The Nunies are quickly winding down (not as quickly as expected) and I for one am happy about it. Don't get me wrong, I do love them, they just take up a lot of my attention. There's been any number of things that I want to blog about, but don't in part because I don't want the polls to move too far down the page. Which segues into a plug to get your vote in on the runoff poll for Best Blog. Either Townie Bastard or Port Town Ghosts are deserving blogs (as were all of the nominees). Numbers on voting are down this round, which is to be expected I suppose, but get your vote in, show them some love. You've got until Friday at 5:00 pm.
And the numbers reference segues into the main theme of the post. (Word for today is apparently segue) Part of my goals for the Nunies, apart from the main one which was to gain some recognition for the wonderful and diverse Nunavut Blogging community, was to generate some traffic within our communities. The idea is that more readers will check out some blogs that they may not be familiar with, and hopefully discover more blogs to visit and keep coming back. At least one of the nominees has mentioned a spike in stats so it seems to be happening.
My numbers (I can't help it, I'm addicted to check Statcounter) of course see a really big jump, because I have the polls and the main sites that people refer to. If you are a new visitor here, welcome and I hope you like what you see, really there is other content on here I'll get back to it soon. Over the week of the voting, I more than double the number of visits to the site. I, of course, realize that much of those numbers come from the nominees checking to see how the voiting is going, but my returning visitors and unique visitors also pretty much double.
Here is a graphic of my stats for the voting week, complete with really cool amateurish notations:
It is covered up by my scrawl, but there were 660 page views that first day of voting. What really impresses me though is that 300 of those were new visitors to the site. Hopefully (once you discount the people looking for info on Frozen Vent Stacks and Purple Saxifrage) many of those visited the other Nunavut Bloggers, and hopefully some of those will continue to.
Nunavut Blogs! showed a similar jump, with probably three times the number of visitors on average.
I've also taken a snapshot of a Nature Blog toplist, showing where I was on it mid week. I ended up a little higher than this (I currently sit at 51) but I missed the peak and wanted a screenshot showing the little "UP" arrow. I'll be dropping down again as I find my equilibrium after the contest closes, but it was nice cracking the top 50.
So, it will soon be back to normal, at least as normal as it gets down here. Townie will eventually forgive me for not settling with the tie, although I think he and Kate Nova should still get the prom picture taken. The number of visitors will drop back down, although I do hope I've picked up some new readers. And we'll do it all again in a year.
Maybe.
Comments
4 responses
What? The purpose of a blog contest is not to pick the best blog, but to introduce readers to awesome new sites they might not have known existed?
Well that’s one of the purposes, to choose what the readers think is the Best Blog. As you know there are many approaches to determine that. I put my top goal as “acknowledge the awesome blogs that exist in Nunavut”. Perhaps the Nunies need a Mission Statement.
Well, the contest and your efforts are very appreciated, especially in this downer of a dark winter month.
Thanks kate, and congratulations.