14,000+ Page Views, on Back-To-Back Days.

   This could also have been titled "Neat-O: Part 2 Electric Boogaloo" in response to one of my early posts where I blogged about meeting Legendary Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr, and having Congressman John D. Dingell share a link to one of my stories on his facebook page. Today I'll tell you about how I got 14,000 page views on two different stories, on back to back days. There were also another few thousand hits yesterday on the popular one from Friday.

   I'll start with the Friday piece, "The 10 Best Scary Video Games of All-Time." At least one of our reader's blatantly did not like the list, he e-mailed me at my work account several times about it, clearly attempting to start a flame war, but being that it was work related, I had to bite my tongue and not respond the way I would have liked. Instead I thanked him for reading, and told him he was free to write a letter to our editor, which he got confused and thought I meant of the blog, but that's a story for another posting, I'll even share some of the e-mails.

  

   Long story short, he shared the post on Fark.com, where he attempted to get more people to make fun of the list, they had to link back to my story though, also I don't know if it were him or not but the link was shared on another site where they attempted to better the list as well. I haven't ever been to that site (Hardocp.com) before. All told between the two days, the story got over 20,000 hits, and it's still doing well today, and I'm certain that it will continue to do well into Halloween.

   The same day that the video game story was posted, a Top 10 Stephen King Books for Halloween article was posted. It did OK, but not as popular as I had hoped it would have been. Yesterday morning I decided to cross post that article as a blog post here, then I was gonna share the link a few places, one of which being the Stephen King Facebook page. I went to the page, and what do I find there, the page had posted a link to the original article already. The last I saw on that one yesterday showed nearly 16,000 hits, I won't know the exact numbers until tomorrow when our web editor shows them off, but I am completely shocked at all of the hits it's gotten. I know it's not through anything I did personally, at least not intentionally, but damn it if it isn't so cool. The only problem now, is trying to find some way to replicate these results next month.

Neat-O

   Life as a journalist is always interesting, no two days are ever alike.  Two very neat things have happened to me in the last three days that I just have to share with you all.
   First off, I covered a fantastic event on Saturday that was called Victory Day. I've posted the slide show already on our site, and a large story will be running soon. There are also 7 short videos on our site that will be linked to those stories, so if you are interested in that at all, I encourage you to check back on the News-Herald site in the future. The event would have been special enough, as I'm always amazed when people, especially kids are willing to give back.
   Victory Day was all about helping children with either physical or mental disorders and giving them a day to be just one of the group instead of sticking out in the crowd. Personally I volunteered to cover the event (Yes that means I didn't get paid to do it.) and I did so for numerous reasons. I would be remiss though if I didn't say that one of the reasons was that former University of Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr was the keynote speaker. For those that know me, they know that I'm a huge college football fan, and that UM has been my favorite team since I was young. Carr won a national championship in 1997 and forever made himself one of my heroes. I went just to hear him speak.
   However, when I got there, the opportunity to speak with the coach one on one arose, and he made himself even a better person in my eyes. He spoke to me like an equal, and even took the time out to introduce me to other people from a couple of other news organizations and in the community as a whole just because we were talking as they walked up.  That impressed me two-fold, one that he thought enough of me to introduce me to them, and two, he actually remembered my name, something I wouldn't expect many people that met hundreds of people that day to do.  He also impressed me in the sense that from talking to him, he was truly passionate about helping these kids and not just there for publicity.  You could see it in his eyes that he really cared.
   The second interesting thing that happened popped up this morning.  As part of my job here at the News-Herald I am expected to check on Facebook and Twitter from time to time. I logged into my FB page this morning, and what I saw as the most recent update shocked me a bit.  True it was nothing monumental but it was really cool. A story I wrote for the Sunday issue of the paper that included a quote from Congressman John Dingell had been shared via his Facebook page to all of his followers.  For a young journalist, it was just a really 'Neat-O" moment.
   Thanks for reading, and I promise I'll get back to the Nerdy with my next post. I've got plenty of topic ideas ready to go.