phdinparenting's posterous

There is always a lot of talk about numbers in the blogosphere. How many visitors do you get? How many page views did your post get? How many people comment on your posts? How many followers do you have?

And bloggers always want to know how to increase those numbers.

I want to help people get a better understanding of what is happening from a numbers perspective in the world of parenting blogs. So, this Spring, I want to take a look under the hood (i.e. into the Google Analytics) of parenting blogs, ranging from small to large, looking at things like:

• How much traffic are these sites REALLY getting?
• What type of posts get the most traffic?
• What techniques work to promote posts?
• Where is the traffic coming from? 
• Is SEO important?
• ...and more.

To do this, I'm looking for a group of volunteers who are willing to give me access to their Google Analytics for a period of about a month. I want to analyze the numbers and put together a report on my findings that will help people to grow their blogs. I'll also provide a personalized report to each participant with specific observations and suggestions for their blog.

I would like to be able to list the blogs that were included in the study (so all participants need to agree to this), but all of the findings in the report will be anonymous. If I do want to use an example that would identify a specific blog, I will request permission first.

Because I want a range of blogs that represent a variety of different sizes, ages, and styles, I may not be able to accept all volunteers into the study. I will follow-up via e-mail with everyone who expresses interest.

NOTE: BLOGGERS MUST HAVE BEEN RUNNING GOOGLE ANALYTICS FOR AT LEAST 12 MONTHS TO BE ELIGIBLE.

If you are interested in being part of this study, please complete the following form.

Thank you,

Annie

www.phdinparenting.com

@phdinparenting

Help me understand...

1) The proposed STOP Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would expand the possible penalties for copyright infringements, such as plagiarism. Per wikipedia :

Provisions include the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and search engines from linking to the sites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the sites. The law would expand existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison. 

The bill is currently being reviewed after a number of protests and it is unclear how or if it will be changed.

2) Disney is one of the many companies that supports SOPA.

3) Disney bought Babble for between $40 million and $45 million, which presumably means that Babbble can use Disney's intellectual property without getting into trouble.

4) But, it doesn't get Babble off the hook for things like violating trademarks, stealing photos, and helping themselves to other people's content, again and again. 

5) So when it happens yet again, even if it does get dealt with quickly, I start to wonder...

• Given the relative lack of experience and journalistic training of a lot of the Babble writers, combined with the pressure to put out five posts per week often while raising a family and working a full-time job, and the lack of editorial control over what gets posted, how much MORE plagiarism is there on the Babble site?

• How would Disney feel if a complaint under SOPA led not only to its $40 to $45 million investment being shut down, but also its parent site being shut down, since it links to Babble in the footer of its Mom and Family website. Oh, and maybe a jail term to go along with it.

Heck, now that I've linked to numerous sites that are interlinked with the whole plagiarism racket, I guess this blog and all of Posterous should be shut down too.

Which one did Disney not think through very carefully? It's purchase of Babble? It's support of SOPA? Maybe both?

Yesterday, I did a retweet experiment on twitter.

Four times over the course of the day, I posted a simple message telling people I was doing a retweet experiment and asking them to retweet it. These are the four tweets, with the number of retweets (using the twitter retweet function) for each of them in brackets.

• Doing a Re-tweet experiment. #rtexp Please RT (51)
• RT Doing a Re-tweet experiment. #rtexp Please RT (27)
• If you haven't yet, would you pls RT this: Doing a Re-tweet experiment. #rtexp (85)
• One last time! RT Doing a Re-tweet experiment. #rtexp Please RT (41)

There were also an additional 30 manual retweets of those tweets, for a total of 204 artificially generated retweets.

On top of the tweets specifically for my retweet experiment, there were around 30 retweets of other content that I had tweeted over the course of the day and I also interacted with people (tweeting, retweeting, replying and receiving replies back) as I would on any other day.

Thirty retweets is a fairly average day for me, so the 204 artificially generated retweets represented a 680% increase in the number of retweets that I would usually get over the course of a day.

What was I trying to figure out?

There are a number of things I was testing with this, some philosophical and some statistical. 

