• Confusing navigation: If your site is built in a way that makes it hard for visitors to find what they’re looking for, each page view could represent a level of user frustration.
• Poor search: If your site’s search engine doesn’t work well, then some page views represent lists of unsuccessful search results.
• Pagination: If your articles are split into multiple web pages, then each part of the article counts as a page view.
• Media files: Is each picture or video on your site served on its own page? That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but just keep that in mind when analyzing your traffic.
• Hack: Two years ago, one of my blog posts received an undeserved spike of  12,000 page views when a URL-shortening service was hacked. Admittedly, you probably won’t run into this problem.

Please read Page views: bad metric #3 by Dana Chinn for a much more thorough explanation of the problems with the page view metric.

This is the last of a series of three posts about page views. The first installment was Page views mean so little. The second was Use page views wisely.

A page view is only one metric and it literally means only one thing: an HTML page was rendered by a web browser. The number of views that a page generates is valuable only if you understand how to use it. If your article or blog post is viewed more than the average post, don’t just pat yourself on the back, use your analytics program to dig up related data to provide the context necessary to figure out what to do next.

• Referring page: Did another web page drive people to that blog post? Visit that site. Subscribe to its RSS feed. Read the post that linked to yours. Read the comments. If appropriate, contribute to that conversation. Find out the author’s name. Find and follow her on Twitter. Thank the writer for mentioning and linking to your post.
  
• Search keywords: Did people get to your post from a search engine? What were they looking for when they found it? You might be surprised to find that it wasn’t what you thought was the most important part of your story. Investigate those topics and find out why people were so interested in it. There could be a good follow-up post for you to write.
• Previous page: Did readers get to the popular post after visiting another part of your site? What was the page that readers were on before getting to your post? Was it a tag or category archive page? If so, make sure all related posts are properly categorized and/or tagged. Was the previous page another blog post or article? If not, you need to start linking to related content on your site.
• Mobile: You might have spent days fine-tuning a Flash piece for your post, only to find that most of your audience read that post from a Flash-incompatible iPad or iPhone. If you discover that most of your popular posts are heavily read on phones or tablets, make sure your site is easy to read and navigate on those devices.
• Social: Assuming that you want your content to generate conversation, and not just views, take a look at who linked to your post from Twitter. You might find some people you want to follow and/or engage in conversation. How many times did Facebook users like, share and comment on your post (use RealShare)? Is your content popular on reddit or StumbleUpon or Digg? If so, join and explore those networks.
• Geography: If you are trying to attract an audience from a certain geographic region, make sure that your popular posts are popular with that crowd. If not, you reconsider that topic of coverage or the way in which you cover it.
• Day/time: Was there a particular time and/or day when the post saw a spike in page views? Try to figure out why that happened. Cross that information with the referring page and social network mentions. You might find that one blog or person was particularly influential. Do not try to “pitch” all your future stories to that person, but follow her and learn from what she shares.
• Weather: If you had a traffic spike on an rainy or intolerably hot day, some of that might simply be the result of people staying indoors to keep dry or cool. Make sure you have some extra posts reserved literally for a rainy day, and roll those out when the demand is high.

This is the second of three posts about page views. The first in the series is Page views mean so little. The last is Page views mean so much.

Image courtesy of James Sullivan on Flickr

If you’ve lost 10 pounds, you must be healthy, right? Of course not. Your bathroom scale can’t detect disease, infection, injury, etc. Just as weight alone does not reflect your overall health, page views alone don’t  reflect the overall success of your digital content. Don’t misinterpret  page views to mean any of the following.

