Last week I ran a test to measure my sphere of influence with this website. I was also testing a new web analytics package called Woopra. A free trial can be found at woopra.com. In my last post I went into a little bit of detail about Woopra and the benefits of using an application like this. Trey Ratcliff from StuckinCustoms.com did a nice review of the Woopra service and posted an example of how the service works for a site that actually gets some traffic.
When I started my test I was under the assumption that my sphere of influence was about 10 dedicated followers and a sphere of marginal interest up to 100.
I had four tasks setup for my test. One write an article, two measure the results for a day, three promote the post via twitter, and four report the over all results.
Well after writing the article I had one hit to the page for the first day (page number 4 listed below.)
The next day I ran a small mention on Twitter (which is feed onto Facebook as well.) After that mention I gained 4 more hits to the page and all of them came from Facebook (NetworkedBlogs is a Facebook app.)
All total I received 6 hits to the page in the days since I published the article. I didn't reach my core of 10 people I estimated, but with numbers this small a margin of error can be huge. It also probably didn't help that the article was not that interesting to begin with unless you are a web analytics person.
After running this test I was able to determine that essentially my estimates for dedicated followers was somewhat accurate. However, I'm now thinking my sphere of marginal interest is much lower. In a nutshell I have very little traffic to this website. I knew that already since I never promote this website. One interesting item I found is that when I take into account all of my traffic for the various images I post in the MyDrive project. I'm able to reach more people. When it comes to images I consistently get about 20-30 page views for new images within the first couple of days of posting. When I post articles it is much lower. This test has confirmed a couple of key facts. I have a follower base as close to zero as you can be. I can either keep things the same and talk to my very small circle of friends, or can I increase this base to a list of 100 dedicated fans?
At work and with my various clients I tell them how to increase their traffic using all the standard techniques of engagement and promotion. I have also done this in the past with other website I have started or managed. Here is one example, I started www.altenergystocks.com and took the traffic from 0 to 10,000 page views a month in about about a year. I ended up selling that site to the current owners. Can I do the same with this website? Since I know I'm currently talking to myself here, I guess it is more of a question to myself. It would be an excellent case study that I can use and point to for the future. So here begins my journey to gain my 100 dedicated true fans.
When I started my test I was under the assumption that my sphere of influence was about 10 dedicated followers and a sphere of marginal interest up to 100.
I had four tasks setup for my test. One write an article, two measure the results for a day, three promote the post via twitter, and four report the over all results.
Well after writing the article I had one hit to the page for the first day (page number 4 listed below.)
The next day I ran a small mention on Twitter (which is feed onto Facebook as well.) After that mention I gained 4 more hits to the page and all of them came from Facebook (NetworkedBlogs is a Facebook app.)
All total I received 6 hits to the page in the days since I published the article. I didn't reach my core of 10 people I estimated, but with numbers this small a margin of error can be huge. It also probably didn't help that the article was not that interesting to begin with unless you are a web analytics person.
After running this test I was able to determine that essentially my estimates for dedicated followers was somewhat accurate. However, I'm now thinking my sphere of marginal interest is much lower. In a nutshell I have very little traffic to this website. I knew that already since I never promote this website. One interesting item I found is that when I take into account all of my traffic for the various images I post in the MyDrive project. I'm able to reach more people. When it comes to images I consistently get about 20-30 page views for new images within the first couple of days of posting. When I post articles it is much lower. This test has confirmed a couple of key facts. I have a follower base as close to zero as you can be. I can either keep things the same and talk to my very small circle of friends, or can I increase this base to a list of 100 dedicated fans?
At work and with my various clients I tell them how to increase their traffic using all the standard techniques of engagement and promotion. I have also done this in the past with other website I have started or managed. Here is one example, I started www.altenergystocks.com and took the traffic from 0 to 10,000 page views a month in about about a year. I ended up selling that site to the current owners. Can I do the same with this website? Since I know I'm currently talking to myself here, I guess it is more of a question to myself. It would be an excellent case study that I can use and point to for the future. So here begins my journey to gain my 100 dedicated true fans.