Did you have a great stats day? That’s wonderful.Â
Now panic!
Do not feel complacent.
Do not get comfortable.
Do not be cavalier.
Success is no excuse for inaction. You need to milk the success, so it continues and replicates itself.
Many articles exist on what to do after an article goes viral. Do any articles exist that tell you what to do after getting abnormally high page views? This article will give you a 17-step action plan.
I once had a friend who had lost a great deal of weight. While trying to maintain his new, slimmer physique, he was criticized for obsessing over wanting to maintain his new weight. He not only agreed he was fixated but insisted obsession, in order to maintain good results, is desirable.
Consider these comments from bloggers:
I am an avid stats watcher. I track, log, measure, obsess over everything! Watching my stats is a part of blogging that I love. I love watching my views go up… from Dream Big, Dream Often.
Stomper Dad jokes about his obsession with his stats– February was good to me. It was even better to me than January so I broke up with January. January is now my ex-month.
Daniela Uslan writes about people who sneak off to the bathroom in the middle of a social gathering to check their stats.
Jason Cushman echoes their feelings. To be clear, my numbers mean everything to me. I work on them, I focus on them, and I work to make them better.
Consider these less-than-enthusiastic comments from famed blogger Jeff Goins after his post went viral:
After the article went viral, I was confused and anxious. What did this mean, if anything?
Should I change what I write about… Should I try to keep as many of those visitors as possible?Â
The next week… the Internet had already forgotten about me. My traffic spike had mellowed out, and I was back to zero, forced to earn people’s attention all over again.
I tried to drag out the success, of course, tried to prolong that temporary feeling of fulfillment that fame brings. But for some reason, it wasn’t enough. And through the process, I learned something:
Every week I go back to zero. And so do you.
That is why I propose you have an action plan when you see a spike in page views. You need to analyze your cause(s) for success so that you can replicate them.
Even Neil Patel says, Track all your efforts and results, then eliminate waste: You never want to guess what is and isn’t effective.
Instead, start by tracking your stats, what you did to promote your content, how much time you spent on it, and what you got in return for your efforts.
Even the famed blogger Yaro Starek claims that given a choice between quantity and quality, he will take quantity every time.
How to Determine the Cause of Your High Page Views
Go to Dashboard, Site Stats, Referrers.
- Do you find yourself getting traffic from a blog where you left comments? In the future, be sure to comment there again.
- Are you getting traffic from Reddit? Figure out what subreddit is sending you traffic and resubmit there.
- Are you getting traffic from StumbleUpon because someone stumbled your article? Resubmit your new link to the place where your previous link got stumbled. For example, there are Facebook threads that will stumble your link for you. My StumbleUpon group will also stumble your link for you.
- Did you leave your link at a Meet and Greet and you are seeing the blog on your referral traffic? If they have regular Meet and Greets, return there.Â
- Are you getting referral traffic from a guest post you authored? Clearly, guest posting is worth the time you invested, so guest post again.
- Analyze your headlines. Did you use a headline analyzer for a post that went viral? Use it again.
- Did you use an odd number in your headline? Did you use a prime number?
- Are you using a new format? For example, are you using a list post? List posts are so popular, they are nicknamed “listicles”. If yes, your readers like the format, so use it again.
- Have you submitted to a new social media site that’s bringing you traffic? If yes, resubmit there. A reader wrote explaining someone else had put his articles on Flipboard, and he received traffic from the site as a result. Now, he puts his own articles there.
- Did you write a post about a topic that resonated with your readers? Write about that topic again.
- Did you schedule your posts at different times? Use an auto scheduler to schedule your posts at those times again.
- Analyze your Pinterest pin if you are finding your pin is going viral. What was the topic? Color? Orientation? Size?
- Look at Clicks. “Clicks” are viewers clicking outbound links on your site. Seeing what they clicked show you what your viewers are interested in.
- Click Other Sources. Get even more information about your referrers.
- Insert Read More. Have you ever checked the difference? You get double page views by inserting the Read More tag.
- Click “Blog”. Then, click the links of your new subscribers. Ask them where they found you so you can promote there again.
- Click the + each time you see it. It has a drop-down menu to all your links that were clicked at that site.  If I see StumbleUpon, Flipboard, or Twitter, I look to see which links are getting me traffic. I even click the + sign if I see Pinterest on the referrers list. I want to know which of my pins are getting clicked. I add it to my Pinterest board “Somebody Clicked Me” which gets transferred to Twitter.
Conclusion
Lucy Mitchell, of BlondeWriteMore, proposes ten celebratory actions you can take if your posts do well. I suggest you don’t do an air punch or a happy dance or any of the other actions she cites as options. I say you get analytical instead.
Do not rest on your laurels. When people do well, they get complacent, and the factors that contributed to their success go by the wayside.
To quote Danny Ray, blogging is a grind. You need to keep grinding out success.
There is a song by the Weather Girls with the lyrics, “It’s Raining Men; hallelujah it’s raining men.” When I see it’s raining page views, I don’t sing, “Hallelujah.” I am too busy trying to figure out why it occurred, so I can replicate the cause. So should you.
Do you agree with the adage, “The more the merrier” when it comes to page views, or do you feel quality should take precedence of quantity? I look forward to your views.
Update:
After publishing, I thought of another tip: If you are getting traffic from someone’s blog because they linked to you, thank them. It’s polite, and they may link to you again.
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Sources:
What to Do if Your Blog Post Goes Viral…