• My article reached a large audience. A page that gets 500 page views rarely attracts 500 people. Have you ever been interrupted while reading an article and then revisited it to finish up? Is there a blog post to which you frequently refer? People view pages more than once. I probably account for 40 views to Craig Kanalley’s How To Verify A Tweet blog post.
• Few people read my article. On the flip side of that first point, your analytics program probably can’t count the people who read your content in an RSS reader or an aggregation application. Worse, the statistics you see probably don’t include mobile apps and might even exclude mobile web page views. Don’t be dismayed by low page views.
• Blog post X was not read many times. People don’t always click on a blog post to read it. Because of the format of most blogs, visitors can read posts in their entirety from the main page, or from a date, tag or category archive. Those activities don’t count as page views for a particular post. Please don’t try to force people to click just so that you can get that page view.
• My article or post was profitable. If advertising revenue is your main source of revenue, here are just a few numbers you’ll have to crunch to find out if you made a profit: your expenses, the number of ads served and the price of each ad. The formula is often more complicated than that. Simply put: page views might equal revenue, but they do not necessarily equal profit.
• People liked what I wrote. Just because people saw something doesn’t mean they enjoyed it.
• My post must have started some great conversations. If you ever assumed this with non-digital media, you have to stop now. The conversation isn’t only happening on your site. They’re happening on Google+, Twitter, hipsterrific hangouts, old school barbershops, or just among parents dropping their kids off at school.

This is the first of a series of three posts about page views. The second installment is Use page views wisely. The final post is Page views mean so much.

Note: This post was posted on July 5, although its publication date mistakenly read May 24. Thank you to Roxanne Hack for pointing this out.

Image courtesy of Mason Masteka via Flickr

BufferApp is basically a button on my browser. It’s a button I press whenever I come across a web page that I think my followers might like. Pressing that button brings up a window in which I compose a tweet with a shortened link. Instead of going out to the twitterverse immediately, the message is added to a “buffer” that BufferApp will send out one of the 9 times that I’ve already chosen in my settings. If BufferApp runs out of tweets to send, it sends me that email to remind me to add more tweets to the queue.

For me, that email might be the key to BufferApp’s success. It really annoys me. It annoys me like my boss annoys me when she bugs me about an overdue project (that polling page is almost done, Terry). It annoys me like I annoy my children when I have to remind them again to do their chores.

I hate that email so much that I work harder than ever to scan my Google Reader in the morning and fill my BufferApp with links. That’s right, that annoying email has basically made me a more consistent tweeter.

If you aren’t too proud to see if being treated like a child can sometimes be an effective time management tool, give BufferApp a try and let me know what you think.

If you manage multiple social network accounts for clients, or if you a have a team of workers who are tasked with being socially active, you’ve probably surveyed various tools to monitor the performance those accounts.

Empire Avenue is not billed as a social metrics tool, but after playing it for a week I became more aware of what some of my friends were doing on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn. That’s exactly what I would need if I managed a team of customer service reps, reporters or social media account managers.

At its most basic level, Empire Ave is a stock market simulator in which you build virtual wealth by investing in social people. From Empire:

Every day, you’re on Twitter, talking to friends on Facebook, uploading videos or photos, and writing blog posts. Just for doing that stuff, you’ll earn Eaves – our virtual currency – and we’ll dish out some more virtual cash to your shareholders.

So you gain wealth when the people you invest in engage in social activities. There’s a whole lot more to the game, but the basics are enough to show how easy this game can be used to evaluate and manage your company’s social activity.

1. Get your whole team to create an Empire account and connect their social accounts.
2. Invest in those team members and no one else. At first, invest in each member equally.
3. Check your portfolio every day. If you gain wealth then you know your team is being social.
4. Sort your portfolio by “gainers” and reward those team members for a job well done.
5. Sort your portfolio by “losers” and coach those colleagues to become more social.

The biggest challenge I see is that Empire Avenue might be too fun. Since beginning, I’ve divested in my friends (sorry) and transferred those funds into accounts with a higher return.

Oh yeah, another challenge is that your share price isn’t determined exclusively by your social activity. Your price also goes up if people buy more shares of you. So … go to http://empireavenue.com/?t=fvcx1nr0 and add (e)KSABLAN to your portfolio!

