Tag Archives: media

Reader Engagement Site Improvements

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I add a few “engagement” features to this site.

Blogging is more than just using blogging software to create and edit posts. After all, if someone shouts in an empty room, does her voice make a sound? An important part of blogging is to attract and retain readers. That’s where content, SEO, and site design come into play.

I’m a strong believer that once you get a visitor to your site, the site’s overall design can help keep them there, at least for longer than the average 30 seconds. (Read Jakob Nielsen’s books for the sad truth about site/page visit lengths.) You can do this by making sure the site is legible and by including navigation features that make it easy to find interesting content.

I read an excellent article on Connected Internet today: “Best WordPress Engagement Plugins: Make Users Read More Posts“. The author lists several plugins — some of which I already use or have tried in the past — that’ll help keep site visitors on your site, reading more content. I added two of them today.

Readers Posts

Readers Posts is a plugin that offers three features:

  • Within The Loop, indicate how many readers have read a post before you.
  • List the most recently viewed posts.
  • List the most viewed (i.e., popular) posts.

I installed the second of these three options in the sidebar of aneclecticmind.com. It began working immediately, drawing information from the WordPress database to list the ten most recently viewed posts. Refresh the page after a few minutes and the list changes. This site has, on average about 5 visitors online at any time and they don’t always come to the site’s Home page. That, of course, is the drawback of any plugin that lists recently read posts — it only lists the posts that have been read on their own page — not on the Home page or archive page. In a way, that’s a good thing. It means the person reading a post is reading it because he found it via a search engine or used a link on the site to read it. He’s reading it because he wants to read it (or thinks he does; as we all know, search engines don’t always display desired results). That’s more meaningful than Home page reads, which could include lots of articles that the visitor just isn’t interested in at all.

The benefit of this: site visitors are shown a list of articles that other visitors have found interesting. I love this feature because it shows me what people are coming to the site to read and it helps me write more content of interest to visitors.

If you try this plugin, don’t be alarmed when you click the link above and arrive at a German-language site. Scroll down on that page and you’ll find an English-language translation. Although it isn’t perfect grammar (what is?), it’s certainly good enough to understand the installation and configuration process.

Landing Sites

Landing Sites is a very cool plugin that does a bunch of things, when installed correctly:

  1. It checks to see if the visitor was referred to the page from one of several popular search engines. It the visitor has not, it stops working.
  2. It displays a message with the name of the search engine and the search word(s) or phrase used to find the page.
  3. It displays a list of links to posts on your site that also match the search criteria.

What I like about this plugin is that it only displays content if a visitor has arrived at the site by clicking a link in a popular search engine’s results list. I put it at the top of the sidebar, where visitors are most likely to see it when they arrive at the page.

Installing the plugin isn’t difficult, although you really do need to follow the instructions on the page you download it from. If you copy and paste the code right from that page, you’ll need to modify all the single and double quote characters so they’re straight quotes when pasted into your template file. (I didn’t notice this at first and got PHP errors. It was an easy enough fix.) The result is what you see if you happened to arrive at a page on my site via popular search engine results link. You can try searching for Hermosa Ranch Insanity (the test link I used) and clicking the link to content on my site to see what I mean.

The benefit of this, of course, is that if the article the visitor came to read isn’t enough for him, he’s given other possible articles to try. He may or may not follow the links, but at least they’re there for him. You could keep him on the site longer.

Conclusion

Read the Connected Internet article. It tells you more about these two plugins, as well as others I currently use or have tried in the past. You might find overlap among features; pick the plugin you like best. Give them a try and see how they affect your visitor stats.

Podcast Stuff

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Maria Speaks Episode 31: Podcast Stuff.

This episode marks my return to Maria Speaks after a two-month break. It covers my change in podcasting technique, a new video podcast I just created for Flying M Air, and the podcasts I subscribe to.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 31 of Maria Speaks: Podcast Stuff.