1) I was wondering how many people are really watching, listening and acting based on content they see on twitter.

I have 61,854 followers on twitter. I know from experience that many of them are passive followers. When I post a link to a new blog post on twitter, I generally post it about 3 to 4 times over the course of 24 to 48 hours. I also post it on my facebook page, where I have 5885 "likes". Where does the traffic come from? Despite having more than 10 times more followers on twitter than on facebook, I get more than 10 times more traffic from facebook than from twitter. In other words, each facebook fan is worth 100 times as much as each twitter follower from a blog traffic perspective.

Perhaps a lot of the people who follow me on twitter are listening, but just aren't interested in my blog or they are using twitter on the go and not stopping to click on links. So, I thought I'd put out a fairly simple request and see how much pick-up it got. Four times over the course of the day, I asked my followers to retweet something simple and 0.3% of them did so. That means that 99.7% either didn't see the message at all (probably true for most of them) or opted not to participate (which I can understand -- it's not like I was saving the world with the tweet or anything!).

2) I was wondering what it would take to make a dent in Klout.

Klout changed its algorithm a while ago and my main observation on that is that they changed the way they calculate amplification. Essentially, instead of calculating your score based on how many people interact with your content (reply, retweet), they changed it to a calculation of what portion of your audience engage with your content. As I explained:

So, if you have 5 followers, you tweet something, and they all reply and retweet that, you are going to have a very high amplification score. However, if you have 100,000 followers, and 300 of them reply and retweet, you are going to have a low amplification score.

My amplification score has been 11 ever since Klout changed, but it then dropped to 10 the other day. I was curious whether an out of the ordinary number of retweets over the course of a day would make a difference. It didn't. Having 0.04% of my followers retweet something (usual day) versus having 0.3% of my followers retweet something (yesterday), doesn't make a dent.

In the old klout, my amplification score used to go up and down fairly significantly depending on what I was tweeting about and how interested people were in it. Now, whether a handful of people interact with me or several hundred interact with me makes no difference whatsoever to my score.

3) I was checking the accuracy of a few reporting systems

This one isn't very exciting, but I wanted to check the accuracy of the way that twitter was reporting on retweets versus the way that some other apps and analytics services that I used were reporting on them. I don't have anything exciting to report, other than that most of them are accurate. That new twitter that was up for a few days, but appears to have been taken down yesterday, had some significant issues. But since it is gone, no need to keep beating that dead horse for now.

Conclusion

This reinforced the fact that I'm on twitter for the relationships and the conversation. It isn't driving traffic to my blog (but facebook does). It isn't helping me to grow my klout score (that appears to be pretty stagnant). Really, I'm on twitter to engage with the people who want to talk to me. The rest of those passive followers -- honestly, I find it a bit annoying. If they don't want to talk to me, aren't retweeting my stuff, and aren't clicking on my links, then why are they following me at all?

Done experimenting...and done ranting for now.

Klout is the self-proclaimed "standard for influence" and even claims that "when we're measuring your influence there's no room for error." Anyone who is active in social media (facebook, twitter, etc.) can sign up to have their influence measured by klout. According to Klout, your score is based on three factors:

• True Reach: How many people you influence
• Amplification: How much you influence them
• Network Impact: The influence of your network

Something happened yesterday (October 26, 2011). As promised, Klout made some changes to its algorithm and peoples' scores changed. This has happened in the past, but yesterday's change seemed more radical than others, with scores dropping by more than 10 points in many cases and leaving people asking why? What changed?

I have a theory: AMPLIFICATION

I believe that the way they measure true reach and network impact remained fairly consistent. However, the way that they measure amplification changed significantly.

In the page that describes the klout score, amplification is described as:

Your Amplification is how much you influence people. When you post a message, how many people respond to it or spread it further? If people often act upon your content you have a high Amplification score.

I don't think they changed this description yesterday, because this is how I remember amplification having been described in the past. However, if you look at your profile page and hover over the "?" next to the word "Amplification" it is described as:

Amplification is how much you influence people. It indicates how likely your audience is to respond and how close you are to your entire network.

