The power of blogging
Listen to your webstats!
Got a business-related blog? Then listen to your webstats and experience blog power in action.
I’m always banging on about monitoring webstats. But you can’t plan marketing effectively unless you know what works and what nosedives. You need to know returns on investment, especially if you’re paying for search engine marketing.
Webstats are easy to understand and there’s plenty of online advice about interpreting them. As far as my business is concerned, blogging seems to be doing what everyone says it does: as long as I provide useful, relevant content it brings in visitors, goodwill and work. Here’s the evidence:
MONTHLY BLOG VISITORS
September 2007 (launch) - 375
October: – 547
November: - 716
December: - 770
January 2008 – 992
A steady growth in visitors. Not bad for a young blog.
The effect is immediate. When I write a particularly useful article I see a corresponding spike in visitor numbers, which is useful for planning future articles: Because you know what people want, you can consciously provide more of it.
PS. This post was originally written in late January ’08. Today, 11th November ’09, this blog averages more than 4000 unique visitors a month.