Monthly Review: March 2016

March2016

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Other Monthly Reviews

  1. January
  2. February

Analytical Summary

The graphic above summarises the state of XBOP for the Month of XBOP – an improvement on the prior month of February. Across all the reporting metrics, the signs all point to this same conclusion, All comparative statistics are positive, showing the growth with the exception in year-on-year comparisons; 2014 March was a more successful time. The one year-on-year positive sign is the 11% increase for views per visitor. Whilst a statistic of very limited variance and movement in magnitude to the others, this is arguably one of the most important measures for XBOP assessing the stickiness of viewers in terms of how much content visitors are looking at. The general improvement for 2016 suggests people are staying longer at XBOP, a sign of growing brand loyalty.

The number of views per visitor measure can be put into further context when you consider the total amount of content available for viewing – whilst not reported directly in the table above, the more detailed Excel spreadsheet which stores the full detailed statistics includes a monthly tracker of new posts and pages. For the month of March, as shown in the image below, content additions were limited to a total of seven posts, bringing the total to 220 posts. As the amount of total content available for viewing grows with each month, the ideal target would be to maintain the views per visitor in proportion to the number of posts. A new calculated metric for the detailed spreadsheet has been derived this month – dividing the number of views each month by the amount of total content available. This is arguably the more accurate measure of what is happening at XBOP. As content grows, it is hoped that the viewership would grow in proportion. The steady development and publication of new content only adds to the pressure for maintaining and growing the number of views, let along visitors. Back in 2015 when there was a two-month silence in terms of new posting activity at XBOP, the amount of content remained unchanged. During this period, with a decreasing viewership, this View/Content metric deteriorated accordingly – bottoming out. With a return to regular posting, as shown in the posting activity graphic below, the view/content metric has back to a health level.

March Posting Activity

March2016PostingActivityThe month of March began with an unprecedented seven consecutive days of continuous posting; the first two having been the last two days of February. Immediately after this first few days, life got super busy so an unfortunate break had to be undertaken from XBOP activity posting. This busy-ness was driven from a combination of both my day-job as well as demands on my time from XBOP client work. Of late, I have had the opportunity to return to a web development skill set, through the lens and framework of WordPress. This experience is a great opportunity not just to help refresh and update a website powered by WordPress, but to also see how WordPress can be used in a variety of ways. The learnings from XBOP particularly with the social media integration are simple techniques that can help small businesses like my client create an integrated and holistic social media presence as a subset of their wider marketing aims.

The first commercial opportunity in terms of video editing and filming was also practiced during the month of March, where the use of green-screen and automated tele-prompting services was combined with lighting and audio set-up to create a simple filming environment. The finished product was a replacement to an earlier first attempt video which is now featured on the home page of my client’s website – VervePotential.

The busy-ness of Easter has already been the subject of its own dedicated post Happy Easter 2016!, but collectively with the above, this explains the recent three-week down time. The momentum from the first two months has definitely faded away, but a backlog of writing topics and posts is growing. Part of the challenge for me is to find the time to pen quality articles and not simply write for the sake of writing. I remain committed to completing the entire series that has just commenced in reviewing the Family Christmas Cruise that took place in December 2015. Completing the Higher Than I writing serial requires a recalibration in terms of timing since the official album launch is already scheduled in the church calendar for May.