Does Traffic Matter?

Traffic, Hits, and Ratings
I have never been motivated to have a well thought out marketing plan for encouraging traffic to my blog. Mostly, because I am simply too busy to be as prolific a poster as some of my friends in the blogosphere.

Don't get me wrong, when I get comments on what I have written I am thrilled and when others trackback or link to my site, I smile for sure. One of the recommendations folks give for bringing people to your site is to post and post a lot. Until my dissertation is over I simply do not have the time.

However, I do feel like it is something that educational bloggers should be thinking about. Being a good PR advocate is part of teacher leadership and that PR should encompass the way we present our profession, schools, classrooms, to the sharing of our ideas through our blogs. It also gives our ideas wider play which in return makes us open to the rethinking of ideas based on the comments of others.

Lesson Planning

The idea really hit home for me this morning as I was revising a lesson I teach to emerging student teachers at The College of William and Mary. The lesson is about Evaluating and Locating Web Resources in preparation for their technology implementation projects they will be teaching this semester.  I take them through a lesson they could use with their own secondary students if they chose. I try and model what lessons I think are worth teaching as a way of accomplishing two tasks at once.

I start at this site which has done most of the work for me. After reviewing the different techniques for determining the credibility of the Web site they are previewing, I usually land on http://alexa.com/ to make a point.

This morning I decided to type in my daughter's site http://www.myaimistrue.com.  She is a  graphic designer and has been blogging since she was a kid. I was amazed. I clicked on overview and it listed some very enlightening information beyond what I typically highlight in my class. Amber's site had a
Traffic Rank of 297,124 of all the blogs tracked in the world!!!!

Comparisons
To give you some idea of how that number plays out Google ranks 3rd, Moodle.org ranks 8,617, Stephen Downs ranks 106,507, Will Richardson ranks 359, 515,  and Tapped In ranks 916,410.

So Amber, a 24 year old kid ranking just under Stephen Downs is pretty impressive. Which made me realize as educators we have a lot to learn about marketing our ideas on the Web from netgenrs who are using the various social networking sites as digital natives.

Here is an interesting story about how it all works.

So Amber posts a cute home improvement post about a magnetic wall she made for her posters.  Vistors find it controversial for some reason and it gets a lot of play.

Then she posts one about about her magnetic space rack-
It is even more controversial-- people say things like how ruining spices is not a trival thing... sheesh. I wish they cared about education as much as they do spices.

From there lifehacker pics it up.
Again it is very controversial and the commenters go crazy with their passionate comments about her ruining the spices. Others pick it up.

Then someone Diggs it.
79 passionate comments about her endangering spices!

Once it hit Digg it spread all over and in five days she got  51,564 hits.

Is She Intentional about Marketing?
So I asked her-- do you have a marketing strategy when you post?
"Not really, Mom, being famous on the Internet only lasts 5 minutes anyway."

When I prodded her further this is the advice she gave.

Whenever i do a cool post like that, I send a link to these people via email

apartment therapy
design public
decor8
design sponge

The last two have never posted about me, but the other two have. Craftzine picked up my wall post from apartment therapy, and lifehacker picked it up from them. Also, when I post about Project Runway, (she is a designer) I send it to the big Project Runway Blog. and when I start recapping the Top Design show, I'll send it to the big Top Design blog.

I wouldnt send it to Bravo (the tv network) bc you know it will never get through. Just like I wouldnt send something directly to Lifehacker or 47 folders or any of those places. What has worked for me is to get in with the biggest small site and then you get linked.

I also crosspost it to Curbly and to a Livejournal community that has to do
with DIY/home design the second lifehack I got last week was picked up from Curbly.
Also when I upload a photo to flickr I put the link to the actual post having to do with the pic in the description, that way they have to click over to get details.

Thats about it. I usually get a couple hundred clicks when apartment therapy features me, and around 100 when design public links me, but this is the first time a really big popular site has linked to me, it just so happens they did it twice in a row.

So somewhere in there is a lesson for us all about how to act as our own personal journalists and publishing agents.

Just in case any of you are worried-- she reworked the spice rack. They are safe now.

Also her Lost cupcakes she made for the party she had in honor of the Season premiere of LOST were featured on some TV nighly news show! 

Here is the comment:We plan to mention your "Lostcakes" Wednesday on our Morning News at WTVM Columbus, Georgia!  Simply hilarious!

 

Comments

[Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach]

Wanted to add a comment I posted on Peter Rock's site over at gnuosphere
that adds to my perspective of how confusing this worry over ratings can be.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach said...

I read your post and tend to agree. I think your focus was that getting hits or ranking is really meaningless in the scheme of things. It isnt about building huge networks, but rather meaningful ones.

But I think you can have high ranking and many hits in Technorati or Alexa and not really be serving up a profound message.
And in reverse you can be getting less hits and yet resonating deeply with a few individuals who then reconstruct your ideas and take your message to the f2f world and start to evoke change.

For example, I just posted about my daughter Amber. She ranks just under "A" lister Stephen Downs and above Will Richardson, but besides the lessons in marketing we can learn from her-- her message is only one of cupcakes and spice racks. (Dont get me wrong my kid is a genius and incredible artist but she doesnt always blog in ways deemed intellectual.

Hits in some instances give the illusion that people are listening, when in fact sometimes they simply did a Google search and clicked on you out of curiousity. They saw one post for a few seconds, not exactly a foundation for influence.