Do you see the difference? They changed it from a "how many" measurement (i.e. how many people reply, retweet, comment, thumbs up, etc.) to a "how likely" and "how close to entire network" measurement. So, someone who has a small, but very engaged audience is likely to have a higher amplification score than someone who has a large and partially passive audience.

There are hints at this in Klout's description of the changes too. They say:

Influence is the ability to drive action and is based on quality, not quantity. When someone engages with your content, we assess that action in the context of the person’s own activity.

So, if you have 5 followers, you tweet something, and they all reply and retweet that, you are going to have a very high amplification score. However, if you have 100,000 followers, and 300 of them reply and retweet, you are going to have a low amplification score. 

Let's look at an example

My friend Maranda (@hotelqueen) has a klout score of 60 (hers did drop, previously it was 68). I (@phdinparenting) have a klout score of 58 (I believe mine was previously 72, but I'm not 100% sure).

Now, let's compare some stats for Maranda and I:

@hotelqueen (Klout Score = 60)

• Followers: 1,831
• Following: 722
• Klout True Reach: 4K
• Klout Amplification: 54
• Klout Network Impact: 33

@phdinparenting (Klout Score = 58)

• Followers: 61,552
• Following: 2,840
• Klout True Reach: 8K
• Klout Amplification: 11
• Klout Network Impact: 42

Looking at these stats, you can see that Maranda's amplification score almost five times as high as mine is, even though my stats are higher across the board on the other factors.

Why is that?

Maranda may have a relatively small number of followers, but they are incredibly engaged with her and her content. I have a larger number of followers and I may have a higher number of re-tweets and replies overall than Maranda does, but percentage-wise a larger portion of her audience is engaging with her than my audience with me.

Ultimately, what it means is that being followed by a lot of people, even those super-popular and super-connected people, isn't going to get you anywhere unless they are actually replying or retweeting your content. In fact, you are going to be penalized for the people who follow you and don't engage with you. So instead of people getting pissed off at Chris Brogan for his massive unfollow of EVERYONE, people should be thanking Chris for boosting their klout score.

The conclusion...

You should follow Maranda. She's awesome and the people who follow her can obviously attest to that. But don't follow her if you're just going to be dead wood and not engage with her. We don't want her klout score to drop. :)

And if I really cared about my klout score, I would have to spend the good part of a week blocking thousands of followers who don't ever engage with my content because having them passively follow me obviously makes me less influential (because, you know, there is "no room for error" in klout's algorithm).

UPDATE -- CONFIRMATION

Today (November 22, 2011), Klout added some additional information to the klout profiles. It now lists the 90-day activity for each user. This essentially confirmed my thoughts about how the amplification score now works. Here is the information on my klout score/activity (@phdinparenting) and Maranda's klout score/activity (@hotelqueen).

If you look at the sum of my retweets and mentions (7.8K) as a percentage of my followers (62K), you get 16%. If you look at the sum of Maranda's retweets and mentions (1.6K) as a percentage of her followers (1.9K), you get 85%. That is pretty close to our amplification scores, of 10 (me) and 72 (Maranda). In both cases, our amplification scores are a bit lower than the retweets/mentions as a percentage of followers. My guess is that klout only counts each person once, so if 3 of my replies were from Maranda, then only one of those would count towards my amplification score.

I checked this with a few other people and the results vary. But that probably depends on what percentage of a person's replies and RTs are coming from the same people versus a wider spectrum of their network.

I continue to be intrigued, if not impressed, by the klout algorithm. I'm a math geek at heart, so I can't help myself.

Were we connected on Google+? Maybe we were. If we were, we aren't anymore. I had to disable Google+ today, otherwise I risked having Google disable ALL of my Google accounts, including gmail, analytics, feedburner and more because I don't want to use my real name (or even a fake name that sounds real for that matter). Google not only decided that people must use their real names on Google+, but they also said that when you change your name on Google+, it would automatically change your name on every other Google service that you use too. Or, if you decided to ignore their real names policy, they would not only kick you off of Google+, but also delete all of your other Google services too.

