Hi, Jacob here. This is the next instalment of the soap box. Please send you entries to me using my email. On the left of my blog is a bit telling you about the soap box and a link to the post explaining what to do and that post has my email on it. Anyway I'm rambling. Please enter the soap box and read this latest one, it's Drax:
Drax's Soap Box Moment: GW STORES
Here's my twopenn'orth on Games Workshop Stores. Now, I've been into this hobby (with the half-decade hiatus that so many of us appear to have taken) since the early nineties, and since that time I've been in many GW stores throughout the UK and elsewhere. Rarely have I ever enjoyed the experience.
Don't get me wrong: I love looking at the pretty models, and I particularly enjoyed the 'bargain buckets' they used to have in the old days...I certainly don't want to gripe at the hobby itself here, as I seemingly keep participating in the consumption of what many seem to term 'plastic crack', but I usually find the experience singularly dismal.
GW Norwich was my old local store before I moved across the country, and was - I believe - rather typical. There was one chap in there, called Chris, who was lovely! He'd let me browse, avoid haranguing me, seem genuinely interested in my replies and he never tried to sell me anything! Consequently, I frequently bought things from him. Better still, he was decent enough to vaguely remember me from one visit to the next. Thank you, Chris.
On the other hand, the Norwich store was forever haunted by the gangly, unkempt, unfragrant and seemingly unwashed Annoying Guy. Annoying Guy was the one who pounced on everyone who came in. Annoying Guy was the one who always asked you the same formulaic questions in that weasly, ingratiating way usually reserved for dayglo-tabard-wearing students who accost you in the high street in order to pressure you into giving money to whichever charity is choosing to waste its money on dayglo tabards and clipboards.
But I digress.
He's the guy who'd always shout a little bit too enthusiastically in the demo games; the guy who'd yell 'WAAARGH!' at a novice player before slaughtering his ill-glued force; the guy who always, always wanted to sell you the latest £100 battle box. He annoyed me, he smelled bad, and he made me not want to go in there.
I know that as a 'hooked' 29-year-old 'veteran' I'm not in GW's target market any more, but this ought to be acknowledged, not ignored; and besides, I hated this approach as a kid, too. I know we all wonder at their marketing strategy from time-to-time, but this one really does seem to be an odd choice.
I could go on, but Drax Minora is calling, so here are my closing thoughts on a small selection of stores: GW Norwich = often okay, but sometimes very frustrating; GW Covent Garden = pants; GW Portsmouth = tiresome and surpisingly sparse; GW Cambridge = very unfriendly; GW Plymouth not unpleasant, but oddly apathetic.
Best GW Store for Drax? GW Fox Valley Mall, Chicago, IL, USA. Wonderfully friendly and interesting;
Worst GW Store for Drax? GW Berlin, Germany. Jeez, that place was unfriendly! Brilliant city; grumpy geeks.
Cheers, all,
- Drax.
Jacob: Great stuff Drax and thanks.
My local GW is actually really nice, the two guys in there might ask you whether you have enough glue to do your army but only when you are already buying stuff. they rember me and everyone else. TBH it is more like a mini gaming club that sells stuff than a store. I really enjoy going in there and loads of my high school friends are noramlly there. I am friends with people 2 years above my in school so it gives us a chance to talk proper warhammer.
Thanks for reading,
Jacob.
Showing posts with label The Soap Box. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Soap Box. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Sunday, 15 November 2009
The Soap Box: Adam from space wolves talking about blogging!
Hi, Jacob here. Today we have Adam Hunter. He has a really good post here! Here it comes:
Hello everybody! Adam Hunter from the Space Wolves blog here to talk about blogging, where your traffic comes from, what your readers want and how to use Google Analytics.
