July byte counting – Monthly blogging stats

I’ve decided to start keeping a regular eye on my statistics  because I think this information might be useful for anyone new to blogging who is looking at how to generate traffic and readership to their own blogs.

July has been a huge month for the blog, the best ever according to site statistics, including a new high in daily traffic and the first time my visitor numbers for the week cracked 1000 hits. This extra traffic was due to two posts going (relatively) viral plus I had extra time on my hands due to holidays which in true geek  form I spent time writing blog posts.

I also used my holidays do some research for upcoming operation job search had some fun attending Nethui, EducampTT and Ignite offline while online I took part in the PLN challenge, presented a paper to #Twecon, attended some sessions of RSCON3 and had an attempt to get #DUedchat up and running.

Don’t worry I still had time to chill out and relax doing non-teaching bloggy stuff like making my first beer cake for my friend Jeremy’s 30th birthday. Although I found the recipe on a blog so perhaps there really is no hope for me. On the plus side that cake was one of the best chocolate cakes I’ve ever made.

Right statistics time.

Posts: 21

Comments: 115

Page Loads: 3,539 (average: 112 hits a day)

Biggest day: July 19 (454 hits)

Most commented on post: Orewa College: It’s not actually about the technology  generated a lot of discussion both on the blog and via twitter. There was a very interesting discussion on blogging anonymously while there was also a lot of comment on Dear Teacher Education Providers – Can you enter the 21st century please? which was re-tweeted a fair bit including by the UNESCO Chair in e-learning.

Top 5 most popular posts (in order of popularity)

• Orewa College: It’s not actually about the technology (581 hits)
• Dear Teacher Education Providers – Can you enter the 21st century please? (307 hits)
• Graduating Teacher Standards – E portfolio (206 hits)
• Weekly reflection: If you want to learn, don’t let the geek touch your device! (187 hits)
• Advice needed: finding your first teaching job (155 hits)

Twitter is a major driver of traffic to this blog, it accounted for 256 referrals this month compared to 244 referrals for the first 5 months of this blog. Facebook is my next most common referrer with 173 referrals. @SteveVoisey drove a lot of traffic to this blog due with his shout-out on my Orewa post which resulted in 63 referrals so thanks Steve for the linky love.  The Hand Mirror has moved down to the 4th largest source of visitors with 37 referrals and google reader takes out the 5th spot which means I must have some regular readers out there now. Yah!

Thanks again dear readers for clicking through especially to the ones who leave me comments, they really are appreciated. A slice of virtual cake is coming your way.

Coming up in August

• My second Teaching Experience (started today) so bloggage will likely be light in August through to mid-September.
• AKL Edu camp! Can you tell I’m just a little bit excited about that?
• The blog cracks 10,000 visitors (currently at 9,447 at time of writing)
• Guest posts, there’s some awesome posts in the works from a multiple array of perspectives.
• I have numerous  freak outs about visiting lecturer assessments and finding a teaching job.
• Another #DUedchat

Mid-January through to end of June