Not 500 posts per se (46 draft posts), but still a good point for a retrospective.
I've been running this blog since 2011 (with various degrees of seriousness/attention/dedication). No (active) promotion on my part. While Google+ was active, things I posted here got picked up there--I know of at least one person who began to follow the blog that way. A couple of years back, I added a link to my email signature, and this year I started using Twitter, and using IFTTT (If This Then That) to post things from blogger to Twitter. I would say that has made the most noticeable difference--On the traffic sources, Twitter is the second largest river, behind only google.uk (where people seem to find the site searching for details about the original Outlook Tower, which is this blogs namesake.
Twitter ha been a big deal. For years, my two biggest sources of 'traffic' were 'bait' sites like referrer, and some SEO-generated porn-site links. Only in the past year have sources of actual traffic replaced that, all of it referred from Twitter. One of the nice things about Twitter is that I'm getting immediate response to how many views I'm getting. And I'm learning (re-learning) the importance of good titles (as that's all IFTTT posts on Twitter).
The two most popular entries remain two early posts: Public Lounge Chair and Skyscraper Forum. I don' think they are actually that great of posts--but I tend to think that people were clicking on the blog and then clicking on posts from the 'Most popular posts' gadget. Which then reinforced their popularity, such that they never left the top category. I've changed that today, so we will see what that brings.
The original inspiration for the blog was Jarrett Walker's 'Human Transit'. I'd quit my job, and was working hard at making a serious effort at the blog (daily updates, etc), both as a way to develop my own consulting business, but also as a means to clarify my own thinking on things.
Watching Human Transit change over the years, I've seen Jarrett Walker doing increasing amount of internal linking, to past blog posts. Likely drives interest more than the blogger 'popular posts' gadgets, and it's a nice way to get a lot of content across, in bite-sized pieces, without overwhelming the reader. (Screens are small these days, creating 'pages' is simple, and the is no need for the long-format Geocities wall of text). But I've also come to realize that the ability to link to a specific article on a point is a great way to provide a counter-argument in the middle of a debate. There is no need to retype something already written, when there is a clean, clear, well thought out and well-articulated vision of it.
That said, being able to articulate a point on demand is helpful, but I don't think writing things down is necessarily antithetical to that. Writing it down in longform essay format, perhaps. But it's easy to draw good 'talking points' from a well-written essay.
I'm spending a lot of time interacting with Cap'n Transit on Twitter these days, often re-posting, sometimes replying (and sometimes clashing). He's very very active. (I don't know how he manages to find the time--perhaps he's Patreon funded? I tip my hat to him regardless.
Twitter ha been a big deal. For years, my two biggest sources of 'traffic' were 'bait' sites like referrer, and some SEO-generated porn-site links. Only in the past year have sources of actual traffic replaced that, all of it referred from Twitter. One of the nice things about Twitter is that I'm getting immediate response to how many views I'm getting. And I'm learning (re-learning) the importance of good titles (as that's all IFTTT posts on Twitter).
The two most popular entries remain two early posts: Public Lounge Chair and Skyscraper Forum. I don' think they are actually that great of posts--but I tend to think that people were clicking on the blog and then clicking on posts from the 'Most popular posts' gadget. Which then reinforced their popularity, such that they never left the top category. I've changed that today, so we will see what that brings.
The original inspiration for the blog was Jarrett Walker's 'Human Transit'. I'd quit my job, and was working hard at making a serious effort at the blog (daily updates, etc), both as a way to develop my own consulting business, but also as a means to clarify my own thinking on things.
Watching Human Transit change over the years, I've seen Jarrett Walker doing increasing amount of internal linking, to past blog posts. Likely drives interest more than the blogger 'popular posts' gadgets, and it's a nice way to get a lot of content across, in bite-sized pieces, without overwhelming the reader. (Screens are small these days, creating 'pages' is simple, and the is no need for the long-format Geocities wall of text). But I've also come to realize that the ability to link to a specific article on a point is a great way to provide a counter-argument in the middle of a debate. There is no need to retype something already written, when there is a clean, clear, well thought out and well-articulated vision of it.
That said, being able to articulate a point on demand is helpful, but I don't think writing things down is necessarily antithetical to that. Writing it down in longform essay format, perhaps. But it's easy to draw good 'talking points' from a well-written essay.
I'm spending a lot of time interacting with Cap'n Transit on Twitter these days, often re-posting, sometimes replying (and sometimes clashing). He's very very active. (I don't know how he manages to find the time--perhaps he's Patreon funded? I tip my hat to him regardless.
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