Quick Thought on the Blogosphere
Before we get our teeth into analysing your traffic and meeting the needs (and demands) of your target audience, I wanted to thank Jacob for his Soap Box. It's a fantastic platform for people to talk about general goings on in the blogosphere or the hobby itself without distracting from the focus of their own blogs and when I see Gamers World on the blogroll of every 40K blog, you know it's going to be read by the community. So hats off to Jacob for a brilliant idea. He's only a young lad, but I reckon he'll go far!
Get on with it you say? Alright I will...
What Do Your Readers Want?
Good question, because they don't actually tell you. You simply have to judge their responses by comments that they leave. Surely the more comments your post gets, the more popular it is? Think again!
There's a handy tool called Google Analytics that everyone with a Blogspot has access to. It shows you where your traffic comes from, whether it's search engines, other websites or from people who have bookmarked you. It's pretty straightforward to install (and I'm an html noob!).
I'm going to compare 2 blogs: my current Space Wolves blog and my Warhammer Tau blog. Between them you can see trends in the community, in search engines and how the community responds to different types of blog posts.
Warhammer Tau
Looking at the graph, you can see that Warhammer Tau gets from 400 up to 600 visits per day with a big peak when Space Hulk was announced. Each peak in the graph represents a new post, which brought in more visits from the blogosphere.
In the pie chart with the smaller graphs beside it, you can see how Direct Traffic has increased over time -representing people bookmarking the site.
Referring Sites shows traffic from blogs and other websites, usually from blogrolls.
Search Engine shows traffic from search engines. You can see the massive spike in visits that coincides with my Space Hulk post. This clearly shows that all my visits for Space Hulk came from search engines and not the community. I later found that this was because I had been featured in the Google News results for the search term 'space hulk'.
Over time you can see that Direct Traffic increases (as the blog becomes better known socially) while there is a rise and fall in Referring Sites. Search Engine traffic however, grows slowly, but steadily. So even if I stopped upating the blog, I'd still receive 40% of my visits.
If you look at the pie chart, you can see that 46% of visits are from referring sites. 40% are from search engines and 14% is direct traffic.
Space Wolves
The Space Wolves blog is a comparatively new site, so it doesn't have a huge community following, which is evident from the analytics.
As before, each spike in the general traffic graph represents a post. And across all the graphs you can see the effect the release of the new Space Wolves Codex had on the blogosphere, the search engines and the direct visits to the blog.
However, 49% of visits come from search engines, 38% from referring sites and only 13% from direct traffic.
Measuring Content
The best way to measure if your latest blog post was any good isn't by the comments, but by the peak in visits. If you make a number of blog posts over a month and find that shortly after your Direct Traffic rises from people following and bookmarking you, then you know you're doing something right.
Generally, if you're writing some well constructed tutorials, the search engines will send more traffic your way too.
So this means that your posts should not only have an engaging title and an eye catching picture to look good in the blogroll listings and pull in reader, but have some substance and value in them to increase your followers.
But What Do My readers Want!?
The easiest way to find that out is to look at your Google Analytics a few days after you've made your latest post.
I found that Tactic posts on Warhammer Tau would get a lot of visits and usually a lot of comments.
However, on Space Wolves, Tactics haven't received much traffic. It's the modelling and painting that people are interested in instead. But Tactic posts do get more comments -proof that comments are not the best way to measure the success of your blog.
Following an Army
People like to read battle reports and generally follow someone else's army.
I had a dozen or so Tau players avidly following my Warhammer Tau army. Similarly, Fritz from The Way of Saim Hann has been so successful because people are following his army. Whether the rate of traffic depends on the popularity of that army, the quality or the frequency of posts remains to be seen (probably all three!).
Round Up
Hopefully this look into Google Analytics has been helpful and given you lots of ideas on how to get more visitors to your blog, build you fan base and embrace the Warhammer 40K blogosphere.
Happy gaming and happy blogging!
-Adam
Jacob: What a great post, I learned a lot! Thanks for the comments Adam they are greatly appreciated! So, what do you thing. Tell us.
Thanks for reading,
Jacob.
