So, today we just hit our first 1000 site views. Nice– thanks everyone!
Here are the stats from the first 18 days of the project:
Total Views: 1,000
Best Day Ever: 134
Views today: 67
Posts: 41
Comments: 142
Tags: 9
So basically, it has taken us 18 days to get 1,000 site views, 142 comments, and more or less 20 active commentors.
I’ve been researching viral marketing techniques. And I’m curious:
- What would it take us in order to get the same amount of views (1,000) and comments (142) in only 1/2 the time (9 days)?
- Or, what would it take us in order to get twice the views (2,000) and comments (284) in the same amount of time (18 days)?
This is my new goal for the project: to either hit 1,000 views in 9 days, or 2,000 in 18 days– whichever comes first.
Any ideas? 
Carolynn,
You raise an interesting challenge. And unfortunately, it has little to do with the actual questions posted daily. Sounds like a wonderful opportunity for a pyramid scheme. I need to do my part and tell another 5 people, who each tell 5 people, and so on.
Cheers,
j
Hey Jon,
Thanks for the comment… egads, pyramid schemes, not quite what I’m wanting to go with. I think what I’m trying to figure out is an authentic way for the project to “be remarkable” See this article: Seth Godin, How To Be Remarkable
At first, I had links on the site like “tell a friend”, etc., and I sent an email out to some friends & associates I thought might be interested. We actually had 0 results from that, and it’s because it was unwanted, typical “spam-like” marketing, which was not at all effective.
So I think in my quest for understanding “viral marketing”, I’m shooting for the authentic kind where I don’t even really ask people to tell others, they just do it because:
a) they want to
b) the site provides interesting value to them and
c) because somehow we’ve crossed over from being just a blog like all the others, to being a blog that makes a difference.
I think that depends heavily on the daily questions and the presentation & functionality of the site. I’ve noticed that when I post questions that are highly technical or specific to one particular niche, the general interest wanes. Also, for whatever reason, days when there are pictures with the post have a higher response rate.
So I think the challenge is to create something that generates continuous quality value to a reader, but, also that has a certain “awesomeness” that gets people to start talking about it…. but how to do that…?