Yesterday, Google introduced their analytics service, which is basically a free version of Urchin, the web stats company Google acquired. It’s a third party service that requires an account with a login/password, and the user must place a snippet of JavaScript code on every page they wish to track.

I have added Google analytics to this site just to see how it works, but I’m having trouble with Google Analytics and Blogger. I have a blog on Blogger that I use solely for testing purposes. When Google announced their release of Analytics, I immediately thought: “Finally Google is going to address statistics for Blogger!” But so far, I’ve had no luck with it.

On the analytics instructions page, you are told to place their JavaScript code after the head tags in the pages you want to track. I’ve done that, but the analytics report pages think otherwise. This could just be a lag, but maybe Analytics just won’t work with Blogger? It’s a curious problem.

I will report back as soon as I get to the bottom of it. But I honestly thought that after logging in to blogger, there would be some mention of using Analytics, and vice versa. Right now, that’s not the case whatsoever.

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In local news, the Boston Business Journal is running an article on Blawggingentitled: “‘Blawgs’ - lawyer musings that raise firm awareness.”

Only a relatively small number of local lawyers have picked up on the practice, but devotees swear by blawging’s marketing power.

The article serves to introduce the business community to blawgs, and it goes over the basic benefits of blawgging.

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A blogger now known as TypePadRefugee has set up a site on Blogger asking other TypePad users to join in a Class Action lawsuit.

From the post on Tuesday:

As its long-suffering users know, TypePad has provided terrible service over the last several months. Its “fix” for the problems causing “degraded” service was put in place last week. Today, after a day of “degraded” service, the entire TypePad application is down.

TypePad is a paid service. It has repeatedly violated its contract with its subscribers, many of whom use TypePad as a part of their businesses, as encouraged by TypePad and SixApart.

The blogger then asks for TypePad users to either email or post a comment on the blog. So far, there are zero comments.

This is not news to TypePad users. On Business Blog Consulting, Triss Hussey has posted in frustration “I’m sick of TypePad.”

The whole problem is that businesses (and law firms…..I’ve seen a few) are using these third party services to host their content. And when it gets to a point where the business is relying on said hosted service, any downtime or problems with service become critical.

Triss’s post caught the attention of the head of corporate development and sales at SixApart (the company behind TypePad), and posted the following apology/explanation:

Hi Tris… I’ll jump in here (I run corp dev and sales at Six Apart). Needless to say, none of us are particularly happy with TypePad’s performance of late either, we are in “all hands on deck” mode as we work to solve these problems. Everyone in engineering is focused on solving these issues and we are not working on any new projects until we have stabilized the situation on TypePad.

It’s been an unfortunate case of whack-a-mole of late: as soon as we solve one problem, another pops up. As you probably know, we had a good run from last Tuesday through the weekend of very strong performance. Just as we were ready to declare some stability, some new problems caught us yesterday morning and today. Different problems from before, although we know that’s not necessarily comforting. Still, each of the fixes we’ve made (whether to hardware or software) has left TypePad stronger and more reliable and once we squash the remaining issues, I think TypePad will be back as never before.

We hope you stick with us as we will not rest until this is fixed and we bring TypePad back to the level of performance that everyone is used to and expects from us. We are still very much a start-up and our business depends on the strength of TypePad. We take the business blogging community’s needs very seriously and realize that you need a higher level of service and reliability. We will return to providing that level of service as quickly as we can.

From my perspective, the third-party hosted application just isn’t the way to go. I go with WordPress because it’s software that is installed on a host. You sign up for web hosting for a monthly fee (and it’s fairly cheap right now), and install WordPress on the host. That way, you control your own data. And when it’s depended upon, you need that form of control.

I know this may be confusing. Some may think: “What’s the difference between a hosting service and a blog host?” A lot. When you sign up for hosting, you are just renting server space. You upload your files from your own computer to the server, and you’re in business. If the web server goes down, you can either get in touch with support at the hosting company and have them get the server back up, or you can move to another host. You just leave one host and go to another. Take your files and data with you, and you can have your site back up right away.

But if you rely on a hosted blog service, you are pretty much at that service’s mercy. You have no choices. There’s nowhere to move.

It’s all about portability and ownership, the two main drawbacks of using a hosted service.

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Since most visitors to this blog are interested in how to set up, maintain, and promote their firm or practice through blawgs, I think that interviewing some top blawggers would be a good idea. I have emailed a few of the most popular blawggers, and have come up with Ten Quick Questions. I’d like this to be a weekly feature at some point soon.

So, if there’s a blawg out there that you look at and say “Wow. I want to be like them. They’re great!”, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

I’d also like to know what you’d like to see covered here. Please feel free to email me or just post a comment here.

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I really hate that title, but I wanted it to be short and sweet. 50% isn’t bad.

I was recently asked: “Do your clients get business from their blogs?” The answer was, well, it’s really hard to tell. It’s nearly impossible most times to be able to directly attribute a reason to a client. In most cases, they become aware of a firm from multiple sources.

This morning I was feeding my dog an ice cube (he really likes them), and I had a thought. I’m sure many other people have thought about doing this, and I bet some put it into practice:

Use a different contact email on your blog than you use anywhere else.

That way, you know that the person has come from your blog. It’s such a simple thing to do that it almost begs to be done. Why not? Even if no one uses it, it’s not like you’re losing money, or time, or strenuous effort in trying. Just set up another email address, and that’s it!

I’m not suggesting using this little trick exclusively. I think it should just be another tool to compliment statistics and intake questions. But again, why not use it?

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After reading the two articles on blogging I mentioned below, I started thinking about the direction blogging is headed. I absolutely believe that blogging is more than just a fad, and that it will continue to increase in popularity and importance with time.

To me, it definitely feels like an exciting time to be involved with blogs, and in particular, blawgs.

When I first started with blawgs, I had a lot of experience working with firms and their sites, but actually suggesting that lawyers take a slightly more personal approach with blogs was a hard sell in my mind. Knowing that attorneys are used to structured, professional writing, I had a hard time figuring out where to draw the line between having a legal publication and a more casual blog post.

So, I asked an expert. I sent an email to Seth Godin, asking his opinion. I wrote a long, detailed email explaining my dilemma. The email was far from succinct, but the main idea was: I want my clients (attorneys) to have their own blogs, but I don’t want them to appear amateurish. I want something that shows a little bit of the attorney’s personality, but I want them to keep an appearance of professionalism. So where’s the line?

The next day, he responded with only one line:
“we’re all just making this stuff up!”

It was a perfect answer. There is no line. It’s all what we make it. We’re doing this thing, blogging, but there are no real guidelines to help us. It’s a very, very strange, but exciting thing.

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