Hello everybody! Adam Hunter from the Space Wolves blog here to talk about blogging, where your traffic comes from, what your readers want and how to use Google Analytics.
Quick Thought on the Blogosphere
Before we get our teeth into analysing your traffic and meeting the needs (and demands) of your target audience, I wanted to thank Jacob for his Soap Box. It's a fantastic platform for people to talk about general goings on in the blogosphere or the hobby itself without distracting from the focus of their own blogs and when I see Gamers World on the blogroll of every 40K blog, you know it's going to be read by the community. So hats off to Jacob for a brilliant idea. He's only a young lad, but I reckon he'll go far!
Get on with it you say? Alright I will...
What Do Your Readers Want?
Good question, because they don't actually tell you. You simply have to judge their responses by comments that they leave. Surely the more comments your post gets, the more popular it is? Think again!
There's a handy tool called Google Analytics that everyone with a Blogspot has access to. It shows you where your traffic comes from, whether it's search engines, other websites or from people who have bookmarked you. It's pretty straightforward to install (and I'm an html noob!).
I'm going to compare 2 blogs: my current Space Wolves blog and my Warhammer Tau blog. Between them you can see trends in the community, in search engines and how the community responds to different types of blog posts.
Warhammer Tau
Looking at the graph, you can see that Warhammer Tau gets from 400 up to 600 visits per day with a big peak when Space Hulk was announced. Each peak in the graph represents a new post, which brought in more visits from the blogosphere.
In the pie chart with the smaller graphs beside it, you can see how Direct Traffic has increased over time -representing people bookmarking the site.
Referring Sites shows traffic from blogs and other websites, usually from blogrolls.
Search Engine shows traffic from search engines. You can see the massive spike in visits that coincides with my Space Hulk post. This clearly shows that all my visits for Space Hulk came from search engines and not the community. I later found that this was because I had been featured in the Google News results for the search term 'space hulk'.
Over time you can see that Direct Traffic increases (as the blog becomes better known socially) while there is a rise and fall in Referring Sites. Search Engine traffic however, grows slowly, but steadily. So even if I stopped upating the blog, I'd still receive 40% of my visits.
If you look at the pie chart, you can see that 46% of visits are from referring sites. 40% are from search engines and 14% is direct traffic.
Space Wolves
The Space Wolves blog is a comparatively new site, so it doesn't have a huge community following, which is evident from the analytics.
As before, each spike in the general traffic graph represents a post. And across all the graphs you can see the effect the release of the new Space Wolves Codex had on the blogosphere, the search engines and the direct visits to the blog.
However, 49% of visits come from search engines, 38% from referring sites and only 13% from direct traffic.
Measuring Content
The best way to measure if your latest blog post was any good isn't by the comments, but by the peak in visits. If you make a number of blog posts over a month and find that shortly after your Direct Traffic rises from people following and bookmarking you, then you know you're doing something right.
Generally, if you're writing some well constructed tutorials, the search engines will send more traffic your way too.
So this means that your posts should not only have an engaging title and an eye catching picture to look good in the blogroll listings and pull in reader, but have some substance and value in them to increase your followers.
But What Do My readers Want!?
The easiest way to find that out is to look at your Google Analytics a few days after you've made your latest post.
I found that Tactic posts on Warhammer Tau would get a lot of visits and usually a lot of comments.
However, on Space Wolves, Tactics haven't received much traffic. It's the modelling and painting that people are interested in instead. But Tactic posts do get more comments -proof that comments are not the best way to measure the success of your blog.
Following an Army
People like to read battle reports and generally follow someone else's army.
I had a dozen or so Tau players avidly following my Warhammer Tau army. Similarly, Fritz from The Way of Saim Hann has been so successful because people are following his army. Whether the rate of traffic depends on the popularity of that army, the quality or the frequency of posts remains to be seen (probably all three!).
Round Up
Hopefully this look into Google Analytics has been helpful and given you lots of ideas on how to get more visitors to your blog, build you fan base and embrace the Warhammer 40K blogosphere.
