Apr 26
Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind?
Published by Amybeth (@researchgoddess) at 6:30 am under Blogging,Social,Twitter
With the availability of so much information these days via social media, I feel that if you’re not constantly putting yourself in front of your audiences, you take a chance on them forgetting about you. In about three weeks, I am doing a presentation at the Social Recruiting Summit in Minneapolis on how recruiting professionals can do this without being annoying to their audiences.
Since I tend to be a bit of an over-sharer on Twitter, last week I decided to take the entire week off from tweeting via @researchgoddess, just to see what would happen. I also didn’t write any new blog posts.
My guess is that most of you did not notice, which is what I expected to happen. However, even though I wasn’t actively posting new content, I still gained a couple new Twitter followers, and my blog continued to be visited. The volume to my blog went down only slightly, and the search terms with which people found my blog were a little different:
2 weeks ago
last week
Twitter was a different story. I stopped tweeting on Sunday the 18th. Over the course of the week I had a total of only 13 tweets to me…a significant change. The first tweet to me wasn’t even until 3 days after I stopped. There were no tweets for previous blog posts or links that I had shared in the past. Only one person, @mosy311, made an observation that I hadn’t tweeted in awhile. I had 5,141 followers last Saturday, and as of Sunday evening, I had 5,143 followers. Over the course of the week I gained and lost quite a bit but I netted only 1 new follower. Basically – I was forgotten. I used Twitalyzer to check out some metrics over the course of the week:
My conclusion? The search-ability of my blog and the keywords I use on it kept it active and visited. The terms with which people found my blog changed, some for the better. (I love the fact that search for “AT&T sourcing” brought traffic to my blog!) Twitter however, appears to require more updating and attentive interaction in order to stay relevant. Even though search engines like Bing and Google now pick up tweets and other social traffic, it’s still important to be in front of your audience’s eyes and continue to update. I suspect that if I went another 1-2 weeks without blogging, these numbers would change and get lower. But it would seem that occasional neglect of a blog is less impactful to one’s online identity than neglect of your Twitter account – if you’ve got an established audience as I do.
One thing I did discover while being silent this week is that life DOES go on when you’re not twittering, and I enjoyed the break. But don’t be too sad – I am going to start tweeting again now!
I would like to know what you used to collect the search strings on how your site was found. Would appreciate it!
I may have been to involved in my own social media efforts and obsession with my Alexa rank (which continues to improve as long as I keep my content growing and refreshed) but that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss you! Glad you’re back. Makes you seem closer and that’s nice!
Interesting research. Did you miss tweeting?
I checked your blog daily, anxiously awaiting your next post..glad your experiment is over and you are back sharing your perspective!
Benjamin: that information comes directly from my blog host, Atomic18. If you want I can give you the information… I self host now and the tools are pretty robust.
Katie: sort of
It was really nice to take a break and focus on other things, but it’s nice to be back!
Debba and Susan: thanks for the love. I really appreciate it!
Would love to hear about it and receive the info. I may need to check my host and look more into the tools!
Feel free to email the info! Thanks again
I may have been to involved in my own social media efforts and obsession with my Alexa rank (which continues to improve as long as I keep my content growing and refreshed) but that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss you! Glad you’re back. Makes you seem closer and that’s nice!