If you clicked on this post, than I can only assume that you are a member of my super-secret club. Clearly, those who are not in my club should know better than to have clicked their way here. Shame! The title clearly indicates that you were not supposed to click here.
No, I haven't lost my mind and of course-- I hate to admit this-- but there is no super-secret club. (So don't feel bad if you didn't get an invitation.)
Clicks and Views
When you are logged in and at your "Home" on ActiveRain, you will notice a link on the bottom-left side of the page entitled "Statistics."
If you've explored there before, you would have seen all of your posts listed-- from most recent to oldest-- matched with the number of comments from your guests on each post, the "Views", and the "Clicks".
The "Views" column displays how many times your article was seen as a link, attached with your photo. Like, you viewed my article link-- Do Not Click Here Please-- and then, being very naughty, you clicked it. So for your visit here, I scored one view and one click. In a perfect world, everybody that viewed your post would also click it, and you would have an equal number of Views and Clicks.
So does everybody understand that "views" are not views of your article? I didn't know that when I first signed on. I had to email ActiveRain and ask for an explanation, so if you are anything like me...there you go.
Views and Clicks can tell you a story.
If you stare at those statistics long enough you should see a pattern. The better your title, the better your view-to-click ratio. For the mortgage brokers reading, you can call it the VTC Ratio. (We mortgage brokers love our acronyms.)
For example, one of my badly titled posts is The Importance of Privatization. What does that mean anyway? It's such a terrible title.
Side bar: It's actually a really useful post. If you have more than one website (ActiveRain does not count), you really should read that post.
But I digress, the title stinks. So I had 1221 views and 252 clicks.
Only 20.6% of the people that saw it chose to click it; again, because the title stinks. Did I mention the title?
Yesterday, I wrote a post entitled I Did A Bad Thing Today. Much better title, yes? Everyone wants to read this-- my good friends and people who don't normally read me at all. Something juicy maybe. What bad thing did she do? People want to know! So far, that post has had 1190 views and 850 clicks. So 71.4% of the people that viewed it, clicked it. It helps that it was featured, but I suspect I would have had a better-than-average ratio on this one anyway.
Look carefully at your statistics and look at what your best titles are. The title really is everything. Once you suck 'em in with a good title, maybe they will subscribe to your blog- and that's a good thing. (For newbies, the "subscribe" button on ActiveRain is on the top right side of the blog, above the bloggers picture.)
I can't wait to see what the percentage of clicks on this title will be!
By the way, Jason Crouch wrote a post with a very similar title recently. Honestly, I did not see it previous to titling this post! Here is a link to Jason's post: Please Don't Read This Post! He is an excellent writer and a great guy.
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