Pamela Chan, BCFamily.ca/Editorial
Lean 30 : 30 days of keeping it lean and old school online. More
Any online publisher with any street cred knows how to analyze his/her social media performance stats in more ways than many might imagine. I subscribe to content shared by social media specialists who publish – every DAY – articles, tips and even infographics about how you can better optimize your performance online. I have to admit that half the time I forget to look at my stats on my website publishing dashboard. I’m more likely to look at information coming my way via other sites such as Facebook or apps that help me analyze action on Twitter.
It’s not that I’m being deficient. I simply have more important things to do such as researching topics for content I’m developing or fleshing out what I want to share on other social media BCFamily platforms. Being an active social media publisher means that you’re writing, researching, fiddling with html/technical details, interacting with others online and developing strong visual content as well. That’s an abbreviated list of what people do. There are many other issues such as trying to make money while doing what you do. Some people do this a lot. Others don’t do this at all. BCFamily.ca isn’t a heavily monetized site. If I wanted to go that route I certainly would work that stat analysis for everything that it can give me.
For now I’ll keep tagging all those articles with tips about how I could be working more effectively and hitting it out of the ball park.
When I do take a moment to look at, for example, who is reading what on BCFamily.ca, sometimes I feel disappointed. X from place Y is reading post Z? What about the recent content I published?
What about this piece about how mental health challenges affect us all.
Or how we are here to pay attention. (I can’t ignore the timing of when these inspiring ideas were shared.)
Why is THAT one being read instead? That’s such an old piece!
Most of the time, though, I do have a more charitable outlook. Very often you will hear people say that they tried to publish online but felt discouraged. I like to take a more optimistic view. If one or two people – or 100s – are reading a piece and it provides inspiration, support or a feeling of solace in some kind of way, isn’t that meaningful? Since BCFamily.ca has been in existence now for 5 years (and I’ve been publishing content online for 11), over time 1,000s upon 1,000s of people have visited this site.
And that’s a highly modest number compared to the action that more prominent sites see every day, month and year.
The content on BCFamily.ca and the related social media pages is British Columbia, Canada and internationally focussed. It’s eclectic and unexpected. When I look at my stats and I see that someone in Ireland or Finland is reading a specific piece, I do feel excited. (I used to live in Ireland.)
Publishing content online encourages you to be more globally inquisitive and enables you to make connections with people around the world.
My family and I live a 100 mile lifestyle these days. In recent years this has partially been because our twins were young. But it’s also because we’re realistic about living within our means. As someone who spent my school years and young adult days (up until my mid 30s) living and traveling around the globe, I value the opportunity to feel connected to community of global citizens.
You can never put a price on that kind of professional and personal experience.