Comments on: Comparing Blog Traffic: RSS Love vs Overall Uniques

By: AbleReach

AbleReach — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:31:05 +0000

There is so much that can’t be known for sure. Did you show up as a new reader today, because you cleared your cookies yesterday? Are you here for nerdy and entertaining brain-stretching, or are you hoping for the answer to a question? have you been here before, or are you floating through on the SU toolbar, not knowing me from Adam?

@ Jenn & Barry – Feed clickthroughs are all going to be returning visitors, which is one reason for my curiosity. I’m always curious about human behavior, and stats are one window.

@ Allen – LOL. This year I grow a blogger. Next year I craft a niche. Today, I sent this post to you because I thought you’d have opinions to share – and thanks!

This morning I had six Stumbles waiting in my toolbar. One was a hello from a new friend, one was a link to something someone was proud of (and not the last in a long line of send-tos for every single post they’ve ever written), one was a post that I was glad to see and wouldn’t have gotten to on my own. Any self promo spam seems to settle down after people get to know the system or realize the traffic algo is unkind to rapid repeat Stumbles, or maybe I’ve just unsubbed them. Life is good.

By: Allen Taylor

Allen Taylor — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:43:22 +0000

Elizabeth, I’m not a subscriber. As someone who subscribes to hundreds of RSS feeds I’m not really interested in becoming one. I’d prefer to read your posts coming in from SU because I know I can find you that way. And I don’t have the time to read every day. So what I do is scan headlines and if I see one that interests me then I click. I’ll also usually click on the Stumble bar if a friend submits a link to me as you did in this case. (But too much of that and I stop voting for you – I’m only interested in the occasional “reminder”).

I know you’re there and I follow all my friends; some a little more than others. But I only read the posts that strike me as one I might like. But I can’t categorize them. It’s all based on headlines, the way they are written, and subject matter based on what mood I’m in at the time.

This was a very interesting post, though, because I’ve spent some time trying to figure out what your focus is on and this clarifies it a bit for me. You are right about the difficulty of blogging split-niche. If it works for you, fine, but after blogging for two years for myself and my clients, I’ve discovered that you can segment your niches into separate blogs and reach all of your target markets more effectively.

By: Barry Welford

Barry Welford — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:31:52 +0000

I found this fascinating, Elizabeth. You’ve followed some interesting ways of analyzing that mountain of data that is available to all of us. I really should do that some time. I’m sure I would surprise myself.

By: Jenn Osborne

Jenn Osborne — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:07:46 +0000

Your theory “those who come to my site from from an RSS Feed will click through to different posts than social media users, who will in turn head to different pages than Search Engine users” is based on how the traffic got there. But there is another important consideration that is going to impact what that traffic does – are they new visitors or returning visitors?

Your blog has a lot of fans (like me) who’s click patterns will be entirely different than that of a new visitor who happened upon the site via Social Media.

Interesting thoughts Elizabeth – great post!