High Traffic Area: Â Marsha’s Blog
I have to admit that this is my question, but it stems from a conversation I had with Leanne Cole about getting more traffic from our blogs. Â She started scheduling her posts, and so, as usual, I copied. Â You would think I could be more original with my blog than to copy people, but sorry to say, I’m a teacher. Â If there’s anything teachers learn to do well in life, it’s copy others. Â You have a successful lesson in your class? Â We are the best copy cats in the world. Â Now if we catch a kid doing the same thing….. Â YOU COPIED HIS ANSWERS ON THE TEST! Â XXXXXXX Â RRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPP Â SCORE “F”. Â Actually things are changing in the world of education. Â It’s becoming more than perfectly ok to work together and come up with collaborative answers – finally! Â But I meander.
The sad and happy thing about my statistics are that they are fairly consistent. Â It doesn’t seem to matter what I write. Â Yesterday I had friends, just under 800 of them who all actually come to my site and read about two posts per visit every month. Â I unhooked one of my Facebook accounts accidentally, and now I only have about 600 friends. Â I had tons of friends, (about 1,100) in December and January when I was planning and executing my online birthday party for Renee. Â That was really fun, and people do like to come to parties – even online. Â But, like in the Great Gatsby, once the party was over, the folks went home, and only the real friends stayed.
But that still doesn’t answer the question about whether scheduling posts has made my blog more successful. Â What I can say is that I’m down the number of visitors since May, and I’m down the number of visits in both June and July.
But here’s the deal. Â Those are summer months here in the United States. Â Beautiful outdoor types of days, that stretch into romantic summer nights. Â I haven’t been at blogging long enough to have a record of if summer really affects one’s number of views. Â It looks like this will be my worst month yet. Â So, if I am just measuring recent statistics, then I would say that scheduling posts has been detrimental to my view finding, and I’m better off just blogging about whatever random thoughts float across my brain.
Looking at things another way – responses. Â First of all, people all over the world are not rushing to my blog asking ANY questions of me. Â I grab them from wherever I can get them – even turning random comments into possible questions. Â So, the expert at whatever, I’m not. Â My comments are down.
Other than my online party for Renee, my most comment happy day was May 19th.  Now this statistic can be skewed because some people comment more than others, and actually converse back and forth with me for ages.  If I could count number of words in a comment then Autty Jade is my best all time commenter, and it wouldn’t matter what I write because Autty and her dad, Sir, love me and I love them even though we’ve never actually met.  (I don’t want to give you folks the wrong idea – I am happily married to Vince.)
Then Ralph, another conversationalist whom I love dearly, has been busy with his house since June, and only has time for a like or two. Â He’s another blogger who would read anything I write because he loves me. Â (He doesn’t tell me that, but he does!) Â I could write about dead flies in my homemade soup, and Ralph and Autty would read it and write back asking if they could come over for dinner. Â See why I love them so much! Â Sylvia, Dianne and Carol would write, “Eewww, Marsha, and then add something cute and funny.” Â Leanne would say, “No thanks, Marsha. Â I’ll stay here in Australia.” Â Viveka, Paula, and Benzeknees would tell me a good story about dead bugs in their soup because they seem to have the same problems that I do in life. Â Andrew would send me a close up picture of a living fly. Â Jim, JT, Guapo and Sydney would say something incredibly sympathetic, and invite me to dinner with their family at a nice restaurant a million miles away.
I’d better stop there because it is going to take a long time to insert a link to all these names, but trust me, I adore my commenters. Â The stalker bloggers would slip away in the night and never come back for fear I might tell the bugs to crawl into their soup, but they wouldn’t tell me about it.
The moral of this post is that I will get around to changing my schedule eventually, or rearranging it, but I’m going to keep on and try to lose a few more viewers for a little longer. Then I’m going on a real push to get serious about blogging, and bring my followers up to at least 5,000, and my total views per month to at least 20,000. Â However, before I do that, I’ve got to get my best-selling book written and published, and have a showing of my photography at a famous California art gallery. Â I’m also thinking about becoming a body-builder and I’m definitely going to start taking Yoga, so I can teach it until I’m 95 years old.
Gosh, I have so much to do before I retire for good. Â I’d better get going. Â First, I’m going out to lunch and shopping with Paula, and out to lunch and a movie with Sally and friends for Alice’s birthday tomorrow, lunch with Marie on Wednesday, and Elane on Thursday, and to a meeting on Friday. Â Did I mention that I also promised to fix lunch for Vince and his son every day this week, too?
I need a clone! And I’m not even THAT popular!  Just look at my stats!  🙂
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
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