Editors Note: This post is more technical than most. It was written to share with other content creators the trends and traffic data associated with ‘popular’ web content so they can compare or anticipate past or future successes of their own. It is simply one data point. I am releasing this data because I have not seen anyone share information in this level of detail before. I am releasing it because I wondered what sort of impact a ‘popular post’ would have on various social profiles and had nothing to compare it to. I am well aware that the numbers discussed here in this post are, in the grand scale, mostly inconsequential. Having said that, after one year of blogging- this is the level I have reached and felt compelled to share.
The Madness Begins
I opened the computer to see how many views the (now syndicated) post I wrote on Facebook Groups was up to and I was hit rather suddenly with an idea that just wouldn’t go away. A little context If you missed out on what happened near the end of last week- One of the articles I wrote here on Tt(h)B was picked up and syndicated by a major site called Social Media Today. The post was rapidly approaching the 10,000 reads benchmark, a milestone previously out of reach, and I was determined to accomplish two tasks:
- Capture a virtual ‘snapshot’ of every single piece of data I could the instant the article hit the 10,000 reads mark (for future goals, benchmarks, and to share the information here).
- Use a portion of that data to reach out and personally thank (one by one) as many people as I possibly could who made this article so popular.
The Snapshot
Editors Note: One preface to the snapshot that I feel had a negative impact on the results listed is the fact that my ‘Social Media Today’ Profile was not created by me. As a consequence, the post received just over 7,000 views before I even knew it was going off the charts. The moment I assessed exactly what had happened I got into my profile and added essential missing elements- mainly a link to my twitter profile and my website URL.
At the time the post hit the 10,000 read mark the article had generated the following digital impact:
10,000 Page Views
3,760 Direct Linked Search Results In Google (the search was made by entering the exact article title in quotes into google.)
352 Tweets and Retweets
174 Emails Sent
63 “Shares” Via Facebook
55 New ‘Followers’ on Twitter
12 New Facebook Fans for This Site
8 New Twitter Listings
Operation Thank You Begins
I woke up on Saturday. As the article rolled past 10,000 reads I began my quest to thank everyone who promoted it. One by one. The easiest place (and realistically the only place) to find those who passed it on was twitter. Social Media Today makes it extremely easy to see who tweeted about each story. I started at the most recent tweet and worked my way down through pages and pages of tweets.
In doing so I discovered that twitter has a ‘rate limit’ of about 150 per hour. In other words, you can only do around 150 ‘things’ on twitter (RTs, tweets, DMs) each hour before you are temporarily suspended. This was about the only speed bump and meant that on twitter the absolute fastest I was able to thank everyone was over the course of three hours. 352 thank yous later I was done with twitter.
Due to the privacy structures of both facebook, and email sharing I was not able to see who promoted the article through these platforms. The only other way I was able to thank individuals who promoted it was by searching through the countless pages of google search results, finding blogs (not aggregators… of which there were several) that specifically mentioned the post, and thanked them in the comments.
The Aftermath
In the three weeks following the initial spike the post has accumulated an additional 3,012 reads, 56 twitter followers, 38 shares on facebook, 31 Tweets, and 3 listings. The most surprising statistic is that an additional 202 emails have been sent. It is the only factor that increased after the initial explosion of activity.
Have you had a successful video, blog post, or other piece of digital content? If so, leave a comment below with the impact you had as well as any surprising tips or tricks you may have for others.
t(h)ink on.
