August 9, 2009 65 Comments

The Power of the Absurd

Over the last few days, I’ve run two satirical blog posts: Get More Twitter Followers TODAY and 10 – no 4!! – Days to Become a Social Media Expert. They were meant to highlight how silly it is that there’s an entire cash-sucking industry built around getting more followers or learning about social media.

What I didn’t expect were the stats. I want to share my findings with you:

Stats for a Blog Post

The arrow marked “twitter post” shows the final day’s tally for the day I ran that post. The second arrow that’s marked “expert post” is actually a bit of a misnomer, because the stats show both the Twitter post *and* the expert post helping drive my traffic. What’s just crazy is the third arrow labeled “so far.”

For whatever reason, my stats package thinks the new day starts at about 10PM ET. I get a new graph every day at that time. I took that snapshot at Midnight ET of the day the expert post ran. That means I’m going to have one of my best blog traffic days ever on Saturday the 8th of August, and for what? A couple of silly posts?

Here’s the breakdown of the traffic on the day of the Twitter post:

stats

And here’s the breakdown of traffic so far of the “so far” day:

stats 2

What Does This All Mean?

Near as I can tell, it means that writing absurd pieces that mock or mirror the current status quo of things we’re passionate about like Twitter and Social Media can get some attention. But I think there’s more to it. Because people don’t expect snarky, sarcastic blog posts from me (or do you?), I think my efforts had even more impact. What’s your take on that?

Oh, I meant to tell you, on the day that I got the huge push against the Twitter post, LOTS of that traffic walked in the front door instead of clicking in from any discernible source:

stats3

So that means it wasn’t even pulled in via Twitter, but by sources either not tracked, or by people just typing in my URL.

Beyond this, I’m as stumped as you. I feel crazy and yet curious. There’s something to this little case study in the absurd. But what?

Related posts:

  1. The Raw Power of StumbleUpon
  2. 10-no-4 Days to Become a Social Media Expert
  3. 27 Blogging Secrets to Power Your Community
  4. Social Media as Personal Power
  5. The Power of Links

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  • http://twitter.com/trenttsd Trent Hamm

    I get small “Twitter floods” on a regular basis. What I've found is that when one happens, I get lots of “mystery clicks.” Those mystery clicks are coming from Twitter apps like TweetDeck and Twitterfon and Seesmic and so on.

  • http://www.twitter.com/philladden Phil

    Exactly! It's NOT about being an expert. It's about being real, connection, authenticty. Follow numbers are about appearence and do not represent the value of the tweet :).

  • Ty_Walsworth

    If you quit using sarcasm I will not follow you anymore. Kidding. That was sarcastic… and I really enjoy your humor in a world of too much serious. I start every day reading your emails. Don't change. I also enjoy long walks in the park, but you should know I am slightly overweight. Sarcasm. It IS wonderful. Love, @Ty_Walsworth

  • http://www.PhilLauterjung.com/ Phil Lauterjung

    There may have been some who thought those posts were serious, but I RT'd them because I thought you were spot on. I think there are many of us that really get a little tired of the mindless self-promotion from way too many people. I didn't think you were too snarky or sarcastic – it was “goldilocks” sarcasm, just right. Keep injecting your personality into what you write, that's why so many of us follow you. Don't give in to the vocal minority who may only follow you to find something (anything?) to criticize. With so many following you, you become a larger target; but, that doesn't mean you should change what brought you this far. Your advice has been that we should be ourselves when we use social platforms. Thanks for following your own advice. Keep up the good work, and wear that bulls-eye with pride.

  • http://davecriswell.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-was-i-thinking.html davecriswell

    Chris, outside of some of the other lessons learned from other commenteres, the first lesson I thought of is that it shows the power of the headline. It had the feel of a Cosmo or Enquirer headline, which work, right?!

    To back this up it would be interesting to see the bounce rate for these posts compared to others and also the time spent on the site where these posts were the lead in. My suspicion is that those visitors who thought the headlines were serious would quickly leave and not look at any of your other content.

    That may give a better understanding for the traffic bump. Could be an interesting analysis!

  • http://twitter.com/PixieStevenson Pixie Stevenson

    Then I'm an expert in baking chocolate chip cookies. Let me know when you're in Ohio again and I'll bring you some.

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  • http://www.PaulNorwine.com/ Paul Norwine

    Hi Chris,

    Not that this is information about your “reach” that you don't already know but I did a google search on the top 50 social media blogs to get some advice for starting out. You came up at #1 so I did a little surfing on your site and came across the posts you are referring to. I did think the titles were a little off with your following but was intrigued anyway (you obviously know what you are doing so I was hoping to get some little golden nuggets). So, even though you may not see yourself as an expert, google disagrees :( Thanks, Chris!

    Paul

  • paulnorwine

    Hi Chris,

    Not that this is information about your “reach” that you don't already know but I did a google search on the top 50 social media blogs to get some advice for starting out. You came up at #1 so I did a little surfing on your site and came across the posts you are referring to. I did think the titles were a little off with your following but was intrigued anyway (you obviously know what you are doing so I was hoping to get some little golden nuggets). So, even though you may not see yourself as an expert, google disagrees :( Thanks, Chris!

    Paul

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    I also want to learn some trick that how to get more followers on twitters,

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    I laughed my head off because well being both funny, they still had those decent signal – they were not out and out parody. I'd say move on and to hell with those who do not get it. It was funny, but yeah you have an effective style, as I have learned, sometimes people get when you're trying to be funny, but that's an individual thing. It's your fault they do not get it and the people you should not expect to dumb them down is not. A writing style that reflects the skills vary.

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