2010 Blog Winners – Kevin Smith, Superchunk, Jimmy Pardo, Beastie Boys and Rizzo the Rat

Thanks to WordPress.com for providing the following summary.  It was a fun first year (well, half year) for One Good Minute.  I still do not understand the Internet’s obsession with Rizzo the Rat.  Here’s to more great stuff in 2011.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,300 times in 2010. That’s about 18 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 202 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 61 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 12mb. That’s about a picture per week.

The busiest day of the year was November 2nd with 1,226 views. The most popular post that day was Kevin Smith’s “Red State” Poster is very Non-Kevin Smith … in a good way (Updated).

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, mergerecords.com, videogum.com, stumbleupon.com, and facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for rizzo the rat, rizzo, beastie boys short film, jon wurster, and rizzo rat.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Kevin Smith’s “Red State” Poster is very Non-Kevin Smith … in a good way (Updated) November 2010
2 comments

2

My Fake Jimmy Pardo T-Shirt Design November 2010
2 comments

3

Superchunk Singles – The Singles’ Singles Album (now with less singles!) August 2010
3 comments

4

Superchunk Album History – Part 2 [1993-1996] September 2010
2 comments

5

Beastie Boys Short Film Starring Seth Rogan, Elijah Wood and Danny McBride? December 2010
3 comments

My Personal Analysis

Looking at these results and some of the underlying data, I am a little surprised at the various ways in which people found the top posts.  There is not one clear winner in terms of referral type.

• First place comes from Twitter thanks to a Kevin Smith shout out.  Given the power of Twitter I am surprised that it did not dominate the rest of the spots.
• Traffic for number 2, 3 and 4 came primarily by way posting to message boards.  A good chunk (pun intended) of number 3 also came from a Twitter shout out by Superchunk.  This plus the first spot all make sense, given that people are monitoring these avenues for specific topics that I posted on.  This sort of targeted promotion beats out any of the more generic promotion blasts to places like StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.
• The biggest surprise for me has been search traffic.  The number 5 spot was almost fully driven by search results hitting my site.  This, plus the whole Rizzo the Rat phenomenon, is not something I expected given the lack of time spent on SEO.

Social Media Part 10: Conclusion of Round 1

It has been about 3 months since I started this blog and I would say that so far I am quite happy with the results.  I enjoy writing the articles, I have made some great connections and I am learning about the world of social media. If you are interested in social media and self promotion I encourage you to read my posts on the subject.  This series is intended to provide insight from the perspective of a newbie stumbling into the world of social media, ready to explore and learn.  Go here to see all of my previous posts.

Social Media: Part 3 – Blog’s Early Days

One of the big decisions I made when starting this blog was to not announce it to my friends and family.  I did this for two reasons.  First, if I am to truly learn about blogging and self promotion it will be easier to gauge my success if I am not giving myself a “head start”.  Second, I was interested to learn who might come across One Good Minute on their own, how they might find it and how they might connect it to me.

Actually, there was a third reason.  I didn’t need my dad clogging up the comments with “great job, son”, though I do appreciate his support.