There’s a number of tools for evaluating how a blog’s doing traffic-wise, but I’m not sure why anyone doesn’t just use Google Analytics, which will tell you how many visitors, where they’re coming from, what pages they’re looking at, and much more. Much like SEO, this is something that could take up its own workshop, and we didn’t get much to explore it in class. Hopefully these links will prove an alternate entrance.
One of the things I caution students in the (my) blog class, tho, is that the numbers provided by analytics look a lot more precise than they probably are. Numbers like page views and unique users and such are notoriously fuzzy and should not be taken at face value. About the best you can get from them are relative trends — i.e., one blog post is definitely more popular than another by some squinty sort of margin.
Note also that Google Analytics et al. are not specifically designed for blogs, they’re designed for commercial websites. As such, stats like bounce rate are not meaningful in the same way.
Still, it’s definitely worthwhile to use analytics; you learn surprising things about your blog that way.
PS People are aware, right, that adding analytics to a site has an impact on overall performance — ? Not a big one, but it’s additive, and each little external call that you add to a blog site — analytics, feed burner alert, etc. — is one more little blip.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Facebook Advertising: Is It Worthwhile for Writers?
Many of Facebook’s changes affect fanpages. Think of a fanpage as a tiny website hosted by Facebook. Companies could create one in order to have a presence on Facebook, and their fans could go click “Like” on the page. You have one in the form of your author page. Here’s mine, for example.
The model for interacting with fans has been to post messages, which appear in your fans’ newsfeed. They respond by commenting and liking and hopefully by clicking on links in order to go buy your book or listen to your podcast or read the interview or blog post or whatever.
It’s hard to find a good overview of what’s happened, but it boils down to several things:
So I wanted to test out the changes for myself. Like most writers, I use social media to sell books but also to brand myself, spread news of upcoming events, etc. I also teach online classes, so I try to sell those as well. I had just announced a couple of new ones, so I figured I’d use that post for the test.
After I’d posted something, I clicked on “Promote this Post” to see what was involved, and saw it’d be $7 to promote. Wotthehell, as Mehitabel would say, and look, they even took Paypal.
One reason I’ve been a little dubious about all this is that in August I tried advertising on various social media (Facebook and Twitter) and search engines (Bing and Google) as well as on Hope Clark’s newsletter. I did see a lot more traffic on my site, but I don’t know how much of that translated into sales of books or classes. Overall, the newsletter, which was the cheapest, was also the most effective.
And, not to my surprise, here again it didn’t make much, if any difference, even though when I looked at Facebook’s results for my promoted post, I’m told, “Promoted posts stay higher in news feed to help people notice them. So far, your post has had 113.8x as many views because you promoted it.” That translated into a total of five visits clicking through the Facebook link yesterday. Five.
And that’s my point. Like most writers, my Facebook fan page just isn’t big enough for me to worry about this much. I’ll keep maintaining my Facebook presence, but I won’t spend money on advertising there but find most effective places. I’ll also make sure I don’t confine my social media activity to Facebook but use Delicious, Google+, Stumbleupon, Twitter, and Tumblr as well.
My advice for writers is not to waste money on social media advertising but to work on their blog and attracting readers through good content.
Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.
Sometimes putting something up for award consideration feels uncomfortable, but if you're not going to toot your own horn, who is?Amal El-Mohtar has a great blog post up right now about writers and posts where they list what’s eligible for awards. I get as squicky about writing my own as anyone else, I’ve got to admit, and I thought this was a terrific reminder that it’s okay to toot your own horn a bit.
So in that light, if you’re reading for the Hugo, Locus, Nebula, Tiptree, or World Fantasy Award, here you go.
I had twenty original pieces published in 2013. Of those, I’m pushing two, one SF short story and one fantasy story. The first is “Elsewhere, Within, Elsewhen,” which originally appeared in BEYOND THE SUN, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, which I am happy to mail a copy of to people interested in considering it. The fantasy story is “Superhero Art,” which appeared in DAILY SCIENCE FICTION. If you’d like to see the full list of 2013 pieces with links to the online ones, you can find it in my 2013 wrap-up post.
I myself am reading for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula and am not sure yet about WFC. I am also on the Norton jury this year, so if you’ve got a YA or MG novel that came out in 2013, I’m very interested. Feel free to leave pointers in the comments on this piece; I pledge to make sure I read any listed there. If you want to mail me something, please send it in mobi or pdf format.
Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.
One Response
One of the things I caution students in the (my) blog class, tho, is that the numbers provided by analytics look a lot more precise than they probably are. Numbers like page views and unique users and such are notoriously fuzzy and should not be taken at face value. About the best you can get from them are relative trends — i.e., one blog post is definitely more popular than another by some squinty sort of margin.
Note also that Google Analytics et al. are not specifically designed for blogs, they’re designed for commercial websites. As such, stats like bounce rate are not meaningful in the same way.
Still, it’s definitely worthwhile to use analytics; you learn surprising things about your blog that way.
PS People are aware, right, that adding analytics to a site has an impact on overall performance — ? Not a big one, but it’s additive, and each little external call that you add to a blog site — analytics, feed burner alert, etc. — is one more little blip.