To a small blogger, like myself, a single post that generates over 1,200 views in two days is amazing. It’s not Viral with a capital “v” but it’s certainly viral.
The problem with this “hit” is the driver was Flipboard. And I have no way to track it back to the source or the champion who added my Apple Watch post to their audience on Flipboard. I used all my tools. I saw the hit coming, I pushed a few extra times on my Twitter feed, but I was clear the Flipboard boost was a single event. I even wrote another quick Apple Watch post to see if I could get some residual traffic. And that worked pretty well. A normal post for me does about 200 reads on the first day. My “apple watch” post yesterday got 356 views. So it did get a boost, but not in the 1,200 views mark.
The feeling of a viral hit is awesome. The day after it looks like the metrics are giving me the finger.
What do we learn from a big hit on a post?
- Do it again.
- Refresh the content.
- See out the influencer who drove the page views.
- Write more content for the audience that reads the post.
Other than that, a viral hit is fun, but it doesn’t change my process or plans for what I should do next. I would love to architect a viral hit a week. Imagine where I could take the numbers on this site. But that’s not likely to happen. I’ll keep trying though. I’ll keep picking topics to stir the pot.
John McElhenney — let’s connect online
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