We are seeing some really positive results from the first two weeks worth of traffic on BlogBurst and want to share it with you.
While it is early in the process to claim victory, we are seeing two distinct and compelling sets of results for blogs that have been picked up on publisher sites.
Growing visibility for your blog via headline impressions
The first opportunity for your site to be discovered on a mainstream media site is through the page components that typically display headlines, a teaser sentence and your blog’s name in a clickable widget (see example by clicking “more”) 
At the moment, these headline widgets are typically showing up on sectional pages alongside other headline widgets representing content from the Publisher’s editorial staff and from professional wire services. As expected, the initial number of placements and the impression number is already ramping to millions per week. These impressions are essentially free advertising for your blog and brand, reaching users who typically would not have been searching for your content in places like Technorati or BlogPulse. Expect these headline impression numbers to continue leaping upwards as we bring on new publishers and they expand to new topics areas with the BlogBurst service.
Traffic Generation: bringing new readers to you
We are seeing really encouraging click through rates (CTR) from full-post views on publisher sites back to the originating blog. Over the past two weeks, we have interviewed a number of bloggers who were picked up on publisher sites. While not every blogger had visibility to their referrer traffic, every blogger that reported their referrals showed between a 15-30% CTR back to their blog from their full-posts on the publisher sites. BlogBurst’s model of providing full attribution with each blog post appears to be working well and it indicates that readers who discovered your blog post on a media site want to know more about you. Once these new visitors land on your blog, this is your opportunity to convert them into regular visitors and even feed subscribers.
Now the truth is that the overall numbers are small, but they meet expectations for the early days of the live rollout on publisher sites. However, we are so charged up by these preliminary results that we are moving up the priority to capture and report on this click through rate data for all blogs in the system. Expect to see more official CTR reporting from us in the next month or so. Also, please note that bloggers can help influence CTR rate by writing headlines and opening sentences to your blog posts that will draw a reader into a click to read the full post. Use links in your post content (within reason please) to make it easy for the reader to click through to your blog to read more. All of this will help the preliminary click through rate hold true as we scale the service, proving an important blogger benefit for members of the BlogBurst network who show up on the publisher sites.
Firstly, thank you for addressing the concerns we’ve been hearing lately from the bloggers. I had a feeling you would.
You lost me here: Use links in your post content (within reason please) to make it easy for the reader to click through to your blog to read more.
Do you mean that I should have links to Artblog.net from within individual posts on Artblog.net? Or do you mean that the content of the post should link to itself somehow? Either way, that’s going to be pretty weird for people reading the site in the original, unless I tweak my feed writer to do something clever to the xml.
Thanks for the update. I wish that you report the blogs and the posts that are getting good headline impressions and post views. This way, we can know which blogs are doing well and what they are writing. This information can help us to figure out what your publishers/clients are looking for.
I agree with Razib, it would be helpful to know who the top ranked bloggers are currently across the whole Blogburst network. We can all learn from each other.
Granted, the draw may very well be the content ‘topic’ that is the key driver, and that’s OK — even though I don’t write about Paris Hilton, I’d still like to see that statistical insight
Cheers, DHD
This news is promising, and hopefully the exposure will broaden across the blogs in your stable. That said, how are publishers being introduced to the hundreds of blogs you’re syndicating? Do you present them in categories or tiers to the publishers to select, or are they on their own to sift through list after list?
Lots of good thoughts here. We are making progress on showing top bloggers and also publisher site pickups (so you know where your blog is showing up). Keep telling us what you need and we will keep pumping it out from the development team.
Regarding the question on links in your blog back to your site…do it if it fits naturally in your blog. For instance, if you write a blog post on animal husbandry (not in the martial kind) and it is part of a three part set of posts you are writing, feel free to say that in the blog post and provide a link to the other articles. Or if you use categories on your blog, then put a link at the end of the post that says: More on this topic here and link it to the category veiw. Just some suggestions, but we certainly are not encouraging you to do something that will hurt your blog post’s credibility/readability in the name of click optimization.
I, literally, have not had a single impression.
Do we have any visibility to which publisher actually is using our content? I had a story published for the first time this week but have no clue who did it… or where it is viewable.
Would you please explain the difference between post view and unique visitors. My stats show more unique visitors thatn post view. I do not know how that works.
Thank you!
I’m glad Ro asked, ”cause I also have no idea where my
stories are being published. Will it be part of the upcomming top 10 publishers?
Also “headline view” “unique vistors” etc… I’m assuming that is to my content on blog burst??? not the publishers site?
v.
Check out the latest post: Where ‘o Where are the BlogBurst Posts Showing for a complete list of all the spots & topics where BlogBurst bloggers are showing up on publisher sites.
Joe - Keep in mind that we are just getting started here so many of you will not have impressions/postviews/traffic yet. You can see that the list of publishers and the breadth of topic areas are expanding so the opportunity is growing for more blogs to be picked up on publisher sites, but it is not automatic. We suggest you build a solid profile and image for your blog, post regularly, write originally and as your topic area is selected by publishers you will have your chance.
Two different topics here (hence two different numbers):
The 15-30% number represents the CTR of people who see a blog’s full post on the publisher site and click through to the original blog. We emphasized this number at the moment because some bloggers expressed concerns here that no one would bother to click from a full post on a publisher site to visit the original blog. While the data is anectdotal, gathered from a few bloggers who have been picked up on our publisher sites, we are encouraged by this result and wanted to share it. We are working to track this globally as part of reporting too so we have something more conclusive to show and react to going forward.
The 1% number is accurate as well. It represents the CTR from headline impressions (ie, fair use content of headline + abstract) to the full post on the publishersite to a click to visit the original blog. While this overarching number is low right now, if the above full-post->Original Blog click thru rate holds true (the 15-30% CTR) then the culprit we need to focus on is how we get more online newspaper readers to click on a headline and read a post. That is a funciton of placement on the publisher pages (you will notice that many are below the fold in these early days as the publishers are feeling things out too), more inviting looking headline widget UI, more compelling blog post headlines, etc.
Zero impressions so far - still early days. My content is better than ever, and I’m really surprised that I am not getting any visitors to my profile or blog from blogburst.
Hopefully this will improve.
Darren - Please see comment #11 above.
But I’m writing in a topic area in which you profess need for content…sitll not one hit? Something seems odd here.
and