Blogging for the Long Tail

How is your company’s blog doing?

The chart above illustrates the number of pageviews to a single blog post (or URL) since it was first posted 21 months ago.  The data comes from an Upper Peninsula blog and is related to the winter season.  This post will elaborate on what’s known as “the long tail” and how it relates to blog entries.  Particularly, how a blog post nearly two years old can continue to bring in heavy Web site traffic.

If you’re like me, you are addicted to your Web site’s traffic, which is both a blessing and curse.  This addiction is fueled even more when operating a blog (or a few blogs, as I do).  With each post, I’m excited to check stats the next day to see how many people read the post, how long they stayed on the page, where they came from and if they commented.  Without doubt, consistent blogging is able to help grow Web site traffic month after month.

The initial post

The blog entry for the data shown was initially posted in February 2008 it received roughly 100 pageviews on the first day and roughly 300 pageviews in the first week. Since the first week, there have been over 6,000 additional pageviews of mostly unique visitors.

In total, this single post has averaged about 10 unique visitors every day since. That is the long tail.  The pageviews in months after have brought in far more traffic than the initial post. In the long term, it is much more powerful to have several visits each day than it is to have a large spike the week of the given blog entry.

Search engine traffic

The full potential of this particular blog entry wasn’t realized until eight months later. I had written the post in the middle of winter about winter hats.  It was a hot topic at the time, but I knew it would die off during the summer. As fall came back around, people started searching for winter hats. Throughout the first full winter, a couple thousand new visitors landed on my site, all thanks to a post I had written months earlier.

Now that it’s November, traffic is once again picking up for this blog post. Because I can anticipate the Web traffic, I am able to optimize this as a landing page. For example I could include related blog entries, hopefully attracting the visitor to spend more time on the site.

Social media traffic

The “Facebook post” referred to above is the date when I shared the post’s URL on the blog’s Facebook page. Since it was fall, I knew the content was becoming more relevant as winter approached.

Do you have a popular post that’s been well received with lots of comments? Just because you originally wrote the post several months ago, or even several years ago, doesn’t mean you can’t still plug that post effectively months after. After all, your blog has probably gained new readership, Facebook page fans and Twitter followers who may not have seen all of your older content. You can continue plugging your posts to these new readers to create a new spike in traffic (in this case a spike that was larger than the initial post) and generate new interest, comments and maybe convert a few visitors to subscribers.

Now, imagine posting a successful blog entry like this each and every week. If that can be achieved there is no doubt your Web site’s traffic will grow month after month.

If you have any questions about the long tail, blogging, analytics, or social media please get in touch today. As M3’s secret weapon, I’ve got a number of blog tips to share. Come say hello.