Here are a couple of links to get you started in the game:

• Empire Avenue 101 – Newbie Guide to the game
• The Quick Flip Versus Daily Dividends — How to Make Eaves in Empire Avenue
• This social media stock market game is building a real-world “value score” about you (with awesome video interview with Empire Avenue founder Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana

@ReallyVirtual: Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event). May 1, 12:58 am

@ReallyVirtual: Go away helicopter – before I take out my giant swatter :-/ May 1, 1:05 am

@ReallyVirtual: A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S May 1, 1:09 am

@ReallyVirtual: @m0hcin all silent after the blast, but a friend heard it 6 km away too… the helicopter is gone too. May 1, 1:44 am

@ReallyVirtual: @m0hcin http://bit.ly/ljB6p6 seems like my giant swatter worked ! May 1, 1:46 am

@ReallyVirtual: @m0hcin the few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani… May 1, 1:48 am

@ReallyVirtual: @raihak I try, man, I try May 1, 1:57 am

@ReallyVirtual: @raihak Funny, moving to Abbottabad was part of the ‘being safe’ strategy May 1, 1:57 am

@ReallyVirtual: Since taliban (probably) don’t have helicpoters, and since they’re saying it was not “ours”, so must be a complicated situation #abbottabad May 1, 2:02 am

@ReallyVirtual: @raihak yep, the mad power cuts have reached abbottabad – 14 hours daily – luckily I have a generator AND a UPS at the coffee shop May 1, 2:03 am

@ReallyVirtual: @tahirakram yea. *hides his giant swatter* May 1, 2:03 am

@ReallyVirtual: @kashaziz technically, it is unidentified until identified, and it is a flying object, so year, why the hell not, we have seen weirder stuff May 1, 2:04 am

@ReallyVirtual: @tahirakram they’re not saying anything May 1, 2:05 am

@ReallyVirtual: The abbottabad helicopter/UFO was shot down near the Bilal Town area, and there’s report of a flash. People saying it could be a drone. May 1, 2:10 am

@ReallyVirtual: @wqs figures, if they have the right to shoot planes flying over the president house, the must have the same instructions for PMA May 1, 2:14 am

@ReallyVirtual: @smedica people are saying it was not a technical fault and it was shot down. I heard it CIRCLE 3-4 times above, sounded purposeful. May 1, 2:15 am

@ReallyVirtual: @tahirakram very likely – but it was too noisy to be a spy craft, or, a very poor spy craft it was. May 1, 2:16 am

@ReallyVirtual: @smedica It must have been more, I started noticing the helicpoter when the noise got irritating – which part of Abbottabd are you in? May 1, 2:20 am

@ReallyVirtual: @smedica I live near Jalal Baba Auditorium May 1, 2:23 am

@ReallyVirtual: @smedica ‘safer’ is a relative term that has lost its meaning in Pakistan May 1, 2:26 am

@ReallyVirtual: Here’s the location of the Abbottabad crash according to some people >>> http://on.fb.me/khjf34 May 1, 2:34 am

@ReallyVirtual: Two helicpoters, one down, could actually be the training accident scenario they’re saying it was >> http://bit.ly/ioGE6O May 1, 2:43 am

@ReallyVirtual: and now I feel I must apologize to the pilot about the swatter tweets :-/ May 1, 3:05 am

@ReallyVirtual: And now, a plane flying over Abbottabad… May 1, 3:39 am

@ReallyVirtual: @raihak The day there is uninterrupted electricity in Lahore for a whole month, I will start packing my bags, until then, Abbottabad is home May 1, 4:14 am

@ReallyVirtual: Interesting rumors in the otherwise uneventful Abbottabad air today May 1, 8:00 am

@ReallyVirtual: Report from a taxi driver: The army has cordoned off the crash area and is conducting door-to-door search in the surrounding May 1, 8:02 am