I just spent the past three hours redoing the Maria Speaks podcast. I used to publish it with Blogger and FeedBurner. Now, since my personal Web site is blog-based using WordPress, I cut Blogger out of the picture. It took me three hours to create or modify blog entries to embed my thirty existing podcast entries on this site. Well, twenty-nine. One of them covered an eBook I no longer distribute, so it didn’t link to it.

I developed this new method of podcasting — new to me, I should say — to reduce the amount of work required to publish a podcast and keep all podcast information together. I used to use a WordPress plugin called podPress, but I removed all references to it and disabled it today. Keep it simple — that’s what I decided. And the technique I worked out is relatively simple, utilizing an existing WordPress blog and FeedBurner. I wrote about it in an article to be published soon by Informit.com. When it comes out, I’ll link to it on the Aritcles page of my Web site and create a podcast based on its content.

For some reason, my “Maria Speaks” podcast has more subscribers than ever. That makes me wonder, since I haven’t released a podcast episode since September, and that episode was a bit more commercial than I like. This time last year, I was releasing one or two episodes per week. I ran out of steam last December and have been releasing them far less frequently. Still, my subscriber numbers have been climbing steadily. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it did convince me to release more content. The way I see it, when all these new subscribers start getting the new content, they’ll either like it and stick around or not like it and leave.

In the meantime, I started a new video podcast in October for my helicopter charter company, Flying M Air. I have literally thousands of photographs taken throughout the southwest, in places I fly to. I also have photos taken by my husband and by professional photographer and Bigfoot Hunter, Richard Noll.

Rick accompanied me on a test run of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. The deal we struck was that in return for all all-expense paid trip, he’d let me share copyright on all the video and still images he took. While he has the ability to sell these images as stock photos or use them in other projects, I have the ability to use them in marketing material to help sell the excursions and in articles I plan to write for publication about the trip. It was a win-win deal. Richard took lots of pictures from the air, which is something I simply can’t do while I’m flying. He also took video images with something a few clicks better than the little Canon digital video cameras I have. I’m still going through the over 1,000 still images and 3 to 4 hours of video he left on my MacBook Pro’s hard disk before departing back to the Seattle area.

I decided to turn my library of photos into video brochures for Flying M Air’s tours, charters, and excursions. The result is “Come Fly With Us!” (subscribe), which currently has three episodes. Another episode will be released Monday. (That’s one of the good things about my new podcast publishing technique; I can schedule a publication date and time. This makes it possible to record several podcast episodes at once and release them periodically over time.)

Part of the learning experience for creating this new podcast was finding legal music to play while the images were showing. I wasted a lot of time looking. Some sites promoting “royalty-free” music for podcasts required that you buy the songs to use them. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the songs were sold at iTunes prices or even a few bucks, but they were asking for $25 or $39 dollars per song. I use each song on just one video podcast episode and plan to release new titles once a week until I run out of material. That music was simply over my budget.

The much hyped GarageBand.com promised royalty-free, free downloads music. But the vast majority of artists didn’t allow free downloads of their songs. And since I was looking for relatively mellow instrumentals — you know, mood music — I had trouble finding what I wanted there in the first place.

I finally wound up on MagnaTune.com. I heard about it during an interview with the site’s founder, John Buckman, that Miraz had referred me to. MagnaTune predates iTunes by about two weeks. Although it has a limited number of artists on board, it offers very reasonable licensing of its music for podcast use. I’ve been getting tunes for my “Come Fly with Us!” podcasts from MagnaTunes since then and giving credit to the artists at the end of each video. I hope they sell some music.

Speaking of music, if you’ve been listening to Maria Speaks for a while now, you may have noticed that I changed the “theme song” for this podcast. The reason: I had a one-year licensing agreement with FreePlay Music for the old tune, Floater. Last year, when I bought that license, it cost $25/year, which I thought was reasonable. When I went to renew, the price had gone up to $100/year. I guess they decided to cash in when podcasting took off. That’s above my budget for a free podcast that doesn’t even earn any advertising revenue, so I decided to find a new tune. The new tune is is a segment from a nameless bit that I got off a public domain music CD I acquired back in 1996. I spent about an hour yesterday going through the one thousand plus songs on that CD set to pick this one. I’m not sure how much I really like it, but I do need something for my opening and closing credits.

