What Makes A Blog Or Facebook Post Popular?

I'm fascinated by people. They're very strange creatures.

What makes them tick, what makes them laugh, what makes them cry, what they value and what they could care less about. Maybe it's my anthropology background. I have to say, anthropology is a pretty cool major. Of course, not so much if you're looking for steady employment with a decent salary - after all, I ended up going into HR. (Yes, I was one of those people that everyone hated at work, right after the folks in IT.) But, if you want to spend four years going to classes which are all about understanding the diversity of people and their cultures, then anthropology is your answer.

Maybe that's why I'm fascinated by what makes people sit up and take notice of something in their Facebook feed or what blog posts they click on and read all the way to the end. I don't know about you, but I scroll quickly past some posts in Facebook, while others make me stop in my tracks. Same thing with blog posts - there's some I click on, but never make it to the end because they don't engage me. I bet you do the same thing too.

What is it? What draws people in? What makes them linger on Facebook?

Scott and I are always fascinated by what Facebook posts get the most likes and comments. When it comes to our Facebook page, turns out, people are interested in two things - romance and creepy bugs.

I posted this picture of the Eiffel Tower last week for #TravelTuesday on Facebook and talked about how Scott and I honeymooned there after getting married in Copenhagen. It was a popular one - lots of likes and comments. Awww...everyone is a romantic deep down. Of course, now it's a sad reminder of what happened in Paris. #JeSuisParis

Another recent popular post on our Facebook page was when I started whining about having wee beasties on our boat. Romance and cockroaches - that's what people want to hear about.

So, now I've had a cockroach crawl out of the drain in the kitchen (galley) sink and a bunch of tiny spiders crawl out of the bathroom (head) sink. What's next - a baby alligator coming up through the toilet?

#florida #wildlife #weebeasties #boatliving

There's obviously more at play on Facebook which determines what will be popular. Things like when you post (what day and time), whether it's a picture or link, what hashtags you use etc. But, I still find it interesting to see what topics are popular on our Facebook page. Maybe you'll be seeing more about the love life of creepy bugs going forward. That seems to be what the people want.

By the way, the current score is Ellen - 3, Cockroaches - Nil. I take pride in the fact that I'm faster than a cockroach. I haven't seen any in a while, so fingers crossed they've found someplace new to live.

I'm not sure how to define popularity when it comes to the blog.

There's two ways to slice and dice this that I can tell - how many views you get of a blog post and how many comments you get.

If you look on the right hand side of our site, you'll see the top ten most popular posts based on the number of views as counted by Blogger stats. (Blogger is the blogging platform that we use. WordPress is the other popular one that you'll see people blogging on. You can read more about the differences here.)

Our top five posts, based on how many views they got, according to Blogger, are:

1 - 10 Steps to Becoming a Full-Time Cruiser - 13,726 views (6 comments)
2 - Meet Scamper | Our 13' Scamp Travel Trailer Home - 8,824 views (20 comments)
3 - Boat Review | Catalina 36 - 9,232 views (14 comments)
4 - The Big Experiment | Buying Our First Boat - 6,398 views (3 comments)
5 - Sail Repair | The Theory - 3,861 views (3 comments)

{Note: These are the number of views when somebody or something clicked on a particular post, either through a Google search, a link on our blog, an RSS feed etc. It doesn't count the number of people who read the post on our home page.}
 
But, our top five posts based on how many comments they got are:

1 - 6 Mistakes I Made Starting a Sailing Blog - 40 comments (538 views)
2 - 4 Ways Writing a Novel is Like Being a Sailor - 40 comments (114 views)
3 - 5 Things that Surprise Me about (Re)Living in the States - 30 comments (219 views)
4 - Accidental Discoveries | Robinson Preserve - 26 comments (312 views)
5 - D is for Doing Nothing - 26 comments (181 views)

{Note: When you see the number of comments one of our posts got, divide that number by two. I generally respond to every comment, so if we get 20 comments from blog readers, you'll usually see 20 additional comments from me.}

Quite different results. The blog posts with the most comments really don't have that many views in the scheme of things. 

What's better - comments or views?

My gut reaction is that comments are better. That's simply because it's a lot more fun when people are engaging with you and what you write. You know that they've actually read all the way to the end and they enjoyed it enough to have a conversation with you about it. Sometimes, they hate what you say and they want to tell you exactly what's wrong with what you wrote. Fortunately, that doesn't happen all that often.

But, having said that, views aren't a bad thing either. Some posts may not be the type that draw people into a conversation, but people are still reading them. I have to confess, it's nice to know that people read what I write. It's a form of flattery - I'll take it.

Some posts are always going to get more views than others because they're on a popular subject or rank high in Google searches. The post about our Scamp travel trailer is a good example of this. Folks who are thinking of buying a Scamp do a little Google search and often get pointed our way. 

So, why do people leave comments?

Usually, I get the most comments when I've shared a post in a blog hop. Blog hops are fun. They're like little internet parties for like-minded people, but you don't need to worry about a hostess gift or what you're going to wear.

The Insecure Writers Support Group is a good example of this. Every month, they host a blog hop where writers can share posts they've written about their own insecurities with the writing process or share tips and tricks to inspire fellow writers. I shared my post on 4 Ways Writing a Novel is Like Being a Sailor on their blog hop this month and I got tons of supportive comments from members of the group. The purpose of the group is to support each other and they do by commenting on each others' blogs. It was absolutely lovely.

I also got lots of comments from folks who regularly haunt our blog and whose blogs I regularly check out. Those are some of the best kinds of comments - from folks you've built up an online relationship over the months, even years.

Some people say that if you ask a question at the end of your blog post, it will encourage people to comment. To be honest, I'm not sure about that. I've talked to other bloggers who've tried it (and I often do it too), but it doesn't always seem to correlate with getting comments. Maybe I'm just asking the wrong questions.

On a semi-related note, robots are some of our biggest fans.

Blogger stats have some serious issues. I'd be a bit delusional if I thought 13,726 flesh and blood humans read our post on 10 Steps to Becoming a Full-Time Cruiser. Unfortunately, robots make up a good chunk of those views. These aren't the kind of robots that Isaac Asimov wrote about, but the automated spam robots that they seem to breed in places like Russia, the Ukraine and India. These robots keep automatically hitting your blog. Many of them are trying leave spam comments with links to things completely unrelated to what you're blogging about - like Rolex watches or Nike shoes. Some of them are trying to hack into your blog to do evil things to it. Either way, these are bad robots. Bad, bad robots.

It makes sense that Google and Facebook are the the biggest referring URLs to our blog over the past month. But, this "play.google.com/strore/apps..." thing - I'm guessing it's the latest robot on the scene. It always seems to be linked to Russia. My advice, don't click on it. 

Blogger doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between humans and robots, so it counts every single view, no matter who or what is doing the viewing. Over the past month, does it really seem realistic to have gotten 2,312 views from Russia, considering the fact that I write in English and don't blog about anything to do with Russia? Yeah, I don't think so.

If you're on Blogger, there are other stat counters you can use like Google Analytics and Flag Counter. Google Analytics does a better job of discounting robots and spammers, but I think it probably also discounts some real humans too. If you compare your Blogger and Google Analytics stats, you'll find you get much smaller numbers on the latter.

Well, that was boring. There's a reason I hated taking stats in college. 

Let's get back to business. What do you think? What do you think makes a Facebook or blog post popular? What makes you want to comment? What makes you want to click on something and read all the way to the end?

If you leave a comment and you have a blog, please leave a link. I'd like to pop by for a visit and leave you a comment. 


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