What I learned from my blog stats

I think I should start this  post by letting you know that I love statistics, I love seeing what types of trends there are and how they can be predictive of the future. This probably explains why I follow one of the most boring sports in the world – baseball, so closely. I know how a certain pitcher performs in the evening facing left handed batters with the roof open or closed.

So then comes the question of what to make out of the stats that most bloggers check fifty times a day. Yes those on the lovely WordPress statistics page. Oh how great they are with summaries, trends and in depth data. These statistics not only tell you direct information but like so many other people who like statistics you can get  a lot more information than is at face value. So what have I learned from these statistics.

Mornings Matter; Most times I tell if we are going to have a good day by noon. That is to say that around 40% of our readers are online mostly between 930 am and 11 am. So publish before 9 am if you want your article to get maximized viewing.

Your best ever day will result in another really good day; If you happen to write a good article or are mentioned somewhere that causes increased traffic it will carry over for a few days. This is a great time to get more articles published to build viewership.

Week-ends Suck; Alright this might be because we are business focused and most of our readers are looking at the articles from their desk but Saturdays and Sundays are horrific so now we do not post on the week-ends, or holidays for that matter. Why waste a great article.

Wednesdays and Thursday are typically the best two days of the week; We usually write on a specific theme in the week and used to publish the “big” article on the week on Fridays. We are more and more publishing this on on Thursday now to hit the most readers. This has increased readership more on high traffic days.

Marketing Matters; Great article or not, it is up to you to make sure people know it is being published. If we highlight an article in LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook we get ten times the views then if we just publish.

Likes Help; Hey if people like your article it seems to help increase viewers. I am not sure if it is that you wrote a good article or if news travels among readers. Either way it seems relevant.

The right categories are important; Articles on Business and Blogging for us do a lot better than say on Human Resources or Health and Safety. I am not saying that people do not care about those topics, but that the pool of readers is rather small.

This is what I have learned so far that from our WordPress statistics and I am sure I can learn even more. The information has helped increase our reader by over 100% from last year. Of course your blog stats might tell you a different story but it is important that you listen to them.

Cheers,

Lorne