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.

Second Red State Poster Revealed Through Charity Auction

Continuing his trend of combining creative viral marketing and charity fundraising with the release of details for his upcoming movie Red State, Kevin Smith revealed the second movie poster yesterday (December 7, 2010). This time Kevin put out the word via Twitter that he was holding an auction for the right to host the debut of the next Red State poster.
http://twitter.com/#!/ThatKevinSmith/status/12185412881616897

The Next Phase of Social Media

I have not written about my social media explorations in a while.  I have been busy preparing for the next step, which is now moving forward.  I have created a “real” site as  a hub / community for independent bloggers like myself.  Those who provide true value to the content on the Internet, but do it as a hobby more than a job.  There are some great, interesting and insightful people out there who do not get the attention they deserve, so my next foray into the power of social networking is to find these people and try to help them be heard.

http://www.indieposit.com/

Check out the site.  It is in its infancy now, but will hopefully continue to grow over the coming months.  I will be moving the rest of my posts about social media over to Indie Posit, leaving One Good Minute to focus on all the other dumb stuff in my head.

If you know any bloggers that fit the bill, drop me a line.

A retweet is worth 1000 views

It is like they always say – it is all about who you know.  The fact of the matter is, I happen to not know anyone, but through my persistence and integrity I was able to make a powerful, albeit temporary, connection.  One retweet by the legend Kevin Smtih (@ThatKevinSmith) and BOOM, my blog jumps to over 1000 hits in a day (on this post).

Sorry Superchunk, you have been dethroned.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled 25 hits a day.

Social Media Emergency Win!! My blog has a secret admirer!!

Wowzers, holy Christmas, good golly and other PG exclamations of delight.  I was just casually checking my One Good Minute blog stats and was shocked to find the following:

Now, for some reason there is a steady stream of people searching for “rizzo the rat” that stumble onto my site, and I’m sure they are not all that impressed with what they find, but hey, that’s blogging, right?

But today someone actually searched for my blog by name.

one good minute blog

By name!

What does it mean?  Probably nothing.  How does it make me feel?  Like I’m in eighth grade and I just found a secret admirer note in my locker.  Who are you?  How did you find out about me?  Do you really like me?  Like, like like me?

Which brings up another thought, if you want to stay on this train with me.  What do kids do today when they like each other?  Secret text?  Facebook poll?  YouTube love video?  Anonymous tweet?

I think that in this world of technology and information sharing it is becoming more and more difficult to be anonymous.  I don’t think anything has been invented that replaces the good old paper poll.

Not even this (but go ahead and vote anyway).

Please leave any additional secret admirer notes in the comments below.

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 9: Google AdWords

This one unexpectedly fell into my lap.  I received an email offering $100 worth of ads free, which I dismissed immediately.  But the idea kept spinning around in the back of my brain and when I received a second email about the promotion I jumped on it.  Now that the campaign has run its course I am looking at the results to determine the level of success from my $100 investment.

Social Media Part 5.1: Twiends Follow Up

As I indicated in my post from last week about Twiends I am looking at the results of a small burst of Twiends activity after one week.

Social Media Part 8: Twitter

I have already touched on Twitter in past articles, but there is one particular aspect of Twitter that has become the Holy Grail: the celebrity tweet.

It is a pretty obvious concept that something tweet by a popular twitter user is going to be seen by a lot of people and therefore have some sort of impact. I never really thought much about it in the past as I do not really care who else is listening when @PFTompkins tweets something funny or @superchunkradio posts a link to a cool new live video. It is of interest to me and so I continue to follow these people.

Social Media: Part 7 – Forums

My participation in forums has always been inconsistent. I tend to read a lot more than I write, but then I will go through little bursts of increased participation. Ultimately my activity has never been to the level of being recognized as a regular or “one of the gang”, but I do enjoy being a part of these forum communities that are focused on similar interests.

My first kick at this can was an overt attempt to attract attention. The comment sections at Videogum are a fun place to hang out, so I wrote a series of poems about Videogum and posted a link in the comments. This currently sits as the #11 viewed page of all time.