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3 Ways to Blog Like a City Planner

November 21st, 2007 Posted by Chanya

I went to college with this guy who eventually became a city planner in the state. I always thought that was a cool job: you review traffic patterns, population growth, educational needs, and demographic changes. Based on that information the city planner decides where to add new roads, widen lanes, build schools, and add parks, to name a few.

In reviewing my stats at StatCounter, I thought, hmmn: “there are lots of similarities between blogging and city planning. Perhaps we can take some pointers from city planners and apply them to our blogs.”

Here’s how:

1. Determine where most of your traffic comes from and react accordingly. In looking at StatCounter, it’s clear that most of it comes from the StumbleUpon community:

This is great because I really like that site and have myself found some great articles there. Also, check out the stats from BloggingZoom, which just got started this month. For a blogging community that’s not yet one month old it’s proving to be a great traffic generator. Additionally, I really like the site’s interface – it’s easy to see others and be seen. I think this is called “line of sight” in city planning terms.

This also shows that although my articles have been syndicated a total of 4,648 times in 17 days, only 6 people have found my site through the BlogRush widget. The click-through-rate (I think that’s what it’s called) is very low. The BlogRush widget has prime ad space on my site – it’s time for a change.

2. Pay close attention to traffic “patterns”. Do most readers visit my site during weekdays, weekend mornings, or weeknights? In other words, when does “rush hour” occur at my site? According to StatCounter most of my visitors stop by on Sundays. This tells me that I should plan on publishing new posts on Sunday mornings.

3. Determine the types of “vehicles” (i.e., browsers) visitors are using. When I looked at my stats, I was awestruck at what they showed in this area. Approximately 72% of my readers use the Firefox browser. I, on the other hand, only have IE on my system so I don’t even know what my site looks like for most of my readers! This was quite an eye opener. I’ll be installing Firefox this weekend.

These are just a few similarities between city planning and blogging. Can you think of other similarities or blogging tips that are related to traffic analysis or planning?