Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Xavier Casanova’s Blog | Coffee, Sun & Technology » Articles » A Bloggers’ Theory:
"I’m committed to limiting my time investment in blogging (see rule #14), so let’s get to the point: looking at analytics data and correlating with market events, blog posts, other bloggers’ comments, etc - I’m seeing a pattern for readership growth.
The basic cycle goes like this:
(1) Seeding. You start a blog, write 8 or 10 interesting posts, and advertise your blog as much as possible (link on your email signature/forums/etc). Soon enough, another blogger will write about you or point to you (blogroll, etc).
(2) Exponential growth. After reaching some critical mass of readers, readership growth accelerates all of the sudden - typically because a popular blogger has written about you, or there is a press article pointing to your site.
(3) Organic growth. Your base keeps growing but it’s slooooowww. You’re incapable to sustaining the growth rates you had in phase 2.
Basic cycle
The challenge then becomes to reach out to another community of readers, and starting this cycle again (or wave). For example, if the initial community was the “Web analytics gurus” - maybe your next community will be “Search Engine Marketing gurus”. In this case, you need to start the seeding cycle again.
cycle
In the context of this simple theory, it’s important to note that the characteristics of the communities you are targeting will determine how successful you’ll be. Community characteristics such as:
(a) Size: the “Search Engine Marketing” community is much larger than the “Web analytics” community
(b) Viral quality: the “Venture Capital” community is a lot more inter-connected than the “people with blue eyes” community
(c) Maturity: According to some studies, only 8-10% of Americans regularly read blogs. If there is no blogging culture in a given community, it’s going to be a lot harder to seed.
As far as this blog is concerned, I’ve seen 2 waves already: Web analytics gurus (started in ~Feb 2005), then the Google analytics followers (~November 2005). Now working on a new wave…
[Read related articles: “Using Web analytics to drive more traffic to my site” series - part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 - and Blogging success: “what lessons have you learned“]."
"I’m committed to limiting my time investment in blogging (see rule #14), so let’s get to the point: looking at analytics data and correlating with market events, blog posts, other bloggers’ comments, etc - I’m seeing a pattern for readership growth.
The basic cycle goes like this:
(1) Seeding. You start a blog, write 8 or 10 interesting posts, and advertise your blog as much as possible (link on your email signature/forums/etc). Soon enough, another blogger will write about you or point to you (blogroll, etc).
(2) Exponential growth. After reaching some critical mass of readers, readership growth accelerates all of the sudden - typically because a popular blogger has written about you, or there is a press article pointing to your site.
(3) Organic growth. Your base keeps growing but it’s slooooowww. You’re incapable to sustaining the growth rates you had in phase 2.
Basic cycle
The challenge then becomes to reach out to another community of readers, and starting this cycle again (or wave). For example, if the initial community was the “Web analytics gurus” - maybe your next community will be “Search Engine Marketing gurus”. In this case, you need to start the seeding cycle again.
cycle
In the context of this simple theory, it’s important to note that the characteristics of the communities you are targeting will determine how successful you’ll be. Community characteristics such as:
(a) Size: the “Search Engine Marketing” community is much larger than the “Web analytics” community
(b) Viral quality: the “Venture Capital” community is a lot more inter-connected than the “people with blue eyes” community
(c) Maturity: According to some studies, only 8-10% of Americans regularly read blogs. If there is no blogging culture in a given community, it’s going to be a lot harder to seed.
As far as this blog is concerned, I’ve seen 2 waves already: Web analytics gurus (started in ~Feb 2005), then the Google analytics followers (~November 2005). Now working on a new wave…
[Read related articles: “Using Web analytics to drive more traffic to my site” series - part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 - and Blogging success: “what lessons have you learned“]."
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