set up your blogroll.

Hot Topics from the Nether!

No Kodos for you! Warcraft Mount and Bre are on a quest for a Kodo!

The Brewfest, like many of the holiday events has been retooled to have a new summonable boss, and a new kodo mount. But unlike last year that both factions could obtain a ram mount, this year Alliance players will only have access to the ram and horde to the kodo.

Which way is Mania’s? East or West?

Okay this has to be on of the coolest things I have seen in a while. Mania from Mania’s Acanica the mistress of Petopia put up a post about a certain map from the creator of El’s Extreme Anglin’,Tim Howgego made a relationship map of the wow community sites and it is just awesome.

Creepy Crawlers – no, not spiders…people.

Pike from Aspect of the Hare gives a great list of “creepy strangers and how to deal with their unwanted attention.

Entertainment or Hobby?

Part Time Druid debates the question of where WoW falls.

How to kill a server.

Boom from Twenty Totems decides to leave WoW with style.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topics!

Phae shares the BA shared topic.

Twisted Blog of the Week and Guest-Auzara!

This week, we have Auzara from the Chick GM . She comes with a party hats and notes! Auzara is very prepared! The GM of a progression guild in Sunwell, Auz offers excellent guild management advice. Chick GM is full of fantastic advice and great writing. From her site:

I’m writing because when I started leading guilds I did a lot of reading. A few talented people shared their insight via blogs, forums and one on one conversations. Those people gave their time and energy and that allowed me to be a better leader. I hope that my energy may provide the same benefit to a new leader in training, or maybe just provide insight to an established leader.

In addition, I’m currently in the process of writing a book on guild leadership. While the book is factual and not based too much in my personal experiences, I believe documenting my day to day joys and frustrations will help keep me in touch with my personal experiences as a GM.

Finally, I’m writing because I believe as a reasonably articulate, female leader of one of the top 1000 US guilds, my perspective and experiences are fairly unique in the gaming world, and may prove to be interesting to at least one other person.

Twisted Nether Commercial Contest!

Our contest will be officially over. Thank you to everyone who send in a submission, now we have the difficult task trying to pick a winner! Listen next week when we announce our winner and runner-ups!

Twisted Nether Wiki is Live and Well!

We wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been helping us build and adding information into The Twisted Nether Wiki. A special thank you to Loronar, isheepthings, Kestrel, Auzara, Phae and Anna for all your hard work. The site is looking amazing and is quickly becoming a one-stop shop. Go and have a look! If you find your blog or one of your favorites (or more than 1) is not there, then email wiki@twistednether.net with the subject TNB Wiki. And one of our wikibrarians (currently Kestrel and Auzara) will add/update/etc. as soon as they can get to it.

Don’t miss out next week, when Ratshag from Need More Rage, rips himself away his wimmin to join us for a drink and a chat.

(Opening song “Monster Techno Blues” is preformed by Joe Sibol, provided by podssafeaudio.com)

Anna’s Blog Tipping: Statistics (part 1)

Anna — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:56:49 +0000

Hey everyone! Time for a mid-week blogger tip!

Know your readers (part 1)

Sounds simple, right? But if you think about it, without using some kind of tracking, you have no idea who reads your page or how they get there. The first part of knowing your readers is using a blog statistics tracker like Wordpress Stats, Google Analytics, Sitemeter, Woopra, or one of several wordpress-plugins that do similar functions.

(Ok, so maybe I use four)

What good does that do, you say? Well, you can learn a lot from these kinds of statistics, so for now let’s just focus on one thing. Referrals.

Looking at a referrals page in your blog statistics tells who is linking to your blog, and what posts (specifically) they’re linking. It also usually gives a web address where you can go to see what someone has said about what you wrote. This then expands your own blog readership, because now you know of a new blog to read – and you know that that person is reading what you write and sending their readers your way.

Referral statistics let you know about other bloggers reading and linking to your blog – know your readers!

*image credit Miqueias