I am a person, Google. A person with a business and a family that I want to protect. I am also a person with an online personality and brand that I am well known for. Using my real name not only muddies the waters in ways that I am uncomfortable with, but would also result in people going "Huh? Who is that?", whereas when they see Annie @ PhD in Parenting, they know exactly who I am.

I am not the only person impacted by this. There is a whole website called My Name Is Me, in support of online anonymity. Perhaps I'll write a post there one day too, but for now I just wanted to quickly say "YOU SUCK GOOGLE" and also explain to my online friends why I will no longer be on Google+.

Got this fun hate mail this morning:

First of all;

1. Your writing skill sucks.

2. You're bias.

3. Your points are not balanced.

4. Your facts are incorrect. ie. Malaysian Airlines economy-class seats are not cramped. Have you sat in Singapore Airlines EY cabin? Qantas 747 & 767? ANZ 747? They're worse than MH's EY seats. I found MH's EY seats are the most comfy, wide & practical wt the 2-4-2 seating config. You talk nonsense.

5. You're not a great parent. You think you are, but you're in fact still badly struggling to be one.

6. You're doing this blogging job because you really really have to. (to make ends meet).

7. 1st-class pax in any airline don't usually bring their baby with them. They're too rich to do it. What they'll do is they'll pay their maid to sit in Business/Executive class and they'll take care of their toddler. The problems here come from mid-class people who got the ticket by sponsor, upgrades & staff-discounted travelling.

8. You tried your best to be hero by bringing up this issue. What? Discrimination? BS. In the name of discrimination then abolish all First/Business/Economy Class!! Let all fly Economy! Please do accept that there are rich, mid & poor people in this world. And please don't forget there are super-rich & extreme-poor too.

9. It's not a big deal by denying babies in 1st class. I love babies & children, but while trying to get some rest & sleep, disturbed by non-stop crying babies, I'd slap his parent for failing to make sure WHY your baby can't stop singing.

10. You're simply trying to make that thing an issue & to gain popularity? U're plainly misguided.

Yup, my writing skills suck. Uh huh. LMAO.

Want to read the post that irked this guy's ire? Fishy Logic in Malaysian Airlines First Class Baby Ban

I live in the riding of Pontiac, Quebec. It is one of the biggest ridings in Canada and is economically quite diverse. In the interest of learning more about the riding and the people whose votes would be combining with mine to elect a (hopefully new, but probably not) Member of Parliament, I have been reading the "riding profiles" on various websites. As I read them, the language profiles on the CBC and Ottawa Citizen jumped out at me. Neither of them seemed correct and didn't jive with my own recollection of stats I had viewed on the most recent census.

So, I checked those language stats, and some of the other statistics in those "riding profiles" against the information in the riding profile on the Pundit's Guide website. All three riding profiles claim to be based on the 2006 Census data and all of them are quite different. Certainly, there are lots of different data elements collected in the census (or there were, when we had a long form census) and the choice of which line item to report on may explain the variation in some things (e.g. postsecondary education levels). However, there are some pretty big discrepancies that cannot be explained away by anything other than plain and simple error.

So, who is making up statistics and who isn't? Your guess is as good as mine.

Someone tell me -- do I live in a 99% French riding, 3/4 French riding, or 2/3 English riding? Because those are pretty big differences.

Source for differing stats:

• CBC
• Ottawa Citizen
• Pundit's Guide

There are a number of factors people may consider when deciding which charity to give their money to. For me, one of those factors is what percentage of the funds get spent on actual charitable programs, versus on management and administration and on fundraising. There is nothing that angers me more than making a donation and then finding out that 50% of what I donated is going to be used to pay people to call me to convince me to give again in the future. No thanks!

So, with everything happening in Japan, I decided to look at how some of the charities people are talking about donating to are handling their money. In the United States, Charity Navigator may be useful to you. In Canada, you may have to do your own homework, but it isn't that hard. The Canada Revenue Agency publishes the financial information of all Canadian charities. Find the charity you are interested in, go to Schedule 6 of their listing, and look at lines 5000, 5010, and 5020 to get the information you need (there is also more detailed information if you are interested, but I like those summary numbers).