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed What really happened doesn’t matter if there is an official story behind it that 99.999% of the world would believe May 1, 8:08 am

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed Another rumor: two copters that followed the crashed one were foreign Cobras – and got away May 1, 8:10 am

@ReallyVirtual: @ahmedbilal @kursed Sadly. We should start learning how to spread believable stories and recreate a reality that suits us. May 1, 8:12 am

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed True, but stranger things have happened. I just hope they don’t find my giant helicopter swatter. Must hide it :-/ May 1, 8:15 am

@ReallyVirtual: Report from a sweeper: A family also died in the crash, and one of the helicopter riders got away and is now being searched for. May 1, 8:21 am

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed Well, there were at least two copters last night, I heard one but a friend heard two, for 15-20 minutes. May 1, 8:24 am

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed I think I should take out my big blower to blow the fog of war away and see the clearer picture. May 1, 8:24 am

@ReallyVirtual: I guess Abbottabad is going to get as crowded as the Lahore that I left behind for some peace and quiet. *sigh* May 1, 8:27 am

@ReallyVirtual: Wondering what would be the right music to play in the coffee shop today… May 1, 8:35 am

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed so, not that hard anymore I guess? May 1, 8:35 am

@ReallyVirtual: I guess I should unsubscribe from the #abbottabad search on twitter before it kills my machine. Leave Abbottabad alone, Osama and Obama… May 1, 8:41 am

@ReallyVirtual: @harisn we are both right outside Islamabad :-) May 1, 8:47 am

@ReallyVirtual: I need to sleep, but Osama had to pick this day to die :-/ May 1, 9:03 am

@ReallyVirtual: Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it. May 1, 9:41 am

@ReallyVirtual: and here come the mails from the mainstream media… *sigh* May 1, 9:42 am

With no real research to back up this claim (remember, this is just my personal blog, not a product of journalism), I’m sure the key to the lab’s success is that they do a great job surfacing stories that I, and the people I follow, find helpful, informative and useful.

The sites and humans that I follow frequently share links to Neiman because they consistently provide interesting content that is often news to their audience of journalists. Those links increase the chance that Neiman stories will show up high in search engines, social streams and curated sites.

The graph below shows search volume (for the word news) on a scale from 0 to 100. Volume was 100 in July 2005, and 96 in March 2011. Read about how Insights for Search works to learn more about the graph.

• @mashable, with a Klout score of 87, is as influential as New York Times, and more influential than any other publication on the list.
• @wikileaks and @techcrunch, with Klout scores of 85 (Wikileaks and TechCrunch),  are more influential than Wall Street Journal.
• @tmz and @gizmodo, with Klout scores of 80 (TMZ and Gizmodo), are more influential than New York Post and USA Today.
• @tbd, with a Klout score of 68, is more influential than Washington Post.
• @thedailybeast, with a Klout score of 78,  is more influential than the Boston Globe and Miami Herald.
• @propublica, with a Klout score of 73,  is more influential than the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.

If you found this interesting, here are other  pages you might want to read:

• What is the Klout Score? Understanding the Influence Metric
• The Top 25 Newspapers on Twitter — Who’s Up, Who’s Down
• The top newspapers on Twitter? Try this list
• Mashable leads Twitter influence list
• Sites: Mashable, Wikileaks, TechCrunch, TMZ, Gizmodo,TBD, The Daily Beast, ProPublica

After Dylan Stableford (@stableford) published a list of top 25 newspapers on Twitter,  based on print circulation, Mathilde Piard  (@mathildepiard) followed with her own list of top newspapers on Twitter that “goes by number of followers on Twitter, not circulation.” I used the accounts from those posts to create the list below. Make sure to read those posts to learn about the selection process.

Here are the numbers. Click on a Twitter username to visit the account. Click on a Klout score for details about that measurement. Oh, and feel free to see the data in this Google Doc.