Day 14 of 20 Days to BlogTastic - Following and Hit Counters

Getting others to follow your blog is a great way to ensure they're always getting a reminder about you making a post and it's more likely to result in a comment.  We're at Day 14 of 20 Days to BlogTastic, if you'd like to know more about this training click here.

Adding a 'Follow by Email' Gadget
This gadget allows your readers to follow your blog by entering their email address.  They get an email every time you make a new post on the blog.

This video explains how to get a follow us or follow me gadget onto your blog.

Hit Counters
A great way to make your blog visible everyday in your classroom is to use a hit counter.  You may have already added a hit counter in an earlier challenge - great you'll already have a few statistics to start with.  

You might like to add the blogger 'blog statistics' gadget to your blog - this is a simple hit counter.  If you're feeling like you need something with a little more sparkle, here are a few more places you might like to consider getting hit counters from:
- FeedJit Shows a live traffic feed of visitors to your blog
- ClusterMaps Shows a map with dots representing visitors to your blog
- RevolverMaps Shows a rotating globe with locations of your blog visitors

A Google search will give you a wealth of other options for blog hit counters.  

To add a hit counter to your blog you'll want to add an html gadget and then copy and paste the code required for the hit counter into that gadget.  Once you've done that make sure you save the gadget and the layout arrangement and you'll be able to see the counter on your blog.

With a hit counter and flag or map installed part of the students morning routine can involve checking how many visitors you've had overnight.  Depending on the abilities of your students they could also add any new flags to a world map, work out how many more visitors you've had overnight, work out percentages of visitors from different areas of the world... there are plenty of possibilities for using this information.

Here's a ComicLife document that can be printed and added as a display in your classroom - Google Doc format coming soon.

You could keep the statistics digital and add them as a blog post each morning. 

A few things to do today... 

• Add a follow by email gadget to your class blog.
• Decide how you and your class are going to track your blog statistics and start today.  
• Take a photo of your statistics tracking in your class and create a blog post about it then post a link to that blog post in the comments below.  
• If you're keeping your statistics digital add a link to the blog post you've created for today's statistics in the comments section below.

Have you completed the challenge?

Remember to update your challenge spreadsheet!  

If you'd like to join the challenge please click here for more information

See you tomorrow!