The main topic of this podcast episode was supposed to be a quick discussion of some of the podcasts I listen to regularly. So let me dive into that for a few minutes.

I want to start off by telling you what I don’t listen to. I don’t like podcasts that mix discussion and “Garage Band” music. For example, I used to listen to a podcast about words hosted by two guys who seemed to guess more about word origins than actually research them. They’d pick few words or phrases and do a 40-minute podcast about them. The way they’d stretch out that podcast is by inserting a few Garage Band songs into it. Trouble was, their taste in music was nothing like mine, so I found myself having to fast forward through the music filler to get to the discussion meat. Fast forwarding is not always easy when you’re listening on an iPod and driving in traffic. When I realized that the content I was interested in wasn’t that good to begin with, I dropped the podcast. Ditto for the writing podcast some woman was doing. I wasn’t listening to hear music. I was listening to hear content. If the content was music related, the music would make sense. But it wasn’t and it didn’t.

In general, I don’t listen to music podcasts at all. Finding new music is low on my priority list. So if you you think you might find some tips for new and exciting music podcasts here, you will be disappointed.

What I do like listening to is podcasts that can enlighten me, teach me new things, or make me laugh with intelligent humor. I listen to podcasts primarily when I’m driving or flying, although I do have a i-Fusion speaker thing that makes it easy to listen when I’m working in the kitchen, making dinner or tidying up. So if I can be trapped in a place doing a relatively mindless thing and listen to something that’ll expand my horizons or make me laugh, I’m pretty happy.

That said, here’s a brief summary of some of the podcasts I listen to. You can find links to these podcasts on the transcript for this podcast. Go to www.aneclecticmind.com and click the Podcast link in the navigation bar to find it.

First on the list are a handful National Public Radio (or NPR) podcasts. There are 355 of these podcasts and I’ve tried at least 20 of them. I listen to five of them regularly.

  • NPR: Story of the Day is a daily selection of a story from NPR’s programming. These stories are wide-ranging in topics: business, war, travel, entertainment — you name it.
  • NPR: Business Story of the Day is a daily selection of a business story from NPR’s programming. Stories cover anything business related, from Silicon Valley news bits to global oil production information and lots of stuff in between. It keeps me informed about the business world.
  • NPR: Satire from the Unger Report is a weekly podcast of satire by Brian Unger. It’ll make you laugh — and think.
  • NPR: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! is a weekly radio quiz show about the news. It has a panel of three celebrities (no, not the kind in People magazine) and call-in contestants. The questions and answers lean toward the comical, so the show is extremely entertaining.
  • NPR: Sunday Puzzle is a weekly podcast of word games with an NPR host, Will Shortz (of the New York Times), and a telephone contestant.

I’ve tried other NPR podcasts, but eventually lost interest in them. And as I prepared this list, I noticed a bunch of new ones to try out. So I might report on some additional podcasts from NPR in the future.

I also listen to American Public Media (APM) Future Tense. It’s a great podcast with short episodes about technology topics.

I listen to three PBS podcasts:

  • American Experience is a podcast with short episodes about historical topics. Recent episodes included the Gold Rush and New York.
  • NOVA is a podcast of brief stories from the NOVA science television show.
  • NOW is a podcast of rather lengthy stories form the NOW news television show. Sometimes the stories interest me and I listen to them. Other times, the stories don’t interest me and I just delete them.

I also watch a NOVA video podcast, which I find excellent. It combines science information with video and still images in a 2 to 3 minute podcast. I like some episodes so much that I save them as movies on my iPod so I can show them to others.

