More than ever this blog is a therapy and a discipline. It forces me to read a lot, from various sources and to reflect on how I can integrate this knowledge in my daily marketing practices (for more information on the genesis and the motivation behind this blog, read this article).
I put a lot of efforts in the last 6 months in promoting my articles in English and in French (much less in promoting our Dutch content which is translated by a professional translator).
From time to time I like to reflect on our SEO strategy and in particular on the growth figures of this blog. Summer time is the right moment to do this. There is less traffic on the website which leaves more room for “side” articles.
How did we do in the first half of 2017 ?
The good news is that our traffic progressed very well in the first 6 months of 2017.
For the English version of the blog sessions went up 21% and we got 22% new users more.
For the French version the number of sessions went up 22% and we got 25% new users more. Page views increased 17%
Although still modest, the figures of the Dutch version of this blog also increased : 29% more sessions, 30% new users more, 23% more page views.
What did we do to increase the traffic on our blog ?
The first thing we did was to keep the frequency of publication we’ve adopted for many years : 3 times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) without exception. This discipline is important to keep the flow of visitors on your website. People will make it a habit of browsing your website if they are sure of finding interesting content. Keeping this discipline is crucial if you want to be taken seriously.
What we also did in the 6 first months was to reinforce our presence on social media with a special focus on Linkedin. Unfortunately Linkedin has changed its algorithm and it’s now much more difficult to get views if you include an hyperlink.
We had so good posts that generated relatively solid numbers of views. Unfortunately our efforts were mainly directed at English and French content; for the Dutch part of the site we still need to follow the same discipline.
Our objectives for the second part of the year
For now the objective is to take a break. We use to slow down the publication frequency during summer and 2017 will be no exception. We usually had 1 article per week during summer in the last years ; in 2017 we may publish a little more (simply because we have many things to say and a backlog of topics that we want to deal with). Our focus in the last month shifted slowly from “marketing-only” to include more and more articles on how (Big) Data is changing the world of marketing, the work of marketers and most fundamentally the work of market researchers.
More focus on market research
In the second half we definitely want to dedicate more time to our primary focus, i.e. market research. We see the world of market research changing rapidly, quantitative techniques based on Big Data playing certainly a role. We get increasing demand for studies combining the best of qualitative research and quantitative techniques. If we get the authorization from our clients we will certainly prepare a white paper or two on this subject.
Enjoy your summer and don’t forget to read our blog during your holiday !
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