I've been blogging for a number of years now. While it is good to carve out a portion of the wild, wild web for myself, I knew I was scribbling away quietly off in a corner.
I'm still off in a corner, and still scribbling quietly. But for a larger audience, for which I am very grateful.
The reason for the additional traffic is #fridayflash, a combination of the reach of Twitter and the imagination of J. M. Strother (http://www.jmstrother.com).
Jon's thought was to have a number of people write a flash piece (1,000 words or fewer) each week, post them, each to his or her own blog, and tweet the fact - including URL and the tag, #fridayflash. Re-tweeting extends the news of a new story beyond the range of an individual's own followers.
The traffic information shows the impact. The first couple of weeks attracted 20-odd visitors, no mean increment over the usual traffic to my blog.
The last two weeks. Well, they are quite different.
Many thanks to Jon and all the visitors and readers who wander over to my corner (including the occupant of a not-park-bench).
I appreciate the company.
No fair! No fair! You get a lot more hits than I do. ::pouting:: I am really glad to see #fridayflash works for you. I am going to survey participants in a week or so to see how it is working out for everyone. If you are the canary in the cage, I'm thinking it's a nice little mine to work in.
ReplyDelete~jon
Hi Jon, "gold in them thar hills?" Could be - although, between us, we mix the metaphor quite nicely. :)
ReplyDeleteThe kudos go to you for the idea. I'm just glad to be along for the ride. It's also stretching my writing muscles, and that cannot be a bad thing.
Backing away from all metaphors...
ReplyDeleteThanks for showing your test results. As a newby to blogs, I have nothing to go by.
I agree that it works to stretch the writing muscles. I'm having a blast writing these little stories!
It is only of late, by which I mean in the past three to four months, that I have looked with any regularity at my blog's stats.
ReplyDeleteWhen the average per day was a number less than one, it hardly mattered. :) On some level, it still hardly matters. But, it is nice to see that Jon's idea is bearing fruit.
I too am enjoying writing, and reading, these stories. Now, I have to ensure they don't keep me from the longer efforts on which I'm working. (That last phrasing was for Jon's benefit - I know how much he loves that sort of construction! ::evil grin::)
I share the same experience. While I haven't seen the volume of hits that you have, I have seen surges in traffic, and it's all because of the #fridayflash. Many thanks to Jon (and others) who started this. I think it's a success.
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