YouTube Traffic vs. Blogger Traffic

My little experiment with sharing a blog article on LinkedIn has spurred a number of questions. I talked with a couple of my buddies about it at lunch today and they provided some interesting insight. I thought you might find it interesting as well.

I wondered aloud with them as to why people would click from LinkedIn to my blog but not continue on to see any of my YouTube videos. One of them suggested that people will often keep up-to-date on their social media feeds via smartphones. Smartphones lend themselves to viewing blogs much more easily than to videos. You can read a blog on the train or quietly at your desk. Watching videos usually requires some sort of sound output and that can cut down on people's willingness to watch.

Both blogspot.com and YouTube are owned by Google and come with extensive analytics. I thought I would go through and see if my buddy's hypothesis is true. To do that I looked at the platform people use to view the content I have created. Sure enough, the overwhelming platform that people use to view my YouTube videos is the computer. My blog entry I promoted on LinkedIn is most often viewed on smartphones.

This has me rethinking my video content. There are a number of spectacular videos that don't need narration. My favorite ski videos don't have someone talking over breathtaking powder montages. They may have some pumped-up music synchronized with the movements of the skier. Perhaps I need to cut down on the amount of narration I have in my videos.

Playing with the analytics definitely gives me something to think about and ideas to try in my next videos. I have two that I am working on now and make adjustments accordingly. If you have any ideas or comments, please let me know. I am trying to get better at what I do and help from the outside is always welcome. 

Lengthening My Blog Posts

This year I have a goal to increase my social network following. It is something I have not worried about since I started blogging back in 2009. So why does it matter now? Well, I would like to eventually write an article on increasing blog followers and YouTube video viewers. Given my current statistics for this blog and my YouTube channel, nobody is going to believe I know anything about that topic. Truth be told, I don't. At least not yet and so this year is going to be an experiment on how to change that.

In doing a bit of research on the Internet I have come across a number of articles talking about the importance of writing lengthy blog articles (1000 to 1500 words). Of course the content is key and just adding words to make an article longer isn't going to help. However longer articles are more likely to be referenced in other blogs which adds to the number of viewers. There are some exceptions but that is how worthless lottery tickets get purchased as people believe they are an exception and not the norm.

After reading about longer articles, I thought I would experiment and made sure my last article came in at over 1000 words. I actually tried to make it 1500 but ran out of time (it takes a long time to write 1500 words). Then I sat tight and watched how many more views that article receives vs. some of my others. I wish I could say that the number of readers increased significantly. It started out strong but now doesn't seem to be getting any more traffic than a short posting. I'm not sure if that is because of the content or if all of my blog posts need to be more lengthy before other readers start to notice. Both are probably a factor and so I will need to do more work before I can draw any significant conclusions.

The only downside with writing longer articles is that I have to be a lot more organized. I also have to come up with topics that matter to people. In the past I could sit down at the airport and just write about some new technology I worked with during the week. That is still possible but I will need to take a bit more time and discuss the topics more thoroughly.

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think. Should I keep my posts to around 300 words or lengthen them to over 1000?

Increasing Blog Traffic

My oldest son recently did a review for a pair of ski bindings from Tyrolia. Naturally he provided them with a favorable review and then provided a link to it on their Facebook page which they immediately made available to all of their followers/visitors. His blog page received a lot of traffic and that made him happy.

I have been wondering how to increase the traffic to my own blog and my son's experience provided one example of how to do so. I had never thought about submitting a product review to the manufacturer based on one of my own postings. It is a brilliant idea. If you have a blog and want to increase your traffic, do a review in one of your postings and let the company know about it. Now I just need to find a product worthy of a review.

Engineering Notebooks

I was instructed to keep notebooks by my engineering professors when I was getting my degree in Electrical Engineering. I was told that all good engineers kept notebooks and so I dutifully obliged. When I went to work for Oracle Corporation right out of college, I continued to keep notebooks and have kept every single one. My professors told me that my employers would want to retain my notebooks when I left but not a single company has ever asked for them.

Naturally I started a new notebook when I joined my current company and have filled two volumes. My coworkers see my notebooks and have been known to make copies of various pages. I have even had several people mention that I should write a book. I tell them I have and that it was a lot of work for very little pay. Lately I have been thinking about writing another book though. The only problem is that people don't really read technical books any more. It is much easier find information on the Internet. Then my boss suggested I write a technical blog, string the entries together, and create an electronic book of sorts. I suppose I could do that with this blog, but it is far too diverse for a single book. Besides I try to keep my entries short and simple so that everyone can understand them.

The book I want to write is very technical and so this evening I will be starting a second blog. Don't worry, I will still contribute to this one so that I get my 71 entries per year. My second blog will be a deep dive into PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL has some of the best documentation for any computer software, whether commercial or open source. However it lacks a cohesive set of examples and certain solutions to real-world problems. My hope is that my new blog will work hand-in-hand with the existing documentation and add clarity to some rather difficult concepts. Hopefully it solves a hole that I feel exists currently.

The Power of the Keyboard

There were several days during my Christmas break where I meant to create a Blog entry but was upstairs and away from my computer. Rather than going back to my office, I pulled out one of my Android-based tablets and pontificated on the day's events. You can tell which days they were because the entries are significantly shorter than the others.

Don't get me wrong, I love using my tablets to look things up on the Internet or take short notes during meetings. They are just difficult to use to create a Blog entry. While your finger makes a great pointer, it makes a lousy substitute for a mouse when it comes to highlighting text. The on-screen keyboard found on any tablet is usable, but is no match for a real one. In the end it was just easier to use my laptop.

I have a friend that is wondering if he can replace his home computer with a tablet. Unfortunately I don't think either of the tablets I have are there yet. Perhaps I should spend some time at an electronics store and see if I can't get an external keyboard. I wonder if there is a way I can win one?

Staying Current

It is important to stay current with the technologies you use on a daily basis. This is especially true of the ones you use at work. As I am a database guy that works mostly in PostgreSQL, I make sure that the PostgreSQL website is always present in one of my browser tabs. I also make sure to read all of the entries from Planet PostgreSQL.

Normally I can just skim over the postings. Today was different. There was a great story from Josh Berkus about racing to create a database with a billion tables. While that would be a database administrator's nightmare, it was interesting to see the results. Josh didn't succeed in getting to a billion tables as the machine crashed before then due to operating system limitations. It did make it to the 4 million table mark. I would be interested to see how many tables could be created on a system with fewer limits, but would have to slash my wrists if I ever got put in charge of a database with over a million tables.

The second interesting posting of the day was from Robert Haas at EnterpriseDB. While I used to work at EDB, Robert came after I left and so I don't know him other than from his blog. He talked about some of the performance optimizations the PostgreSQL developers are thinking of adding to version 9.2. I have to say I am impressed if they actually are able to make them work. Some of the projects for which I am responsible, require extreme database speed. Anything the developers can do to make it faster, make me happy.

Not everyone is a big fan of databases and so I don't suggest that you immediately go out and read up on PostgreSQL. However I can recommend that you find quality websites relating to the technology you use at your job and read them daily. It doesn't take much time and will help you keep on top of any new features that you might just need.