Seeing The Forest AND The Trees: The Magic Of Metrics

Guest post by Shawn Chambers, a passionate plastics blogger who is having great success, and fun, blogging. In his own words:

As a WordPress.com user, it appears that I've got a bit of a luxury over TypePadders and BlogSpotters in that I'm provided with detailed, real time metrics right off my blog's dashboard explaining not only how many people are visiting but how they got there and what search phrases they used to find the blog.

It can be frustrating to watch day-by-day, minute-by-minute charting the number of people that read your articles.

You see good days. You see bad days. But, not all days are created equal and it's important that you recognize this to avoid taking up virtual cliff diving.

I've been at this about 2 months now. I've landed just over 5,000 visitors.
That sounds like a lot and it is to the novice. However, I'm just like most aspiring bloggers out there who sees a slow-read day and begins wondering how much value they're really contributing to the blogosphere and whether or not it's worth the investment of time and faith.

Consider your blog like publishing 7 different magazines. After a while you'll see that each day has a unique traffic pattern demanding different types of information.

For example, weekends typically attract non-business minds that now have some free time to think and explore new ideas - they might even be the same people that were looking for business-related stuff earlier in the week. Mondays - people want to get caught up over the weekend and are looking for both creative stimulus and a reason to get re-excited about their jobs. Fridays - well, people just want to make it through the rest of the day and, like Mondays, are looking for creative stimulus to bide the time. So, focus your publishing efforts based on what people are asking for on a particular day.
Remember - read the little charts that tell you what people are clicking on AFTER they've read your article (I usually put a source line at the top of each article referring to where I found the content) which will give you some insight into what is grabbing the interest of your readers.

The bottom line: Measure your success by the weekly increase in daily visitors: This Sunday vs last Sunday, Friday vs last Friday, etc - regardless, don't lose the faith.

If you have something worthwhile to blog about then someone will find it.
Blog On!