The (Almost) Daily Donovan has reached its first milestone; a complete month’s worth of posts. It has managed to sustain the ‘Daily’ title (albeit not without some very late night activity), and has given me plenty to think about as I’ve gone along.
Being a ‘keen on the numbers’ kinda guy I thought I’d pluck a few stats out for posterity. There is an element of experimentation both in terms of content and attracting readers to the site and I’m happy to share both the successes and failures in case anyone else cares to follow a similar path.
Total posts (excluding this one): 31
Average word count: 297
Highest word count: 577 for “Why It’s Not About Likes”
Total words: 9970
Number of page views: 690
Number of visitors: 249
Number of sessions (visits): 316
Most popular post: “A Crowded House Full of Beatles”
Average Session length: 1:00 minute
Bounce Rate: 75%
Number of Subscribers: 125
Number of Actual Subscribers (excluding spam/bots): 0
Given the bounce rate of 76% that means 240 of the visits were single page views. The remaining 450 pageviews were distributed amongst 76 visits so the average pageviews of “engaged visitors” was around 6.
So, I had no expectations in terms of interaction going into this. The approach for publicising has so far gone as far as leveraging my existing Facebook social network. this was across both my personal profile and the addition of a new page dedicated Donovan Jones page. I also did some occasional cross-posting to existing pages I managed and a couple of groups that I have posted in previously.
Of my 420 Facebook Friends that I invited to “like” my page exactly 50 have kindly done so. In addition I have picked up 3 “likes” as a result of posts in other groups.
I’ve just downloaded the engagement data from Facebook for the page and it is interesting just how much data is available – don’t worry, not Cambridge Analytica level just numbers! Here are a couple of examples of the detail
1: Daily Viral Impressions: The number of times that any content from your Page or about your Page entered a person’s screen with social information attached. Social information is shown when a person’s friend interacts with your Page or post. This includes when someone’s friend likes or follows your Page, engages with a post, shares a photo of your Page and checks in to your Page (total count).
2: Daily Reach of Page posts: The number of people for whom any of your Page’s posts entered their screen. Posts include statuses, photos, links, videos and more (unique users).
So in short, while it’s still not about the likes, it is very interesting to learn how widely my posts are being seen. I’ll be reviewing this every month and will share additional learnings as I try out different things.
In the meantime, more “regular” posts continue tomorrow.
Donovan.