My last post “Are you following Colin Powell’s rules?” was submitted to ProBlogger’s “Killer titles” group writing project last week.  I made it in just 30 minutes before the deadline, which worked out great because it meant my post was listed in the submissions for day 4 of the project which landed me fifth from the top of the list (see the full list here).

As predicted by Darren participating in this project and being listed in the submissions page brought a spike of new visitors to this website.  I admit it was great fun reading through the titles and visiting some of these sites that I had never seen before to read their own submissions.

The results for me were very pleasing:

• triple my normal daily traffic for the two days after my link appeared
• an average time on site for readers referred from ProBlogger of 4:23, indicating most visitors read the nearly 1500 words in the post
• a reader liked it enough to submit to Digg
• a few visitors left comments which I appreciated

What I didn’t get:

• many Diggs :-P
• any other social traffic
• any new subscribers

Things to take away and address:

• Better titles for my posts.  The traffic spike was nice but not overwhelming, and my title was nowhere near as good as the best ones among the rest of the submissions.
• Social media submissions.  A better post title may help, but I also need more social media friends to help spread the word about my website.  As a starting target I’d like to write a quality post (not a blatant linkbait) that hits 100 Diggs.
• Better placement of feed links.  My current RSS placement is awful and it wouldn’t surprise me if it goes completely unnoticed by visitors.  I need to move it, make it more prominent, and add email subscription options as well.

All in all the group writing project was fun and entertaining to be a part of and I’ll definitely be watching out for the next one.

Tagged as: Blogging, Social, Social Media, Writing