How often do you lament the fact that you can’t get through all of the stuff in your reader? I know I’ve done it.

Do you feel guilty when you unsubscribe something or unfriend someone in your network? Why?

Consumption of content is not a democracy. Giving of attention is not a democracy. We each have to decide what we find value in, and leave the rest behind. If that’s one blog or no blogs or five Twitter followers or a hundred, it’s up to us. And there is no standard that’s fit for everyone.

Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster have been discussing whether the social web is an economy of favors, and to a certain extent in the content realm, it might just be. We look at people reading our blog or following us on Twitter as some kind of personal validation that we have something important to say, or simply that people like us enough to pay attention. And the quid pro quo – you comment on or share my post and I’ll share yours – simply isn’t doing us any favors to ensure that the content we’re reading makes a difference in our work, our lives, or our minds. (This goes for that silly “why aren’t you following me back” thing, too.)

The firehose we complain about is a monster of our own making.

We have this irrational fear that by not being up on everything, we’ll be connected to nothing. Which is outrageous. By merely participating online, we are immersed in a great sea of information, and from there we can choose what – or if – to consume. And the relative sameness or related nature of so many of the things we find and read means, very simply, that we just don’t need it all.

Justin Kownacki issued the Read It All Week challenge to get us to examine our reading habits more closely as well as what content we actually consume and get value from. I jumped the gun on Justin a bit and did something a bit extreme but cathartic: I nuked my reader. All of it. I unsubscribed from every single blog I had in there.

I kept a note about a few that I might want to revisit. But the rest? If it’s worthwhile, I’ll find it again. If it’s really valuable content that made a difference to me, I’ll notice its absence and perhaps seek it out again, on different terms.  I might discover new content that fits my current state of mind. And at every turn, I consume the content. It does not consume me.

Our tastes change, as do our ideas, and the way we take in and use information. We need not be shackled to a wave of words, people, and information that doesn’t fit our lifestyle or our work. And it’s about time we evaluate our own motivations for this quicksand we’ve voluntarily walked into, and stop with the melodrama when we’re the victim our  own choices, or when our behaviors aren’t reflected in those of others.

The beauty of the web is that we can each bend it to our will. Won’t you join me in taking control of your own online universe, and ceasing to apologize for what that means for you?

I look forward to your comments.

My friends…

What an adventure Altitude Branding has been.

When I started this blog a little more than two years ago, I had absolutely no idea whatsoever what would happen. I was starting a fledgling business, had had several personal blogs of my own that stayed pretty much off the radar, and had some stuff in my head about what I wanted to do with my work. As a longtime journal writer, blogging was the natural outlet for my business thoughts and ideas.

So when I started my blog it was the place for me to empty my brain.

Then I met a few other people online, got a few clients, made a few contacts. They started reading. I joined Twitter in the fall, and kept writing. And somehow, people kept reading. And reading. And connecting. And commenting.

Two years later, I am in utter awe at what this blog has brought to me. Friends, ideas, business contacts, a place to express myself from a professional stance. It’s very much my home.

As we grow as people, however, our needs change a bit. And the place we call home evolves with us. So, too, with Altitude.

Where I’m Headed

I’m not just a branding person so much anymore, nor is social media the only thing I have to talk about in this head of mine. Moreover, I want to broaden the reach of this blog with new voices, different ideas, and a platform that can grow with me through the next phase of my career.

So while I’m a little sad to see Altitude go, I am beyond excited about my new blog, Brass Tack Thinking. It’s under construction now (so if you’re peeking at brasstackthinking.com early, you’ll see some of the scaffolding).

Brass Tack Thinking is going to be an amazing collaboration with my brilliant friend, Tamsen McMahon. For those of you who know her through her blog or on Twitter, you know she shines with amazing energy, widsom, and insight. And I could not be happier to be growing this passion project of mine into something bigger with her, and hopefully, richer for all of you.

We’ll have a post on Monday on the new blog explaining a bit more about what Brass Tack Thinking stands for. (A hint for now: our tagline is “Making Things Happen”.) But for now, a couple of things for you to note.

1. If you’re already subscribed, you won’t miss a beat. The feed address is staying the same, so you’ll continue to get posts either via your email subscription or RSS, as you always have. If you’re not subscribed yet, won’t you? I’d love to have you along.

2. Altitude Branding will be here for a couple of weeks during the transition, just to be sure everything is hunky dory. But this will be the last post you’ll see here. All of Altitude’s content is being moved over to the new blog (posts and ebooks), and you’ll be able to find it all there with all the new posts. After a couple of weeks, everything on an altitudebranding.com domain will automatically send you over to Brass Tack Thinking. If you’ve bookmarked links, they’ll find their way.

