MetaChat - Alan Alda goes viral

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17 July 2013

Alan Alda goes viral My blog got another boost yesterday, or rather its Facebook page did.→[More:]

Every day I post a link to the day's post on the Facebook page, and I also like to share whatever interesting items I can find in the page's newsfeed. I follow lots of knitting pages, which is really useful for giving me post ideas and keeping me up to date on what's happening in knitting media.

Some days there is nothing in the newsfeed I consider worth sharing, in which case I do a quick search online and find a couple of things I can post. Yesterday morning was such a day, and one of the two things I posted was a screencap of Alan Alda (as Hawkeye from M*A*S*H) knitting.

It generated some mild attention and got some likes and half a dozen shares. Then in the afternoon Vogue Knitting shared it on their page, and the photo went crazy viral. It's now been shared 325 times, and been seen by 36,240 people. Knitters do tend to be an older crowd, and I guess they all love their Alan Alda.

As of this post, I have 108 new followers for my page. To give you an idea of just how big a boost this has been, I set that Facebook page up eight months ago and as of this time yesterday had 329 likes, or an average of about 41 likes a month. Now I have 437.

This is my first spike in months — my traffic has been almost flat. It's the oddest thing, isn't it, what goes viral and what gets everyone's attention? I'll post a link to something I've worked for hours on, and it just seems to drop like a rock. Then I take two minutes to post a photo of Alan Alda knitting, and all hell breaks loose.

post by: Orange Swan at: 08:54 | 13 comments

That's pretty cool. Does your blog get a traffic boost when you post about it on Metachat?

posted by Hugh Janus 17 July | 09:20

No, not really. I mean, some of you do click through to look at whatever post I've told you about but we're talking maybe 50 or 60 click throughs in the course of the next week. My blog gets over 3000 page views a week, so an extra 50-60 clicks is not even noticeable in the overall stats.

I post here in the spirit of telling friends about something that's happening in my life that I'm excited about rather than as self-promotion.

posted by Orange Swan 17 July | 09:46

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that you were engaging in self-promotion, I was just wondering whether our clicks caused an appreciable bump in stats. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity!

posted by Hugh Janus 17 July | 10:00

I do dream of my knitting site getting posted to MeFi someday, but I can't see it happening. It's too niche a blog without really having a special angle that would make it of interest to a generalist site. I could see it maybe getting used as a supplementary link on a given topic, but that's all.

It is all about the presentation; you have to hook readers in by teasing out the aspects of a niche blog that will be of more general interest. One time I created a MeFi FPP about a knitting blog that had some antique knitting patterns on it, including some featuring Roger Moore in his pre-Bond knitting model days, and when I highlighted that even people who have no interest in knitting were all like, "You got me with the James Bond in a sweater link," and it got 72 favorites. But alas, I don't have anything that good on my blog.

posted by Orange Swan 17 July | 10:26

Have you seen the gif of Cary Grant knitting?

posted by fancyoats 17 July | 10:38

Yes.

posted by Orange Swan 17 July | 10:50

from what I can tell from doing this kinda stuff professionally the secret to facebook does seem to be POST MORE PICS

although that "reach" thing can be deceptive too--some stuff that doesn't get shared as much as jokes/pics etc can actually generate just as many clicks to your site. So it has to be a balance between engaging people with stuff like jokes, pics etc and actually driving them to your site to engage in actions that actually drive the bottom line

posted by Firas 17 July | 11:23

So glad for you! I think you hit on a mass appeal topic . . . most stuff that involves celebrities tends to be of that ilk.

posted by bearwife 17 July | 11:25

I must admit... I didn't get some huge traffic spike to my actual blog yesterday. Maybe an extra 150 pageviews, that's all. But my thinking was that going forward with more followers there will be more people seeing blog links in their newsfeeds, which will mean a definite if not dramatic increase in regular traffic, which is actually better than a one-time spike.

posted by Orange Swan 17 July | 11:45

wooo!

posted by The Whelk 17 July | 14:52

I'm sure someone could post your blog to MeFi. It's probably more interesting and valid as a post there than many of the SLYT posts etc. I'd do it, but don't know enough about knitting to write it up properly or find accompanying links to frame it nicely.

posted by dg 17 July | 17:16

I have this whole fantasy where I'm a character on MASH who falls in love with Hawkeye. I've been playing it in my head for years.

posted by JanetLand 17 July | 20:59

And now you can also fantasize that Hawkeye knits you a sweater, JanetLand!

posted by Orange Swan 18 July | 07:31

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