Chris Penn wrote a great post today about how to find blog topics, including reporting on the answers you find when you are searching for information. Sure enough, when I search my Google Analytics stats, the blog posts that get the most traffic are those that help people solve ongoing problems or provide them with useful information. For example, when I had a horrid experience trying to get my AT&T Microcell set up, I blogged about it, but also provided the solution to the problem, so others wouldn’t go through the same hassle. That’s gotten huge traffic, as has a post I did helping bloggers figure out the FCC disclosure regulations. Information sharing is always a sure winner.
Since I am in the middle of several research projects, I thought I would take a few minutes and use Chris’s sage advice. Here’s a few data points you might find interesting:
Mobile technology: According to Pew Research, Gowalla, Foursquare and other location-aware programs are now used by 4% of Americans, compared with the 8% of Americans using Twitter. This is interesting, since Compete.com reports that the monthly traffic on Twitter is around 26 million (This is global, of course) and the monthly traffic on Foursquare alone is 954,247, up 707% this year, compared to Twitter’s 7.4% increase. This would seem to indicate that there are a lot of international users of Twitter (which we know is true), lots of location-aware programs (also true) and location aware is experiencing huge growth, relatively speaking.
Government 2.0: Pew reports that 40% of online Americans have gone online for data about the government, and that citizens are also using blogs, social networks, email, video and text messaging to get governmental information. 23% of adults also report in participating in an online debate about governmental issues.
There will be more for tomorrow, I’m sure. Let me know if you find this useful, and maybe I’ll make it a regular feature. Thanks to Chris for the great prompt!