A Tribute to You

There is no question that this blog has been a successful, engaging, and motivating venture for me because of all of you. The commenters, the lurkers, the ones that share the posts and the ones that simply sit back and read. You all matter, and I am grateful for your time, attention, and encouragement over the last two years.

So while the name is changing, the blog is still very much going to feel like it always has. I’ll still talk plenty about the things that brought you here – we are living through a major revolution in business, after all – but we’ll explore some new ideas and paths together, too.  That’s what blogging is about, to me. An adventure. An evolution. A living, breathing forum for thoughts and ideas.

So, onward I go, and I hope Brass Tack Thinking is everything you’d wish it to be and more. Special thanks to Tamsen for agreeing to tackle the next phase of this insanity with me, and for all of my friends, colleagues, and compatriots for encouraging me to take it new places.

Oh, and just a teaser… more big announcements on Brass Tack Thinking next week about another project I’m super excited to be working on. You won’t want to miss that!

Many thanks again for everything you’ve created in this blog. So long, Altitude Branding. I’m more than excited about the new chapter, and can’t wait to have you get down to Brass Tacks with me.

Are you ready?

The post I wrote last week on 13 Truths about Social Media Measurement did well, and I thought it would be interesting to look at some stats around it in detail. As of today, it’s in the top 10 posts on my blog in terms of visits/traffic of all time (and that’s just a few days after it posted).

So this is a bit of a post mortem on that post, what happened around, it, and some conclusions I can draw about it.

Note that the intent here is NOT to get you tangled up in my specific numbers. My numbers are what I have to work with, so that’s what I’m using. It’s all in the relative data. The hope is that I’ll help you consider how you might analyze your own blog performance, content, or other initiatives, and illustrate a bit about the longer term results of a blogging investment.

Analysis Period

For ease of tracking and a solid, uncluttered snapshot, I did this analysis for the 24 hour period from when the post hit to the following day at the same time. So this is not an analysis “to date” of this post, but it’ll certainly be interesting to revisit this content in 30 days and do some analysis around the lifespan of a popular post. For the purposes of pulling together this post, I had to draw a line in the sand somewhere.

Specific Statistics:

Bit.ly link: 1,613 clicks

Website visits: 3,192
I get anywhere between 40K and 60K uniques a month right now (with the exception of March where I surged to 100K in large part because of this post). So this post represents about 6% of my total monthly traffic for May.

Other Stats: (various sources)
Comments: 31
Shared Items (Google): 84
Delicious Bookmarks: 126
Facebook Shares: 48
Likes: 14

Traffic Sources: (per Google Analytics)
Direct: 31%
Feedburner: 15%
Twitter: 12%
Google (organic): 5%
Delicious: 5%

# of Tweets of the post: 702 (analysis by Radian6)
30% of the posts did NOT include my name, blog name, or twitter handle. just the article title.

15% of the posts didn’t include the “13 Truths” part of the title, and amended it to their own language.

There’s undoubtedly an additional slush factor in those that replied, shared, etc and included a link but totally different language or words. That’s gravy, in my mind. This tells me that when you’re analyzing a post’s carry, you have to consider how it might morph in the translation and spread and realize you’ll always have a margin of error.

Potential Twitter Reach (also provided by Radian6): 2,466,697
I’m still not sold on the value of this number. It looks impressive on paper. But see the conclusions section below for some thoughts about it.

New subscriptions to the blog: +/- 200
I’d love to say this is perfectly accurate, but Feedburner doesn’t always play nice. I could have tracked this better by putting a unique subscription link with tracking code on the post itself, but others would have undoubtedly clicked the main sub link anyway.

To the best I can tell, I gained about 200 subscribers because of one post. That’s about a 6% conversion rate based on visits in the same time period. I’d also love to put in better tracking (using Google Analytics goals) to see how those subscriptions convert by referral sources, i.e. whether the traffic from Delicious bounces and leaves, or tends to actually subscribe and stick around.

Emails inquiring about speaking, input/consulting (which I don’t do): 4
Time Spent writing the blog post: approximately 60 minutes.

My former billing rate as a consultant averaged $275/hour. So you could say my investment was $275 worth of time. If were to take a single speaking engagement at even half my standard rate that found me because of this post, my ROI would be about 1700%. If I were in the consulting or service business, a single account landed this way could pay for itself several thousand times over.

That’s just for one post, though, that’s part of a long effort of blogging consistently and with purpose. See more in the conclusions about that.

