As Edwin Jacobs from Law & Justice asked:

… but who are these readers? One would almost need to organise a kind of poll/survey to find out, or alternatively, hear it from friends/collegue who read your blog, or find out via email subcribers/bloglines-subscribers. In your stats you can’t find that obviously.

Blawgers want to know about their readers. You can learn a lot from your stats, but that doesn’t really tell you whoyour reader are.

I. Stats
There are two main types of statistical analysis packages, log analysis software and page trackers. These are meant to give information on page views, hits, unique visitors, etc.

Page Trackers- Most bloggers who look at their site’s statistics use page trackers. They consist of a small snippet of code inserted into a page’s source code. Usually invisible, the script is invoked when a visitor hits the page. The code then communicates with a third party server, which records information about the visitor. The process is as follows:
1. A visitor lands on a blog
2. A script within the source code sets a cookie on the visitor’s computer
3. The script then communicates with another server (for example, StatCounter), sending information about the user’s IP address, what page they are on, how they got there, and geographical information.

The blogger can then login at the third party site to view their site statistics. I’ve used StatCounter on my personal blog, and it offers the following reports:

• Popular Pages
• Entry Pages
• Exit Pages
• Referring Sites
• Keyword Analysis
• Visitor Paths
• Returning Visits
• Country, State, City
• Browser

Page trackers are great at giving you a snapshot of your site’s activity. But page trackers have one fundamental flaw: they rely on cookies. Some visitors with security concerns turn off cookies and use other blocking software. In addition, most browsers allow security conscious users to turn off third party scripting. Because of this, not all your visitors will be recorded in your stats. Thus, your site’s statistics are underreported.

Another flaw with page trackers is their reliance on a third party service. If the third party server is down, your page could, in the best case, load very slowly. In the worst case, your page could be unreachable all together. And if the service goes out of business, you lose all your data.

Log Analysis Software- These software programs look at your site’s access logs. The access log is a file that records any request for a file. Log Analysis programs offer the same reports as page trackers, but are much more accurate. Since each individual file hit is recorded through an http request, there is no need to set a cookie. And since the software either sits on the desktop or on the server itself, you own your own data, and there’s no need to worry about a third party server’s uptime.

For bloggers, there’s a fundamental problem with this kind of software. First, you need to have access to your log files. Bloggers using free services like Blogger do not have access to log files.

In addition, if you’re using a desktop log analysis program, you must download the access log each time you run the report. This can be repetitive and cumbersome.

II. Self Reporting Reader Information
The other, much more difficult way to learn about your readers is to ask them about themselves. But it’s very difficult to get readers to voluntarily spend the time to fill out a form telling you about themselves. It’s difficult, but not impossible.

A. The Newsletter- One way to get information from readers is offering a free newsletter. In doing this, they must subscribe through a form. Assuming you have the ability to have forms on your blog, you would have a subscribe form that asks short, targeted questions. For example:

• Name
• Email
• Occupation
• Company
• City
• State
• How did you find this blog?

Assuming your readers would subscribe, this would give you valuable information that would be impossible to get from stat programs.

But I don’t have a newsletter! I don’t have the time to write a newsletter every week/month.

No need. One very easy way to compose a newsletter is to simply combine your posts into an email every week/month and send it out. This gives readers a chance to catch up with your posts in case they’ve missed something.

B. The Describe Yourself Poll- Offer your readers a chance to introduce themselves on your blawg. You could do this in your comments. Ask readers to give a little information about themselves by leaving you a comment, and ask them if they have any questions or suggestions. You’d be surprised at how effective this is. If your blog does not have much commenting activity, offer readers a link if they leave a comment.

The other benefit to doing this is that you could get some valuable suggestions for future posts.

C. The Message Board- If you have the ability, offering a message board is another way to get readers talking. I’d only suggest having a message board if your site has good readership, as an empty message board gives a bad impression.

It’s very hard to get a message board started. Most visitors do not want to be the first to ask a question, and it’s hard to convince someone to go through the registration process if they do not see activity on the board. But if you have the time to administer a board, it’s a great way to build a community.

Conclusion: Stats give valuable information on your readers, but if you want to dig deeper, you’ll need to find a way to get them to tell you about themselves. Find a way to get the conversation started, and others will follow suit.

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