Low Risk Blog Experiments

Source: Flickr In my workshop, I cover Web2.0 adoption strategies and often use this slide and talk abut low-risk experimentation.  But, what the heck does that mean? Brian Kelly, whose blog feed I've added to my "Circle of the Wise" feed folder,  has a section on his blog called 'Experiments.

Title

‘Claim your Blog’ in Technorati.

Reasons For Experiment

To explore ways in which a new blog can be found.

Discussion

This experiment was first announced on 6^th November 2006.  Follow-up reports were published on 11^th and 26^th November 2006 and 12 January 2007.

Conclusions

Technorati appears to be successful in helping a new blog to be found.  Its use is recommended to others.

I do experiments like this, but I don't necessarily put them in a structure that allows for easy evaluation.  For example, my most recent experiment was not to blog as frequently this week as I usually do.  What happened?  My subscriber stats went down and I got several emails from folks asking me if I was okay.

I'm am inspired to do something like this and incorporate the use of google analytics to get some qualitative data.  What experiments would you do to inform adoption or make improvements?

Comments

[Michele Martin]

I like Brian's structure, but I think that I'd do it as separate blog posts where I also asked for feedback from readers on those things that readers might have feedback on--for example, changing to a different theme. Then I could also include a poll or something if it was that kind of question.

As for the question of what experiments I'd run, that's something I'm going to think about. I like the idea of doing this in a more formal way.

[Beth Kanter]

Me too. Just fixed a typo there.