The blog will be a month old on December 13th. It was set up as a way of communicating with friends and acquaintances about the joys and tribulations of settling into a new country, but instead of being read by the targeted audience the visitor statistics show that :
- The vast, vast majority of visitors to the blog are complete strangers
- Most of the visitors are (by order) in the US, SE Asia, and for some reason Germany
- Visits rise sharply when pictures of the dogs are posted
- Comments on life in Italy are popular but not nearly as popular as pictures of the two 'boyz'
- Serious comments about the life in general or the state of the economy are least popular
Being new to blogging it's surprising how quickly a blog that had no goal other than anonymity distributes itself haphazardly around the web. Having thought about it overnight,what do readers from as far apart as Malaysia and Venezuela find interesting about the antics of two wet dogs and their Scottish family on a hilltop in rain sodden southern Europe. Are hits primarily driven by an interest in life in Italy or in dogs ? Do visitors stumble across the site by accident? Is there a search engine that links dogs and Italy? There is so much to learn about the psychology and mechanics of blogging.
As far as writing the blog, at the end of the first month I'm surprised at how easy it has been to maintain a stream of consciousness on line . Certainly, the camera in the mobile phone is a great tool for providing illustrations for the blog. The phone camera is useless for inside shots ( as I discovered when trying to take pictures of Rome churches earlier this week - they came out completely black ) but is invaluable as an aide-memoire tool when walking around and coming to write the post later.The goal for next month is to get more technically proficient and to develop a style that makes sense to visitors who don't fit into the original, and apparently non-functioning, demographic.
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