35 days of Website Traffic in 1 day

02 Apr 35 days of Website Traffic in 1 day

Q: How do you accumulate over 35 DAYS worth of website traffic in just 1 day?

A: No need for a flux capacitor, you just need good content. (No fooling.)

Adirondack Mountain Club shared Lake Placid ADK’s blog link.

There was a lot of online chatter about the Adirondacks yesterday. Perhaps some of you read one or all of the April Fools 2015 edition blog posts that the ROOST staff wrote and distributed in honor of this annual event.

We (I) have written these typical hoax April 1 blog posts in the past – in news release format. This year, we added the annual holiday to our editorial list of topics and published one of the “fake” news releases on all seven of our current destination websites. They all went live at 8:00 a.m. on April 1. 

Like we do every week for our topical emails, we then distributed the links via the destination social media accounts, and then sent a mass email to our visitor database with links to all seven blogs. 

This works well to drive site traffic every week. THIS week, though, the content clearly resonated. The subjects varied but had one thing in common: controversy.  

ENGAGEMENT

The great thing about social media is its potential for “viral” sharing and increased engagement with your content. Algorithms change and the percentage of your posts that your friends/fans actually see can be limited. With increased sharing, that potential news feed inclusion increases by some factor to which I’m not privvy or personally capable of calculating. 

The point is, when people read and share with their friends, and they share with THEIR friends, and so on, this results in (in this case) a lot of online discussion about the Adirondacks during one day.

STATS

Here’s where the 35 days comes in. 

Engagement on Facebook, specifically, was significant. 

For example, the blog “DOT and DEC Announce Joint Decision on Rails/Trail” on lakeplacid.com was distributed via the Lake Placid ADK Facebook page. That post garnered 30,700 impressions, 4,200 clicks, 352 likes/comments/shares. 

But wait! There’s more. Just ONE of those shares was from the Adirondack Mountain Club. They have 29,211 fans on their page. Their fans shared this link another 212 times. (They also shared the link to the “Visible border to define Adirondack boundary” blog, which garnered another 89 shares from their fans.) 

Not only did people comment on Facebook and on the blog posts themselves, but they actually clicked the link to the website, and spent significant time on the site READING the posts. 

That blog on lakeplacid.com had 10,539 views, 22 comments (engagement) and visitors spent an average of 5:24 minutes reading!

Altogether, the seven websites welcomed site visitors who spent a cumulative 35+ days reading – all in one day.

WHAT’S MY POINT? That’s a lot of engagement with our destinations. And a lot of chatter online ABOUT the Adirondacks.

If you missed it, here are just a couple of comments from the blogs themselves:

In the “Fooled” category (DOT & DEC Announce Joint Rails/Trails Decision):

• “Is this a joke??? why would we ever ruin the wildlife with trains??????? If people are too lazy and obese to see the high peaks then maybe they should go on a diet… i climbed all 46 high peaks and would be extremely disappointed if this is first real and if it becomes a reality”
• Thank god this was only an April Fool’s joke! I was ready to hike up from Delaware to protest! You got me BIG time!!! Have a great day!

Climbed on board:

• (DOT & DEC Announce Joint Rails/Trails Decision) “Come on, DEC, How much do we spend on rescues? I think we really need escalators on all the HIgh Peaks. Maybe Internet Cafes on some summits.”
• (Wilmington Notch Toll Highway) “Well done!!! You got me hook line and sinker!!!”
• (Tree Tracking Grant Awarded to Hamilton County) “Think again. I’m from Waterford NJ where the police gained a little infamy clocking the trees going at 35 MPH. Of course the tickets were all thrown out when it turned out that the trees were actually in a 40 zone, not 25.”
• (Visible Border to Define Adirondack Boundary) “Another great advantage of this plan: where the Park boundaries are water, as on Lake Champlain and Lake George, we will be able to look out on the lake and see a light show caused by the waves.”

If you didn’t read them yet, here are the links: 

• DOT & DEC Announce Joint Rails/Trails Decision
• Senate Approves Drone Hunting in Park Region
• Wilmington Notch to Install Tolls
• $325,000 Tree Tracking Grant Awarded to Hamilton County
• Forts Reactivated: NY Tourism to Declare Civil War on Vermont
• Saranac Lake Attempts Summer Ice Palace
• Visible Border to Define Adirondack Boundary