Speaking of video podcasts, I also subscribe to a number of others:

  • GARY-PAUL TV is a video podcast of weird stuff published by Gary-Paul Prince of Peachpit Press. My favorite episode, which I’ve saved as a movie for future viewing, is “Drinking and Driving Texas Style.”
  • Comedy Central: Stand-Up is a video podcast of stand up comedy segments. I only like about half of these, but the ones I like arae really good, so I keep checking in.
  • National Geographic Video Shorts are short video segments from National Geographic television shows.

I also used to enjoy a video podcast called CockpitCast, which showed video out the front window of various commuter jets as they landed at airports in western U.S. cities, but there hasn’t been a new release in a long time, so I don’t know if the pilots are still doing it.

Another aviation podcast I enjoy is Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase. Betty is a flight attendant who loves to travel. She brings along her tape recorded and gets stories from other flight attendants, pilots, and people at the places she flies to. The stories are great but the audio quality is pretty bad sometimes. Still, I think it’s worth a listen. My favorite story? The one where a passenger who died of natural causes during a flight was not declared dead until after the flight was more than halfway to its destination.

For tech news and info, I’ve been trying two Wired magazine podcasts:

  • Wired Magazine is a podcast of short pieces from Wired magazine columns.
  • Wired News is a podcast of short news stories from Wired magazine.

I also subscribe to Slate magazine‘s Daily podcast, which includes interviews about Slate’s online pieces as well as audio versions of some of Slate’s online pieces. It gives me a chance to “read” Slate without having to visit the site. Of course, I only get a small portion of the thoughtful gems available online. I used to subscribe to Slate’s Explainer podcast, but have given it up because the topics weren’t all that interesting to me. You might like them, though, so check them and out see for yourself.

I subscribe to the WordPress podcast because of my interest in WordPress software. I admit that I’ve downloaded all episodes and have listened to just three of them. I think the podcast is good, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to them.

The same goes for the Podcasting Underground podcast. Good, informative stuff, but I have to be in the mood to listen to information about podcasting.

For politics, I listen to a pair of real left-wingers. Sorry, but I am not a conservative at all, neo or otherwise.

  • Real Time with Bill Maher is an hour-long podcast of Maher’s HBO television series. He does an interview and then discusses one or more current political topics with a panel of three that usually includes one celebrity entertainer and one political figure. His panels always include someone sitting on the right, so both sides are represented. While I don’t agree with everything I hear, I like to hear the various viewpoints on current political topics. New Rules is a much shorter podcast that includes just the New Rules he lists at the end of his show.
  • MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a collection of Olbermann segments from his MSNBC Countdown television show. Olbermann is a Bush basher — do doubt about it — and it amazes me that he says some of the things he says. It’s a real example of the First Amendment in action — if Olbermann said these kinds of things just once in a place like North Korea or Iran or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, he would have been shot dead for treason. But in our country, we’re allowed to voice all kinds of opinions. Olbermann’s aren’t the kind that’ll ever get on Fox News. My favorite bit? The count of times our president said “Stay the course” after Tony Snow told the press he’d only said it eight times. Classic reporting.

I also started listening to Penn Jillette’s weekday radio show on FreeFM, PennRadio. Penn Jillette is the big, fast-talking guy from the magic duo of Penn and Teller. An atheist (his Nevada license plate is the word “ATHEIST”) and libertarian, he definitely has some non-standard views of politics. But he also covers non-political topics. I don’t enjoy all of Penn’s podcast episodes — I probably delete about half of them without listening to more than a few minutes — but I like enough of them to keep my subscription. One of my favorite episodes was his interview of Phyllis Diller (who I didn’t even know was still alive). Ms. Diller had some fascinating stories to tell and I was especially touched by Penn’s patience when her memory failed her more than once during the interview.

And finally, one of the first podcasts I ever subscribed to, podictionary. This daily podcast, with 2 to 5 minute episodes, discusses the origin of a word or phrase. A weekly digest version is also available. Many, many thanks to Charles Hodgson for his dedication to the subject of word history.

