'The Art of the Blog'--Stats for Guy Kawasaki's Syndication Foray

Sure, it helps to be famous; but from zero to number 284 on Technorati in a month and change? Wow.


It seems I wasn't the only person taking blog stock on Wednesday of this week. Marketing guru Guy Kawasaki also shared the numbers for his blogging effort entitled Let the Good Times Roll.

These are some very interesting numbers. Highlights include:

- 42 posts

- 922 comments

- 304 trackbacks

- 268,060 unique visitors (according to StatCounter)

- 211,947 first-time visitors

- 56,113 repeat visitors

- 479 sites maintain 2,843 links to the blog (according to Technorati)

- 4,231 people get the blog via feeds (according to Feedburner)

- 428 people get the blog through email (according to Feedblitz)

- Traffic to www.guykawasaki.com increased from about 400 page views/day to 800-1,200 page views/day

- Sales rank for Kawasaki's latest book (The Art of the Start) on Amazon were between #1,500 and #2,000 prior to the start of his blog

- Sales rank for Kawasaki's latest book (The Art of the Start) on Amazon is now between #500 and #750 after the start of his blog

The post also contains a breakdown of links clicked on. I'll not cite all of those numbers here; however, a very significant result is found in the following excerpt:

"7,140 people clicked through on the blog entry about the charts of Karl Hartig. Incidentally, he told me that his weekly visitor count increased from 231 visits/week to 38,946 visits/week. " (emphasis added)

Simply stated: wow. Congratulations, Guy!

So, what are the takeaways here?

1. Celebrity clearly helps ramp syndication efforts.

2. Existing brands realize rapid results from syndication marketing.

3. Products in later stages of their life cycle (arguably decline) may be pushed back up the curve through syndication awareness.

[Pundit's Update: In an e-mail to me this morning, Guy said:

"When you said this:

3. Products in later stages of their life cycle (arguably decline) may be pushed back up the curve through syndication awareness.

Were you referring to me or to my books?! :-)"

I loved that! This is one of the many reasons why people read and respond to this guy!]

4. Links from successful syndication content drive significant web traffic increases for those fortunate enough to be referred.

There's lots for marketers to chew up by thinking through the numbers and their meaning.

So, take a look, do some thinking, and Let the Good Times Roll!