Just interesting statistics (a fairly narcissistic post)

One of the amazing things about this whole interwebs thing is how measurable everything is - I have a theory that these measurement tools are causing some sleepless nights for "traditional" marketing types. It used to be easy, tell someone that the billboard will mean 10 gazillion "impressions" - mix that with the television ad, the radio ad, and the full page newspaper ad and you'll have 230 mega-gajillion impressions!

NOTE: I am a firm believer in the above mentioned forms of advertising, and I have several friends in the advertising field - these communication tools are effective and useful - I just think some have taken advantage of the fact that you can't *really* measure how many people are "impressed" with these "impressions."

So, here's the thing - you can actually track how effective your message is here - you know how many people are watching your Youtube videos - or visiting your blog - and even how many people are clicking on the links you post on twitter.

While I do an occasional check to see how many people are clicking on the links I include on twitter, I'm normally just looking at a week's worth of traffic and, until now, haven't really stepped back to get a larger perspective, like this:

OK, so this counts the number of links I provided that were clicked on by others.

NOTE: This DOES NOT track links I've retweeted from others - ONLY those tweets that I originated with links shortened through Hootsuite.

So, since the beginning of this year, 4,869 people have clicked on a link I've offered up into the twittersphere - to be honest, I have no idea how that compares with others, all I know is that it indicates that others are engaging with me at some level, and for that I am both appreciative and humbled.

Now, a couple of quick observations about the most popular messages:

• The most popular topic was the social media wedding (thank you, Chris and Elizabeth, for making this so much fun!) - those were messages #3, #6, and #10 on the list for a grand total of 197 clicks
• It looks like people like fun - the most popular message was about a bunch of characters walking around the University of Delaware
• People like Community - #2 on the list was a link to the Community Shoe Drive at BellaVista in Pike Creek, #4 was about the Greater Newark Network meeting, and #5 and #7 are all about getting the word out about how great Delaware is.

Another observation - until I looked at this chart, I honestly had no idea how many people had been clicking on these links to get information. Chances are, you don't know the kind of impact you're having - if you're active in the Delaware Social Media Community, please keep it up - if you are not yet engaging, please do, you'll never know how many people you will inform, encourage, entertain, and engage with!