Why Blogging Matters

Tis the season for checking annual analytics and check them I did. For my personal blog, nicfletch.com, I thought I’d take a look at the numerical proof in the pudding from December 2011 until now. What I found was pretty darn interesting if I do say so myself and as such, I thought I’d share it with you all.

Generally speaking in web analytics land, we expect the top 2 referral traffic sources to be, you guessed it, search engines and Facebook. I’d expect a third and fourth for me, to be Twitter and Pinterest, as those are really they only ways I push out content. To my surprise I found the following:

#1. Facebook with 3,829 referrals

#2. Search Engines with 3,398 referrals

#3. ChaCha.com with 587 referrals

#4. Twitter with 353 referrals

#5. Pinterest with 238 referrals

#6. LinkedIn with 20 referrals

#7. thepensblog with 19 referrals

Chacha.com, a site I’ve never heard of, posted the following picture earlier this year.

Screen shot 2012-12-14 at 11.28.56 AM

They sited me as you can see in the top right and in doing so, referred nearly 600 visits to my site in just 1 years time.

Obviously a pretty solid drop but still significant is thepensblog.com. Someone I don’t know posted the following in a comment thread.

Screen shot 2012-12-14 at 11.32.01 AM

Mind you, 20 isn’t a huge number but for someone I don’t know to copy and paste my url into a comment thread (when they could have just stolen & posted the image itself) and thereby inform 20 brand new people about my site, is pretty awesome.

Also noteworthy is the wonder that is Pinterest. I’m lucky in that I have a lot of active friends with similar senses of humor on this wildly addicting site. The list of my site’s pin referral traffic is too long to take a screen shot of – but know that Pinterest is a blogger’s dream. Want people to see your stuff? Make it good, not self promotional and relevant. Your friends – and your friends friends – and your friends friends friends will take care of the rest.

In closing, I’ll leave you with the inspiring possibilities that come with the idea of actually trying to market your stuff (because what I’ve done is the bare minimum). Imagine what would happen if you set aside 2 hours each week to create content. What if you implemented an SEO strategy? Could you increase your traffic if you tweeted more, pitched your stuff to local or even national bloggers, started an email newsletter? The possibilities are endless.

Be inspired.