Now you know what I’m listening to. What are you listening to? Share your comments and suggestions with me and other listeners by posting your comments on the transcript for this episode. Go to www.aneclecticmind.com, click the Podcasts link in the navigation bar, and scroll down until you find the “Episode 31: Podcast Stuff” entry. Or just use the Search box to search for the number 31. Then use the Comments link at the bottom of the entry to read other people’s comments and add your own.

And as always, thanks for listening. More later.

A Whinny in the Night…

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…means there’s something wrong.

Horses are generally very quiet animals. They spend their lives eating, pooping, and sleeping. And they do it without vocalizations.

So when I woke last night at about 1:30 AM to the sound of a horse whinnying, I didn’t just roll over and go back to sleep.

Although Wickenburg has traditionally been a horse-property town, the new subdivisions going in all over town don’t allow horses. How could they, with lot sizes shrinking from over an acre per house (we have 2-1/2 acres) to 1/2 acre or less? Even the subdivisions with relatively large lots bordering open land — Saddle Ridge comes to mind — have prohibited horses. Many horse people are moving out of town and existing horse property is being bought by newcomers who don’t have horses. So while there used to be nine horses in our immediate area, there are now only five. And two of them are ours.

Jake and Cherokee at Howard MesaJake and Cherokee are a pair of Quarter Horses. Jake is a former ranch horse that was likely abused — or at least handled roughly — during his working life. He’s very hand shy — don’t try to pet his face! — and doesn’t like to be bothered on his free time. To him, that means any time there isn’t a halter on his face or a saddle on his back. But get him saddled up and he’ll do whatever you want. Jake’s about 25 years old now, which is getting up there in years for a horse. He’s sorrel (reddish brown) and has a swayback. He’s the alpha male in our little herd, bossing around his buddy and terrorizing any other horse we might put in with them.

Cherokee is a paint Quarter Horse. He’s a very pretty boy and he knows it. Previous owners spoiled him and neglected to train him properly, so when we got him, he was difficult to handle and rather “bratty.” Over time, I showed him who was boss. He still tries to get away with things — stopping for no reason on a trail, dancing around while being saddled, biting Jake’s back leg on a trail ride — so whoever rides him has to be on constant vigilance. We don’t put visitors on Cherokee’s back. Cherokee taught me how to fall off a horse — and it took me several lessons over that first year to get it right. I taught him that rabbits were nothing to be afraid of. He’s about 17 now and very fat because he manages to eat more than half the food when we feed the two horses together.

Anyone who thinks that horses are just big dumb animals have obviously not spent any time around horses. Each horse has its own personality and, once you get to know a horse, you can predict what he’ll do in any situation. Jake is all business. He’s calm and will never kick or bite anyone — including another horse — while under saddle. You could drive a freight train right by him while there’s a rider on his back and he’d probably stand his ground until the train was gone. He’s very standoffish when he’s not working. Cherokee is the complete opposite. He’s friendly and will often come up to the fence when another rider goes by, just to silently say hello. He’ll always come to the fence when our friend Pete comes by with his grandkids or when John and Lorna stop by. He knows they bring treats and he wants to get the carrot or apple they’ve got for him. He loves to be petted and brushed and talked to. But get a saddle on him and take him out on the trail and you never know what might spook him or how he’ll behave.

The two horses are buddies, although it wasn’t Jake’s idea. Jake seems to hate every horse while Cherokee seems to love every horse. So when we first put them together, Jake would chase Cherokee away from him and his food and Cherokee would keep coming back for more. He’d be bitten and kicked but he’d take it like a dope. In time, he wore Jake down and now Jake doesn’t chase him off so often. It’s like he’s given up because he knows how useless it is.

Of the two of them, Jake is more vocal. He whinnies around feeding time, when he sees one of us around the hay shed preparing the food. It’s like he’s nagging us. “Hurry up! I’m hungry.” It’s an impatient whinny. Although Cherokee’s life revolves around food, he’s quiet about it.

The only other time they’ll whinny is when they’re separated. Horses are herd animals. They like to be together. When one of them is taken out for a ride or to the vet without the other, the remaining horse whinnies. Sometimes they both whinny. But if the one taken out is with other horses, he’s okay and usually stays quiet.

