How Well Is Your Articles Marketing Campaign Going?
Recently, I decided to ascertain just how much of what I was writing online - to aid my marketing efforts - was getting read and/or syndicated on other websites. Basically, whenever I find evidence that my work has been syndicated elsewhere, I actually consider THAT a more reliable indication of just how well I am doing compared to when I see how many times each of my articles has been viewed. In my opinion, the number of views (”No. Of Views”) recorded per article probably indicates the effectiveness of the article title, more than it does the actual impression each visitor had of the full article’s content. In other words, I believe it is possible that some articles get “viewed” more often than others, NOT because their contents are more beneficial, but because their titles are better crafted than others of the same “age” as them.
I always try to imagine what went through the mind of the person who chose to syndicate my article(s) on his/her website. For the most part, I expect that s/he actually took time to read each one to the point that s/he felt it would be useful content to syndicate in order to attract visitors = “traffic”. I also prefer syndication of my articles, because I know that a person might click on an article title that looks interesting (thereby increasing the “No Of Views”), in a bid to read the full write-up, only to leave (click-away) after reading one or two paragraphs, because s/he found it did not seem to offer the information s/he had expected. In this case, the number of views for the article would have increased, but not much in terms of qualitative marketing exposure for the author would have been achieved.
Take another perspective. The number of views for a relatively new article when compared with an older or earlier published one, tends not to give an entirely accurate picture of how each article is doing relative to the other. Consider this example. An article published 100 days ago, when checked this afternoon is shown to have been viewed 100 times while one published 30 days ago is shown to have already been viewed 90 times at about the same time. If you looked at the “No. Of Views”, without taking into consideration how long each article has been available for viewing, you would get the impression that the former was doing better, i.e. getting more reader interest than the latter. In fact, a closer look at those numbers will reveal the situation is exactly the opposite! (See explanation of why this is so below).
Why An Article With A Lower “No. Of Views” May Be Doing Better
You need to be able to assess all your articles based on the same standard or benchmark. One thing that is common to all articles is that they have a date of publication. Another is the fact that at any point in time, each article’s AGE post publication can be accurately determined by computing the difference between the first day of publication and the current date.
It’s fairly simple logic - only it tends not to be immediately obvious. Rather than use the “total views” recorded, we could get additional information by measuring the total views, say, per number of days (or weeks? months?) since the article was published. The result would be a value - an index - measured in views per day (or week? month?). In the example introduced in the preceding section, dividing the “No. Of Views” for each article by its “age”(i.e. Days Post Publication), shows that the “younger” article has actually been attracting more reader interest - scoring 3 views per day - since it was published, than the “older one” - which scored 1 view per day on the average. Very often, deriving a weighted average index based on an absolute measure like “total views” gives a more representative and useful/reliable indication of performance.
From the above, you can therefore see why I’m saying the ‘No. Of Views” of an article - useful as it is - may sometimes not be adequate to accurately evaluate the true level of readers’ interest in (or value placed on) your articles. Having said that, it currently appears to be the more commonly provided measure of performance by most articles directories. In addition, it appears only a handful of visitors who click to read articles they are interested in, ever take time to “rate” any of them using the easy rating tool provided at the bottom of each article’s page. This could suggest they prefer to download articles they click on, for offline viewing, or that they are often too much in a hurry to take the few seconds required to give this feedback. It was in order to address the shortcomings described above, and make more sense of the “No. Of Views” recorded for my articles, that I developed the RII
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