I’m back! Jonny’s been holding the fort (quite marvellously I might add) for most of the year so far, having written eight articles, compared to my rather measly three. Recently he’s been travelling and hasn’t been able to post much.
I’m hear with some great news for the blog, we are both full of ideas (as per usual) and there is a lot more to come from us before the end of the month – and beyond! I have just scheduled a post introducing a potentially revolutionary transportation technology for Wednesday, I’m working on a review for next Monday and there are a few exciting projects we are working on in the background as well.
Today of course is quite a special day for the blog, as it is four years ago today that it launched. I’m going to make this article short, to keep you in anticipation of what is to come in the next few weeks!
A Quick Check Of The Figures
As I like to every year, I’m going to briefly go over a few viewing/subscriber statistics, just as a good reference, so everyone knows where we are at.
Visitors
Over 160,000 people have visited the blog in the last four years
We have received almost 300,000 hits (pageviews)
The average time people spend on the site at a time is 1 minute and 24 seconds – about the time it takes to read one of our shorter articles
Three years ago today, on April the 13th 2011, Technology Bloggers was born. The blog has changed a lot over the years, however we have always stuck with the same theme. Today everything changes.
A new logo (version 2.5) for our third birthday.
Today’s theme change is clearly the biggest visual change the blog has ever had.
We are now using a theme called Celebrate. There are many things I do not like about the new theme, but there were many things I didn’t like about TwentyTen, (our old theme) but slowly, over time I ironed out most of the creases.
The font is my main bugbear at the moment, but at least it is legible – Celebrate’s default font was very thin.
Feedback and suggestions are very welcome.
Anyway, watch this space.
Looking Back
Once in a while it doesn’t hurt to take a glance back to see how far the blog has come – in fact I believe it is probably quite healthy to review how we got to where we are – so here is a quick snapshot of Technology Bloggers progress, three years in.
Visitors
In February of this year, we received our 150,000th visit
This month we hit a quarter of a million pageviews
Earlier in the month we also received our 135,000th unique visitor
The average time spent on the blog is 1 minute and 29 seconds – just enough time to read an article
Community
Over 80 people have written articles on Technology Bloggers
Together we have published 499 articles – post 500 will be the first of a new era
We have received over 4,400 comments from hundreds of different readers
It is now possible to comment on articles through WordPress, Facebook and Google+
External Interaction
In the last year we have gained hundreds of subscribers
We now have almost 400 Twitter followers
Over 300 people receive updates from Technology Bloggers on Facebook
More than 230 people subscribe to our feed – with over 50 people subscribing via email
Looking Forward
I want Technology Bloggers to be more author focused from now on. The blog was founded as a community blog, to be focused on a strong base of authors – not just a lot of guest posts which is what we have seen in the past. I will be developing the theme to help promote the people behind the content. As always your suggestions and ideas will drive the blog forward.
Very soon we are going to be introducing a whole new wave of guest bloggers and authors – and maybe an editor or two as well.
I leave you with this: just look how far we have come…
Technology Bloggers shortly after it launched and three years on – before the theme change.
Many blogs get abandoned within the first year, blogs that last more than a year are rare. Blogging is said to have died and been reborn so many times, with millions of blogs, big and small falling by the wayside. But we haven’t!
Amazing growth, a growing social influence, and ranked in the top 275 technology blogs on the internet by Technorati, Technology Bloggers has had an amazing two years; and there is loads more to come!
Always striving to improve, every day we are becoming a bigger name in the technology industry.
Lets have a look at what’s happened in the last year…
Traffic
The blog has undoubtedly grown in popularity since last year. Here are some interesting visitor statistics which show the extent of our growth.
In year two (2012/2013) we had 65,000 unique visitors, 20k more than in year one (2011/2012)
Overall the number of visits were up 88% year on year
Year one saw 70,000 pageviews, whilst year 2 saw a staggering 64% increase to 115,000!
On average people spend 100 seconds (1 minute and 40 seconds) when visiting the blog
Social
Our presence on social media has significantly grown in the last year. We now post every article (title, excerpt and link) to Twitter and Facebook, as well as interesting things we find across the net, and developments – like my recent visit to the Gadget Show Live – more to come on that soon.
Our Facebook page has gained 246 new likes, which is a 473% increase in the last year
We now have 275 followers on Twitter, which is 299% up on the year 2011/2012
Since last year we have joined Google+ and now have 33 followers
Want to join our followers? If you subscribe you can get updates from the feed. We will only ever post something additional if we think it will interest you.
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Achievements
As a blog we have achieved far more than traffic and a strong social presence, here are some of our other great achievements:
Almost 4,000 comments have been posted by around 500 different commenters
We have 175 feed subscribers 63 of whom subscribe via email
We are ranked in the top 300 technology blogs in the world by Technorati (we are currently ranked 261, which is in the top 0.6% of all technology blogs in their index)
We have a Google PageRank of 4 (although this doesn’t really mean very much)
The blog has attracted 71 different writers 24 of whom have written more than one post
Of our writers, 4 of them have 10 posts or more and 2 authors who have written more than 50 articles
Many of our writers are now claiming Google Authorship, strengthening the names behind the content on our blog
Community Awards
In the last two years, we have awarded 12 community awards in total. These awards have been given to 7 different people, with notable award winners including: Alan Tay winner of two awards; Peter Lee also winner of two awards; myself, (Christopher Roberts) winner of two awards; and Jonny Hankins who has won three awards.
The Future
Our current growth seems to be showing no signs of slowing down, everything is just accelerating at the moment – which can be hard to manage!
In the pipeline for next year there is already a series, a competition, and loads of ideas for new posts!
Thank You
As always, thanks for playing your part in the community. Without you we couldn’t operate. Read, write or comment, everyone is important and everyone is part of the community.
Thank you everyone, here’s to another great year 🙂
