If you’re a Triond member, you’ve noticed lots of new features appearing on your Triond dashboard. In my opinion, some new dashboard features are more useful than others, and if you take the time to really study your dashboard, you’ll find some great new items there that will help you manage your writing business. Here’s a review of the best new Triond dashboard features and how to make them work for you.

Top Search Phrases

Of all the new Triond dashboard features, Top Search Phrases has proven to be the most useful for my Triond writing. This feature shows what top search phrases bring readers to your Triond articles. I have an article on Triond about summer depression, and was surprised to learn that “summer depression” was indeed a top search phrase for me (and this article has been doing quite well again this summer).

I write sometimes about free coloring pages and printables, and recently I saw the search phrase “difficult coloring pages for children” under my Top Search Phrases. So I researched and wrote an article with that title and used those keywords for a new Triond article, and it’s getting more page views than I anticipated. This Triond dashboard feature tells me what phrases people are searching for, and it gives me ideas for new articles that match my top search phrases. I feel that by utilizing this dashboard feature, I’ll definitely have a good chance of writing articles that people want to read about.

Top Referring Sites

I’m also really excited about the new Triond dashboard feature Top Referring Sites. If you look closely at this feature, you’ll see exactly where your article traffic is coming from. I don’t concern myself with the exact numbers (or frustrate myself trying to decipher those little numbers on my bar graph!) but I can now get a general idea which sites drive traffic to my Triond work.

For me, the largest bar on the graph is always Triond itself, next it’s usually StumbleUpon. I notice my articles receiving hits from a variety of search engines like aol, and from Xomba (where I do a lot of bookmarking of my Triond articles) but I was disappointed to see that I’m not getting more traffic from the Google search engine. Once in a while, an unfamiliar site will pop up on my Top Referring Sites, and I’ll discover that someone linked to one of my articles on their blog or website, bringing traffic to my Triond work.

Recently, I saw Twitter appear as a Top Referring Site for me. I set up my Triond profile to automatically Tweet all my new Triond articles and photos. It’s so easy and convenient to do this, it only takes a moment to set it up on your profile, but it has big benefits. All those automatically generated Tweets of my Triond work are now driving traffic to my stories and photographs. I’m also curious if my blog (thecommacafe.blogspot.com) will start to turn up as a Top Referring Site as I begin to provide more links to my published Triond articles.

Other New Triond Dashboard Features

I have to confess, when Triond first introduced all these new Triond dashboard features, I felt frustrated at how long it now takes my dashboard to load each time I log into my account. I have dial-up internet access, and it feels like an eternity for all these features to appear on the dashboard. The two dashboard features I highlighted above feel like the most useful ones to me, and I hope that Triond won’t keep loading up the dashboard page with too many slow loading bells and whistles, as waiting for it all to load really cuts into my writing time.

In my opinion, the Visit Trends section that charts the number of cumulative daily visitors to your content isn’t that significant for me. This line graph usually shoots up when I publish a new article, and drops or levels off when I don’t publish anything for a while. I don’t pay a lot of attention to this dashboard feature, and I prefer to look at my content page and study my page views there.

There are some notable Triond dashboard features in a green box called “Quick Actions” under the big “Submit Content” button. Located in that handy little green box are links for actions like creating a Triond widget for your site or blog, popular topic suggestions, following Triond on Twitter or customizing your Triond profile page. One of my favorite features is the ability to customize your profile in a very artistic way. I adore this new Triond feature, and I really enjoy visiting Triond member profiles, as the new customized profiles are a wonderful reflection of each Triond member’s creativity and personality.

For more Triond tips check out these other articles:

My Most Successful Triond Articles

Why Freelance Writers Should Write for Triond

Secrets to Success as a Triond Writer

More Success Tips for Triond Writers

Don’t be intimidated or confused by the new Triond dashboard features, as there’s a wealth of data there that can help you be a more productive writer. In my experience, Top Search Phrases and Top Referring Sites are the most useful new features, but definitely take some time to really study your Triond dashboard to discover ways these new features and information can work for you.