There has been a flurry of activity behind the scenes here at Blotanical for some time. However, as the update is an all-encompassing model-change it's not possible yet to start showing you under the hood. But here are some features that are almost ready;

Picks Update

Picks will be virtually unrecognisable from their current format but will offer so many new features that it will out-compete Google's Reader, Bloglines and any other RSS aggregator offering. It's lightening quick, allows to you view all the recent posts from any blog, and can store posts as bookmarks for future retrieval.

But, that's not all. Take a look at these new features:

- Tabbed Lists: now you can create your own lists based on keywords that bloggers, and Blotanists, have used to define certain blogs. If you don't want them in the list then take them out - it's your call - and you can create as many of these lists as you wish.

- Error-Free lists: these new lists will only display posts that are working. It means that your votes will always be scored correctly with no random posts turning up as one of your posts.

- Improved Data:you will now be able to view a few more helpful metrics that should assist you in your journey to improving your blog and increasing your audience.

These aren't the only changes but they should give a taste of how Picks will be improving.

Plot Update

As expected, your Plot will also change with a heap of new features and ways to interact with other Blotanists. Work is now starting on this aspect of Blotanical and should be complete within 4-6 weeks.

As these two features begin to take shape we will reveal them to the Gurus for beta testing and the remainder of the site update should be completed within another few weeks after that process is complete.

Thanks for staying patient and I look forward to showing you more.

Posted by Stuart at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We are having some serious problems with the Picks code at the moment. It has stood us *fairly* well for the past 12-18 months but is showing signs of its deprecation every day.

Therefore, as part of this ongoing update (the process is continuing behind the scenes) this area will continue to have errors up until we launch the new upgraded Picks.

I can tell you now that the new Picks we have been working on is far superior to what we have lived with since the start of Blotanical. It produces fewer errors (and the ones that do get produced can be rectified very quickly), is faster, easier to navigate and allows you to keep abreast of updated posts in a way that you haven't been able to on Blotanical before.

Plus, your options for which lists of posts that you view will be greatly expanded and even allow the creation of lists by tags - something many of you have requested over the years.

Alas, I can't give you a ETA on this but I can promise you that it is a priority and will be rolled out as soon as it is ready. All I ask is that you bear with me in the meantime and understand that the errors that are being produced WON'T be remedied until the upgrade is released.

Posted by Stuart at 5:32 AM | Permalink

In order to learn how to be successful on Blotanical we must first define what SUCCESS is. I'm going to make the assumption that for most bloggers who submit their blog and feed the definition of success would be more readers. Sure, we'd all like to be popular on Blotanical as well but if we boiled it down to the most important goal I think we could all safely agree that more readers were the epitome of our time here.

Each blogger enjoys a "honeymoon" period while their blog remains in the Recent Posts from the 200 Newly Listed Blogs. Posts are picked, a few messages are shared and you may even get faved by other Blotanists. But, once it's replaced with some newer blogs it's relegated to the backlogs with thousands of other gardening blogs.

So, once the honeymoon is over how do you keep increasing your readership even when you're competing against some very established blogs?

Finding Successful Blogs

With a little time on my hands I spent a few hours crunching the numbers on the 111 blogs (with working feeds) that were accepted in March 2010. The idea was to track how these blogs fared once they had slipped out of the 200 Newest Blogs and whether they had gone on to increase their readership or not. I continued tracking them until August 2010 - which is Blotanical's quietest month due to northern hemisphereans basking in their sun-filled gardens or heading of on vacation.

From the eligible 111 blogs that I started with only 7 had increased their readership share*. The remainder had either maintained their level of readership share, lost readers or had stopped blogging completely. I then took these 7 Blotanists and researched some variables that I thought might have contributed to their success; messages, picks, faving other blogs and faving other members.

The Results

I won't share individual names but I shall give the data to help you form your own opinions of how these different aspects of Blotanical may increase your success rate.

Blog #1
Readership Share Increase: 61.59%
Blog Ranking: ~400

	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
Messages	41	38	6	20	5	10	120
FaveBlogs	15	5	3	2	1	3	29
FaveMembers	5	2	2	1	2	2	14
Picks	38	46	39	39	29	74	265

Blog #2
Readership Share Increase: 54.23%
Blog Ranking: ~250

	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
Messages	33	108	26	70	96	60	393
FaveBlogs	7	17	15	6	5	6	56
FaveMembers	2	9	3	2	3		19
Picks	6	162	378	334	441	391	1712

Blog #3
Readership Share Increase: 47.39%
Blog Ranking: ~100

	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
Messages	187	87	3		1		278
FaveBlogs	10	4					14
FaveMembers	14	6					20
Picks	602	524	21	17	141		1305

Blog #4
Readership Share Increase: 8.06%
Blog Ranking: ~550

	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
Messages	22	3		1	1		27
FaveBlogs	5	5	5	5	5	5	30
FaveMembers	1	1	1	1	1	1	6
Picks							0

Blog #5
Readership Share Increase: 14.06%
Blog Ranking: ~650

	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
Messages	4	13	9	7	4	2	39
FaveBlogs	8	3		1	6		18
FaveMembers	1						1
Picks	35	31	8	1	7	1	83

Blog #6
Readership Share Increase: 14.06%
Blog Ranking: ~1800

	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Total
Messages							0
FaveBlogs							0
FaveMembers							0
Picks							0

Conclusion

It's interesting to note that those with the best returns managed to maintain relatively consistent interactions over the six-month period. They picked posts, left messages, faved blogs and members in varying degrees.

While some bloggers seem to think that they can enjoy success by just submitting their blog to Blotanical yet it is apparent that those who contribute to the community and interact are the main beneficiaries. Engaging with Blotanists, whether they are bloggers or not, seems to increase the level of response to our posts.

If your blog has been losing readership, or the honeymoon period is over, then use some of your online time to communicate with Blotanists on a regular basis. Given a little time your readership should increase and the success of your blog on Blotanical will improve dramatically.


*(calculated by dividing the number of picks their blog received in April by the total number of picks in April and then comparing this to the number of picks their blog received in August by the total number of picks in August).

Posted by Stuart at 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)