CASE STUDY: GETTING NEW TRAFFIC FROM OLD CONTENT

When you put content online, you have the opportunity to get traffic month after month and year after year. How green. What a great investment in time. Here’s an example of how that just happened.

Sep 2011

I wrote 9/13: prepare your disaster recovery plan now just after the 10th anniversary of 9/11. That decision was strategic: timely content is more likely to get read. For instance, a post about Valentines Day won’t have much appeal in the middle of summer but can have an audience each year around February 14th.

The 9/13 post got traffic with a spike around the annual anniversary of 9/11. This week is different. I didn’t use any techniques to boost traffic. Maybe the recent storms boosted interested in planning for disasters.

This Week

This graph shows that mere days ago, traffic jumped drastically because of the 9/13 post.

The scaling makes the baseline traffic look lousy. That isn’t the case but does show how much of a change took place.

This Month

This graph shows there was already a spike during the last 30 days because of a post on starting your own private social network. That post continues to bring in traffic daily.

Lifetime

This graph shows that traffic has been growing over the years, with occasional jumps.

You can’t tell what will get read. You can’t tell when it will get read.

More Examples

Here are the five posts with the most traffic over the last 30 days (in descending order):

1. Sep 2011: 9/13 Prepare your disaster recovery plan now
2. Jun 2013: Starting your own private social network
3. Nov 2009: Does your email address say you’re cheap, generic or inattentive?
4. Jan 2010: Hero or zero: the sad tale of Lenovo and UPS
5. Mar 2011: Why join the Toronto Board of Trade?

Only #2 was written this year. That doesn’t matter. Each visitor can read other posts or subscribe to receive updates. Getting quality traffic leads to opportunities and improves credibility with search engines for your other content too.

What you publish can get read. What you don’t, can’t.

Links

• Building trust with blogging
• Of rain storms, blackouts and memories
• Why are we flooded with bad weather forecasts?
• The three marketing essentials for today
• The easiest way to catch up with social media

PS How can you lose by putting content online?