Who is paying attention?
One of the questions I get from time to time and certainly one that I think about often is, “Does anyone read the website?” and another familiar one is, “Does anyone read your blogs?”
As I have noted here in the blog previously, I am concerned about how to get information out to our broad community audience. How do I reach people in the community who do not have children in the system? How do I reach families looking to move to the area? In the current “Monthly Poll” on the website – the two traditional print media outlets are at the bottom. (I do realize that people have to come to the website to even know about the poll…. but it is interesting.)
October Monthly Poll
I have also been tracking visitors using Google Analytics – another FREE product from Google to help gather information about who is visiting your site and what are they looking at when they are on the site. So, I wanted to share that data.
Here is a screenshot that shows from September 23 to October 23 – we had 45,428 unique visitors to the http://www.salineschools.com website. They represent 142,875 visits, looked at 239,107 pages, and stayed on the average just over 2 minutes per visit.
Website Visitor Overview
Another interesting report is the Map Overview. The vast majority came from the United States. However, 71 visits origininated Canada, 17 from the United Kingdom and even 10 from Turkey. The green shading shows the countries where users visited salineschools.com in the past month.
Map Overview
As for the blogs, we do not get near as much traffic. So, if you are reading this… first, thank you and second, you should be proud that you are among an elite group of information hounds. The last thirty days we had 789 unique visitors, that represented 1,434 visits and users on average spent about 45 seconds reading per visit. The overview represents all of the blogs – this one, News and Notes, Budget, Curriculum, H1N1, Technology, etc. We are also looking to encourage comments related to the topics we are posting about.
Blog Visitor Overview
As you can see, we do get some very good information – but like most data it prompts more questions.
Scot Graden's Blog 
Scot,
It strikes me that as the print media continues to crater in this country (for whatever reasons), electronic media delivery will continue to rise in readership. You’re way at the forefront of media delivery with this blog, and all the other blogs associated with Saline schools. Keep it up.
You should take pride in the broad-based readership you find in the analytics (ie, Canada, Turkey). In the “old days” of printed media only, those visitors would never have discovered the Saline schools. Think how much richer our school system is as a result! It’s because of the Saline Schools website, and your blogs, that you may have attracted international students. That’s something to be very proud about.
“If you build it, he will come.” It’s a great line from a really nice movie, but it’s so true with electronic media. Keep up the effort, and you’ll reap the rewards in the future.
Thank you for all you do for the Saline schools. We are paying attention out here.
The problem with the blogs is that you must page back to get back to the main website. If the left side main page menu could be on the blog, so one could go to Moodle or Powerschool next would be helpful or if the blogs automatically opened in a new tab I think that would also make them reader friendly.
I’m paying attention! I especially love Twitter. Thanks for all the information you provide; it’s great. Keep it up.
I read the blog through an aggregator (bloglines.com) and that may not reflect in your hit count.
Patti,
I am working on a site re-skin that will be able to embed the the blogs within the existing menu layout. It would appear like the blog posts are articles on the main page once you click on a post.
Scot
I agree that it is a wonderful mode of communication. It will grow. It is also a great model for the students.
As Michael, above, mentioned, the stats could be misleading as many are subscribed to the blogs through the RSS feed. I think the key is to inform the non-techie about the benefits and ease of the RSS process. The news-driven sites are great and once the word spreads on how to efficiently navigate through the technology, your numbers will soar.