Using Twitter Trending Topics to Build Stats

A month ago I set out to use Twitter's trending topics, or #hashtags, to see if I could use them to build blog stats. See here.

Of course, being a numpty, I didn't record what my stats were for that week or how many overall page views I had at the time. So I don't have a great deal to compare to. But...

Over the last few weeks I've tweeted a few links to posts of mine that vaguely relate to the subject matter. 

 

#ithoughtyoulookedgood was perfect for this tale of a crazy woman going ape at me.

I linked up This Article is Doomed-  a failed attempt to offer dating advice to women- alongside trends such as #undateable and #youcantdateme. It was also a good match for #Ihavenopatience , a trend that one of my followers also included in a tweet. This was a bit of an eye-opener for me as his tweet read “#ihavenopatience for people who constantly RT their own blog. You know who you are.” Yes, I do. Well. Violins to you, follower. You can always unfollow, I thought. A few days later I checked my followers. He had.

Twitter is a place to share information. It's the perfect platform for this experiment, but perhaps I took it too far. Perhaps continuously supplying links to work that you've created is off-putting to followers... BUT, looking at my stats page tells a different story. 

 

Traffic Sources- All time (measuring from when I opened the blog in 2008)

Referring URLs (places featuring a link to my blog. List is in size order.)

Twitter.com 404

Quiddity of Delusion (friend's writing blog) 60

Twitter is the site giving me more referrals than any other, by a LONG way.

Adding a trend to your tweet puts your tweet into the trend's timeline. This timeline- a separate page on Twitter's site- will show you the real-time results of the tweets by anyone across the world using the same #hashtag. It's a page full of tweets all about the same thing- which could include something from your blog. It's a statistics magnet.

Speaking of “around the world”, don't forget that the trending topics differ dependant on the area searched. You'll be able to find a number of major US cities, and a few main cities in the UK. There is also a broader trend function relating to country.

In June I had 15000 hits. Now I have 22000. The trending project must have worked. The trending topics were beneficial to me because I have years of posts behind me, covering a range of subjects. New bloggers might not find the content to match up. Niche bloggers might not either, even if they've been writing for a while. But if you've covered a good range, which some might say I have, you might have something relevant. It's as good an excuse as any to throw up a link to an extra post- inviting the world to check it out.

Give it a shot yourself and let me know how it goes for you.