Here is what I found:

• Canadian Red Cross -- Doesn't disclose (for some reason its financial statements are listed, but the detail is missing -- that on its own makes me suspicious enough to move on to the next charity).
• Doctors Without Borders:
  • 79% on Charitable Programs
  • 4% on Management and Administration
  • 17% on Fundraising (I believe this -- I donated once years ago and still get mail on a regular basis)
• CARE Canada:
  • 95% on Charitable Programs
  • 2% on Management and Administration
  • 3% on Fundraising

It is pretty clear to me which of those three will be getting my money right now.

Who are you donating to and why?

It's beginning to smell a lot like an election in Canada. Today I saw the latest polls and groaned. But it also made me wonder...how does the popularity of politicians in social media compare to their polling numbers? Here is the answer:

Obviously some people follow politicians on social media without really intending to show their support. Nonetheless, I thought these numbers were rather telling (and unfortunate). Interestingly, Jack Layton seems to be doing better on social media than in the polls and Elizabeth May is doing better in the polls than on social media. Gilles Duceppe's average popularity on social media (across twitter and facebook) is similar to the Bloq Quebecois' polling numbers, but it is interesting to note that he has a much larger twitter following than facebook following (relative to the other leaders). Have Quebecers (in general) and separtists (in particular) embraced twitter?

P.S. - Did I mention my goal for this year is to unseat @pmharper as the person with the most twitter followers in Ottawa (I'm #2 right now). :)

Enjoy your weekend!

Annie (@phdinparenting)

This morning, I saw a link to a post on problogger listing 11 wacky things bought via his Amazon affiliate links and thought I would follow suit. For those not familiar with the program, when people click on Amazon links via my blog and then go on to purchase something there, I get a small percentage of the proceeds of the sale. I get a report on what has been purchased, but don't worry - there is no way to link that back to any specific reader.

So here is my list of the most interesting items purchased via my Amazon affiliates links this year:

1. Fishnet Crotchless Body Stocking with Open Bust Halter: Interestingly, when I tweeted about this one, Aaron Vest (husband of Erin Kotecki Vest or "Queen of Spain") claimed that he was the purchaser of this item. Hope you're enjoying it Aaron. I'm sure it looks great on you. That is just one of quite a few pieces of lingerie sold via my Amazon affiliate account, but it is certainly the most interesting one!
2. Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: I find it fascinating that people who read my blog would purchase this book, but perhaps they were just passing through or maybe they wanted to buy it to tear it apart. I wish there was a way to code in big "DON'T BUY THIS BOOK" .... "CHECK OUT THIS INSTEAD" when people look at certain books after having visited my blog. There are definitely no direct links from my blog to this book. Yikes!
3. Infant Formula: I sell a LOT of breastfeeding books and products via my Amazon links. Of course some people do need formula, but I would never promote or advertise it on my site, so I find it a bit ironic that someone purchased a pack of 24 "ready to feed" bottles of formula via my site (I'm not including the link -- although I think it would be okay for the purposes of illustration here, it would feel a bit funny to violate the WHO Code for that purpose).
4. 15 Copies of Birthing from Within: There are a lot of books that I link to directly from my site and that I sell a lot of copies of. This is not one of them. It isn't because it isn't a good book. It just isn't a book that I've read, so I haven't written about it. So I was surprised, but pleased to see that 15 copies of it were sold via my affiliate account. Thank you to whoever bought those!
5. Clarisonic Pro Deluxe Professional 4-Speed Skin Care System: I must admit, I'd never even heard of anything like this. I'm a "splash water on my face in the shower" kind of girl. But it looks fascinating and a bit scary. 

Outside of that list, much of the Amazon affiliate purchases via my links are to books I've recommended, breastfeeding products, co-sleeping products, kids books and toys. Whether you are spicing up your love life, buying a gift for your kids, or looking for some parenting inspiration via good books, I'm always happy to have you do it after clicking through my links. :)