The Reverse Long Tail of Blog Visitors and the Long Tail of Quantum Levels of Blogging
This post is not so technical as it might sound. If you want to be a professional blogger, tracking the health of your blog is an important activity that you have to learn and perform regularly...
The long tail phenomena is a cozy theory that digital content consumption follows a gracefully declining curve in terms of sales/ pageviews/ visitors, etc. If you haven't already done so, you should check out Chris Anderson's well-written blog/site, The Long Tail. Actually, better still, first read his Wired magazine article on the Long Tail phenomenon. The general principle is that the long tail phenomenon applies to many forms of digital content, but it actually represents many typical behaviours of human beings as a collective.
Here is an approximate graph of the underlying behaviour:
I've previously written about the long tail of blog archives (blogspinner v1.0), so I suggest you read that post as well. But to summarize, digital content consumption generally appears to decrease in a graceful curve over time (exponentially decreasing, to geeks like me). But the idea behind the long tail is that there is more consumption in the tail of the curves, i.e., in the declining years, than in the first year.
This seems to be a natural phenomenon that only differs in initial consumption level and rate of decline. But the curve of consumption is almost always gracefully declining. The interesting thing is that other digital measurements show a reverse longtail of increase. For example, if you were to plot the quantity of daily visitors to your blog over several months (preferably years), you'll see a gracefully increasing curve. Well, actually, you'd see a wildly oscillating line. But if you applied "moving averages" (aka trend lines) to the visitor statistics, you would see said curve.
A moving average basically is a sliding average. I tend to use multiples of 28 days (4 weeks x 7 days/week) for my "sliding windows". The longer the window, the smoother the trend line. This technique is used in the stock market to determine trends that have already occurred, and trends that might occur. What you do is choose a window that is preferably a multiple of 28 days, say 4x28 = 112d (medium term). Now calculate the average of visitor traffic for the first 112 days (days 1-112). Next calculate the average for days 2-113. Keep "sliding" this 112-day window and calculating averages until you reach the end of your visitor statistics. This collection of averages is called "moving averages". Now plot the averages to get a trend line.
The longer your sliding window, the more graceful your trend line. If your blog went on for years, and your sliding window was a year (52x7 = 364d), your trend line might look something like this:
Of course, all "organisms" eventually go into decline. A blog is in fact a type of organism, and it will have a life span. So, ultimately, it will reach a peak of visitors, then go into the typical long tail curve and gracefully decline.
But here's what I really wanted to tell you: The blogging effort you undertake to get to your peak visitor level can be broken down in to levels similar to the ones that an electron has to undergo in moving from one quantum level to the next. Initially, you have to put in loads of energy to get from one level of blog visitors to the next. It takes lots of energy. Once you get to the next level, it is relatively easy to stay at that level. To get to the next level again takes energy, but maybe a little bit less than before, ad infinitum.
(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
The long tail phenomena is a cozy theory that digital content consumption follows a gracefully declining curve in terms of sales/ pageviews/ visitors, etc. If you haven't already done so, you should check out Chris Anderson's well-written blog/site, The Long Tail. Actually, better still, first read his Wired magazine article on the Long Tail phenomenon. The general principle is that the long tail phenomenon applies to many forms of digital content, but it actually represents many typical behaviours of human beings as a collective.
Here is an approximate graph of the underlying behaviour:
I've previously written about the long tail of blog archives (blogspinner v1.0), so I suggest you read that post as well. But to summarize, digital content consumption generally appears to decrease in a graceful curve over time (exponentially decreasing, to geeks like me). But the idea behind the long tail is that there is more consumption in the tail of the curves, i.e., in the declining years, than in the first year.
This seems to be a natural phenomenon that only differs in initial consumption level and rate of decline. But the curve of consumption is almost always gracefully declining. The interesting thing is that other digital measurements show a reverse longtail of increase. For example, if you were to plot the quantity of daily visitors to your blog over several months (preferably years), you'll see a gracefully increasing curve. Well, actually, you'd see a wildly oscillating line. But if you applied "moving averages" (aka trend lines) to the visitor statistics, you would see said curve.
A moving average basically is a sliding average. I tend to use multiples of 28 days (4 weeks x 7 days/week) for my "sliding windows". The longer the window, the smoother the trend line. This technique is used in the stock market to determine trends that have already occurred, and trends that might occur. What you do is choose a window that is preferably a multiple of 28 days, say 4x28 = 112d (medium term). Now calculate the average of visitor traffic for the first 112 days (days 1-112). Next calculate the average for days 2-113. Keep "sliding" this 112-day window and calculating averages until you reach the end of your visitor statistics. This collection of averages is called "moving averages". Now plot the averages to get a trend line.
The longer your sliding window, the more graceful your trend line. If your blog went on for years, and your sliding window was a year (52x7 = 364d), your trend line might look something like this:
Of course, all "organisms" eventually go into decline. A blog is in fact a type of organism, and it will have a life span. So, ultimately, it will reach a peak of visitors, then go into the typical long tail curve and gracefully decline.
But here's what I really wanted to tell you: The blogging effort you undertake to get to your peak visitor level can be broken down in to levels similar to the ones that an electron has to undergo in moving from one quantum level to the next. Initially, you have to put in loads of energy to get from one level of blog visitors to the next. It takes lots of energy. Once you get to the next level, it is relatively easy to stay at that level. To get to the next level again takes energy, but maybe a little bit less than before, ad infinitum.
(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