Happy gaming and happy blogging!
-Adam
Jacob: What a great post, I learned a lot! Thanks for the comments Adam they are greatly appreciated! So, what do you thing. Tell us.
Thanks for reading,
Jacob.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
The Soap Box: My turn, with my new blog!
Hi, this is Jacob. I just thought I would keep the soap box going by posting my self.
I have recently started a new blog HERE it is about my progress with a space wolf army hopefully led by ragnar blackmane and his buddies. It is a place for me to put anything space wolves and gives people a chance to follow me with 1 army. Soon there will be a load of pictures up of what I have been doing. I need to get my new blog out there as I started it through comments on how to make a good quality blog post. So, please help me and go to it, it would really help get it going! Thanks.
Jacob.
I have recently started a new blog HERE it is about my progress with a space wolf army hopefully led by ragnar blackmane and his buddies. It is a place for me to put anything space wolves and gives people a chance to follow me with 1 army. Soon there will be a load of pictures up of what I have been doing. I need to get my new blog out there as I started it through comments on how to make a good quality blog post. So, please help me and go to it, it would really help get it going! Thanks.
Jacob.
Friday, 30 October 2009
The Soap Box: Mr.Esty (2nd post today so look at the one below which is a book review).
Jacob: Here is Mr.Esty with his post for my blog. Please visit his blog using the link near the end of the post.
Sorry I couldn't get the pic to go on my blog, see here for pics.
Mr Esty: Sorry for the rubbish picture (I'm still trying to find a good way to light these for macro photography). Still have a loooooong way to go on these painting-wise. My hobby budget is pretty tight at the moment, and I don't have many colours to choose from, so I may just put a call in to my friendly local game store to see if I can dip my brush into some of their pots to finish these off before Halloween.
I'm a cartoonist by day, so I often have more art supplies than I realize. The bad news is that the pastels I used to have (and never used) and was thinking of using for weathering powders seem to have been given away or lost. The good news is I apparently have a tone of oil paints & thinners. We'll see if I can put those to use on some tanks or something later on down the line.
Jacob: See his blog here
Thanks for reading!
Sorry I couldn't get the pic to go on my blog, see here for pics.
Mr Esty: Sorry for the rubbish picture (I'm still trying to find a good way to light these for macro photography). Still have a loooooong way to go on these painting-wise. My hobby budget is pretty tight at the moment, and I don't have many colours to choose from, so I may just put a call in to my friendly local game store to see if I can dip my brush into some of their pots to finish these off before Halloween.
I'm a cartoonist by day, so I often have more art supplies than I realize. The bad news is that the pastels I used to have (and never used) and was thinking of using for weathering powders seem to have been given away or lost. The good news is I apparently have a tone of oil paints & thinners. We'll see if I can put those to use on some tanks or something later on down the line.
Jacob: See his blog here
Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
The Soap Box: New section! (your chance to talk).
Hi, The soap box is now up and runningand it needs you. When I was starting out I found that I would love to post on someone else's blog to get publicity for mine. Places like From The Warp get loads of views and if I got 1 post on their with a link to my blog I might get another couple of followers. now to some that ain't much but when your starting out, it's a lot. So, I thought I would start this section. What I want you to do is send me a post (I am talking to bloggers who are starting out but i would be honoured to have people like Devlin and Ron and Admiral Drax do this) where was I, oh yes. I want you to send me a post that you want putting up on my blog. It would be great if I got enough to do 1 a week. If I get more though you might have to share the soap box (don't worry it's big) and I'll do two in 1 post. the topic can be anything you choose as long as it is related to what my blog is about. Of course, feel free to link to your blog but don't make it just an advert as i will be reading your post and making sure it is suitable. To send me the post, just e-mail it too:
jacobgamer@live.com that link is also on my left sidebar.
Please. Tell us what you think. if you have any questions either comment or e-mail me. Thanks for reading (an hopefully sending me a post),
Jacob.
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