Joining The Borg

Using Statcounter statistics, here is a graph of daily Weblog visitors since August, 2004 (the Weblog itself dates to October, 2002).

The number of Page Loads is indicated by the top of the blue bars, and the number of Unique Visitors by the bottom of the pink bars. The all-important Return Visitors is the red line near the bottom.

Interestingly, the number of visits seems to have little to do with Weblog content. People like to visit after weekends. Sometimes, readership jumps during big DMTC shows. Still, what is most-striking is just how stable everything is. Abrupt declines in Returning Visitors is usually connected to whether or not I'm taking trips (for some reason, my readers seem to hate travelogues).

Abrupt increases in the number of visits are driven mostly by Search Engine improvements. In 2007, several technical improvements were made to Google, which made it function much better at relating search terms to target Web Pages. Those improvements abruptly drove up the number of Page Loads (if not the number of Returning Visitors).

Over the years, the Internet keeps expanding. Since roughly the same number of users inhabit a larger and larger digital universe, there is a constant downward pressure on the number of visits to any given Web Site, since there are simply more places *Out There* for people to go. So, like everyone else, I keep trying to find ways to drive up traffic, running harder and harder just to stay in the same place.

Lo, and behold, The Sacramento Bee is offering their idea of a solution:

Hi Mark,

I wanted to invite you to sign up your blog for Sacramento Connect, a linking and social media network The Bee launched March 29. The network consists of sacbee.com and regional blogs and sites handpicked by Bee editors.

You’ll notice when you visit sacbee.com that a toolbar appears at the bottom of your browser. The toolbar is powered by a semantic search engine that pulls in RSS feeds to find related content across the Sacramento Connect network. Readers can than click the toolbar, which appears on every page of sacbee.com as well as partner blogs and sites, to find related content across the network based on the page or story readers last clicked. The toolbar also makes it really easy for users to share links via email, Facebook and Twitter. Partners in the network are seeing a noticeable increase in traffic. This link will take you to a list of our current partners: http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/sacramento_connect/sacramento-connect-partners.html.

As a partner of Sacramento Connect, we provide you with a line of javascript so the toolbar can appear and function on your blog, and we’ll help walk you through the installation. Our intent is to make it easier for readers to find content they are interested in and to share content, and to increase both your traffic and our own. Bee editors will also be highlighting partner content on a Sacramento Connect landing page (http://sacramentoconnect.sacbee.com/) and via Twitter and Facebook. We will also be promoting content partners in the paper. In the next month, we will be taking the network mobile, and if you don’t have a mobile offering Bee web developers will do most of the work for you. All of this is free.

This link will take you to the partnership agreement and application to officially join the network: http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/sacramento_connect/apply.html.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Tom Negrete
Managing Editor, Online
The Sacramento Bee

Hmmm.... That's interesting!

One of the reasons I started my blog is that I could tell that there was no way the Sacramento Bee, or any newspaper for that matter, could keep up with the Sacramento Community Musical Theatre scene. Newspapers were reducing staff, but the number of local theaters and local shows were expanding exponentially. If people didn't cover these events themselves, through their own blogs and with their own media, they wouldn't get covered at all.

In a way, blogs can act like newspaper adjuncts, covering items and events that newspapers no longer could, or never would. After all, if I'm having trouble with water in my basement (as I blogged about today), could I rely on the Sacramento Bee to convey the news to people in Roseville and Folsom? I think not! So, it makes sense to for newspapers to host communities like this. And it makes sense for me to join as well.

Nevertheless, I don't believe Weblog traffic will increase much, if at all, as a consequence of joining this community. As I say, the Digital Big Bang makes the Internet Universe larger and larger all the time. It would be nice to be proved wrong, but expecting the Sacramento Bee to increase my readership is likely a vain hope.

On the other hand, if I just had an exclusive Tiger Woods interview....