Referrals to my company site (Radian6): none
Of note here is that I didn’t link to Radian6 or mention it anywhere in my post. Other posts I’ve done on measurement HAVE sent traffic through to the Radian6 site, but only when I’ve mentioned the company and linked to it specifically (or my guest author has; this post that Matt wrote last week drove nice traffic through to Radian6’s website). More on that below.

Other Conclusions, Thoughts, and Analysis

Twitter
It’s clearly a key place for me to continue sharing my content, as it gets good reach. Half the traffic for the day can be attributed to the bit.ly link, which I only shared on Twitter. On the other hand, it’s important for me to consider more avenues for distributing content in the future, because I’m putting too many of my eggs in the Twitter basket right now.

There were 686 tweets of the post and 1,613 clicks on the shortened link, which means that every tweet accounted for an average of 2.35 clicks.

Also important to note: my potential “impressions” on Twitter were nearly 2.5 million. It goes without saying that  the percentage of inactive accounts on Twitter – some say as many as 70-80% – skews these numbers. And if there were only 1,613 clicks out of those 2.5 million impressions? That’s an overall conversion rate from attention to action (in this case just a click) of WAY less than 1% (.0006% to be exact).

What would be interesting is to somehow figure out where those 686 tweets and their subsequent clicks fall in within my network (i.e. are they direct connections, or separated by a couple of degrees), and somehow map the resulting click throughs to those degrees of separation. That could start showing how “impressions”  on Twitter dilute (or not) as they drift away from the original source, or from close connections. My hypothesis is that the heavy percentage of the actual traffic would come from the first couple of degrees.

That’s more than I have the chops for right now, though. I’d need some API help with that one.

Delicious
Delicious bookmarks can drive great traffic too, but the types of posts that get bookmarked there are of a specific stripe that I can’t just churn out constantly.

This one hit the Delicious “Popular” posts page, which undoubtedly helped raise some awareness for the post and generated some traffic.

Posts on measurement are clearly still very wanted and well read, so that’s a viable content subject. List posts work, as all of the last several list posts I’ve done have hit Delicious pretty well and driven significant traffic. Good intel for content strategy, but obviously not something you can do every day. Fatigue for content counts for something, so the popular, bookmarkable stuff has to be interspersed with other content.

Radian6 Referrals
My blog can and does drive visible traffic and leads to Radian6. So it’s a good way to keep my bosses invested in the idea that spending time on my own blog is a good thing for THEM. But if that’s part of my goal (and it is), I have to be sure and specifically ASK readers to go there (by means of mentioning my company and linking to it in a post, with disclosure of course). Obviously I can’t do that all the time, or folks would see me as a walking plug for my employer. But it’s something to keep in mind.

Content Spread
This post also got picked up in some newsletters, other publications, and aggregate sites (with permission and attribution). It also got picked up by annoying scraper sites that don’t credit or link back to the original work.

Practical, educational content spreads. And it finds new life in other channels and more mainstream industry publications if it’s written to be applicable to more than the immediate audience. Even the spammers and scrapers like to pick up content that’s driving traffic.

Also of note: Sticky titles and lists posts work well, and unique titles make for easier analysis and tracking of how they spread and get shared.

The Blogging Commitment
Blogging can pay off, big time. BUT. I’ve spent over two years building my audience, traffic, and consistently putting out content (some well received, some not). The burn is slow, and you have to keep earning the attention in order to keep it. I started at ZERO, just like everyone else.

It’s not enough to just get traffic. You have to get people that want to take a seat at the table and hang around for a while. I’d also love to find a way to analyze at what rate my existing subscribers share content and pass it along, as that can help me understand one aspect of long term subscriber value, and how invested my readers are in the content overall.

And what content works? Well, that’s a matter of listening to your audience, participating in the larger community, and delivering stuff that meets needs and interests of those people. Simple, right? Nope. Lots of work. Time. Effort. Learning.

Can You Apply Any of This?

This wasn’t so much intended to show the performance of a single post as to get you thinking about how you can analyze the performance of your content, and measure some readily available things in order to draw some insights about what you’re doing.

I’m not doing this for every post, of course, but by focusing my analysis on the far ends of the scale – the posts that are ghost towns and the ones that go gangbusters – I can continually understand what my audience, social network communities, and other people are finding worth reading. And this is hardly professional, bullet-proof analyst-level drilldown, but what do I need that for? More work than it’s worth. At this point I’m just looking for some validation of my hypotheses.

So was this helpful to you? Again, don’t get mired in my  specific stats, but look at the methods, the data captures, the smashing together of a few different numbers to see how you might put a similar framework in front of the content you create to learn what’s working, what’s not, and help you fine tune your strategy.

Questions? Comments? I’m all ears.