Sometimes when you get a bunch of strange horses together — like when we go on a trail ride with the Wickenburg Horsemen’s Association — they’ll whinny at each other. But our boys don’t usually participate in that ritual. They’re generally very quiet.

So when I heard a whinny in the middle of the night, I knew something was up. And since only two houses in the neighborhood have horses, there was a good chance that the problem was in our corral.

Now a lot of people who don’t live in a warmer climate think that horses live in barns. In colder climates, they often do. But not in Arizona. Most of the horses that live in Arizona live outdoors year-round. Our boys have two corrals: a large acre+ enclosure down in the wash (a dry riverbed) that runs through our property and a smaller pen with a turnout halfway up the driveway to our house. They spend the day together down in the wash, unless heavy rain is possible (and the wash could run). They eat their morning meal of alfalfa and grass and stretch out on the sand in the late morning for a nap. They spend the afternoon nibbling on whatever grass is left or biting the seed pods off the mesquite trees around them or just standing around the water trough dozing. At around 6 PM, we move them to the upper corral, where each of them has his own enclosure. We separate them in this area so Jake has enough time to eat. He eats more slowly than Cherokee and if they were always together, Cherokee would always get at least 3/4 of the food. We feed them alfalfa and grass, as well as a concoction we call “bucket” that includes red beet pulp, grain, bran, and a bunch of other stuff to add nutrition and keep their digestive systems clear. Jake also gets a “senior” pelleted feed and pelletized alfalfa to help fatten him up. If we didn’t do this, his ribs would show all the time.

Although they’re in separate enclosures, the two enclosures are adjacent to each other. In fact, you have to walk through one of them to get to the gate of the other. So they’re together. They just can’t share their food.

The other day, Jake wasn’t feeling too well. He was lethargic in the morning and we thought he was sick. Possibly with colic, a digestive problem that kills horses. We got him to the vet and he was checked out. The doctor gave him a shot and he seemed okay.

So when I heard the second whinny in the middle of the night, I thought of Jake.

Mike was awake as I pulled on my sweatpants. I asked him to come with me. I told him I was afraid of what I might find. We got a flashlight and started down the driveway. I immediately saw Jake, standing in his part of the corral, looking up at as as we came down. He was fine.

But Cherokee was nowhere in sight and the gate to his part of the corral was wide open.

Remember what I said about separation? Cherokee had wandered off and Jake was missing him. Thus, the whinny.

Now there were only two places he would have gone by himself. The closest (but less likely) was the lower corral. We walked down there and peeked in. The gate was open and there was no food down there, so there was no reason he’d be hanging out. He wasn’t. But it made sense to check there first.

The more likely destination was our neighbor’s horses. Remember what I said about horses liking to be together? We crossed the wash to their corral while Jake whinnied again behind us. My flashlight picked up Cherokee’s brown and white coat immediately. But he was inside one of their spare corrals. And when we got there, we found the gate securely latched behind him. He gave us a typically dopey look as we put the lead rope around him and started walking home. Our neighbor’s dog barked like crazy. Jake whinnied. One of our neighbor’s horses whinnied. It was a heck of a racket at 2 AM.

We walked Cherokee up the driveway and put him back in his corral. We opened the gate between the two horses. We closed the outer gate and secured it with a chain. That chain had been bought years ago when Jake learned to open gates. It appeared that Cherokee had learned the same trick.

In the morning, our neighbor stopped by to tell us our horse was in his corral. It was still dark and he didn’t realize we’d already retrieved him. He said that he’d been wandering around their place at about 10:30 PM. They’d caught him and put him in the corral for safekeeping. I’d figured it had been something like that.

But what I still can’t figure out is why he left in the first place. It’s so unlike Cherokee to take a walk by himself. The last time he’d opened the gate, he’d just hung around near Jake until we found him.

Could it be that our fat little boy is growing up?