Wednesday, September 8, 2010...9:00 am
Web traffic: what goes up must come down
Readers may remember the run-in I had with the Clinique press office a little while ago, and the flood of visitors that were drawn here by a repost at US journalism college web site the Poynter Institute. It was very exciting – my readership spiked tenfold, and I had loads of comments.
So – I’m on the way to blogging stardom, right?
Not really. Here’s what happened to that:
I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s the “big post” effect described by US blogger John Scalzi – your traffic spikes and then settles right back down. With luck you retain a small proportion of the new visitors – and if you generate enough Big Posts, your site will grow steadily.
Doesn’t seem to have worked here, though. Could be because I have broken his rule number 1: “Updating daily matters in terms of readership”. Hey – it’s been a busy summer…
Related posts:
- SEO Week: Where does Broadband Genie’s web traffic come from?
- The power of social bookmarking
- How to build your online community
- SEO Week: How to generate traffic through user-generated content
- My first-year student blog masterclass
3 Comments
September 9th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Try more cute dog pics
September 10th, 2010 at 10:22 am
You’re on…
September 16th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Seems similar to the temporary ‘bounce’ that newspapers report when they offer freebies – I guess the most famous case was the Prince album with the Mail on Sunday. But newspapers retention of these types of readers is always low.
But it’s interesting to see what stories do it for blogs – it’s never quite what you would expect.
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