NathanBowers.com

A client who has recently launched a blog asked me two questions yesterday:

1. My Feedburner subscriber count seems to swing without reason. What’s the deal?
2. How come I got a traffic spike from StumbleUpon but only retained a handful of subscribers?

With my client’s permission, I’m sharing my answers here. As always my advice starts with “Don’t Panic” then “Launch, Measure, Tweak, Repeat“, and finally I offer concrete advice about what metrics new bloggers should focus on:

Part of the problem is that, statistically speaking, you’ve got a small sample. As your traffic grows the numbers will be more meaningful.

FeedBurner isn’t super accurate either. You’ll notice that WordPress stats and Google stats and Feedburner stats all report different (sometimes wildly so) numbers.

StumbleUpon, Digg, social news, etc. visitors are super non sticky. Try to convert them, have good “Start here/greatest hits/other posts like this” links, but don’t worry too much.

In Steve Martin’s book Born Standing Up he talks about how he expected to get recognized after being on Johnny Carson once. Turns out, he had to be on many times for anyone to even say “Didn’t I see you on TV last night? I didn’t care for you.” He says “you have to be good consistently and repeatedly”.

Bloggers who made their bones on Digg had to be on Digg many times before they stuck. It’s like advertising repetition. Be on TV enough and people will realize you belong there and they’ll start singing your jingle.

To circle back to metrics, when you’re a new blogger pay attention to these things:

• Comments: The social media chicken and egg problem. Like an empty restaurant, a blog without comments lacks social proof, so nobody wants to go there. Meanwhile, as Yogi Berra said, “nobody goes to TechCrunch anymore because it’s too crowded”. The more comments you have the more you’ll have.
• Incoming links: Who’s linking to you? What did they like about your post? What’s their niche? Are they cool? Comment on their blogs. For someone to take the time to link to you from their blog is a big deal. Treasure those readers.
• Bounce Rate: Since I redesigned five days ago with prominent “greatest hits” and “hire me” sections my bounce rate decreased from 89% to 55%. The design also has something to do with it since it looks “professional web designer” and my old design looked like nothing. One other thing, link generously to previous and related posts.

Now I have two questions for my readers:

1. If you’re a new blogger, what blogging/social media stuff is mysterious to you?
2. If you’re a seasoned blogger, what do you know today that you wish you knew then?