What impact can teachers have across the world?
After starting to blog at Teacher Toolkit in August 2012, this week, I celebrate FIVE MILLION views on this website. Earlier this month, I also marked the 6th anniversary of my Social Media Journey – using Twitter professionally – surpassing 150,000 followers.
Back-Story:
Firstly, I always remind readers that I too, once wrote my inaugural blog and posted my first tweet on Twitter. I’ve been writing online for well-over 15 years, but as for ‘Teacher Toolkit this blog‘, this started earlier in 2010, moving to this website in August 2012. Writing was merely for reflection, not to gain an audience, but to share online even if nobody was listening. In some ways it became therapy (and as teachers we need it), with one reader becoming one follower and so it went on … I always give this piece of advice to new bloggers:
In March 2014, I blogged ONE MILLION reads and shared ‘One small tweet for man; one giant leap for education‘ to explain my journey. In December 2014, just nine months later after reaching one million views, I reached TWO MILLION reads. Then in July 2015, I shared THREE MILLION classrooms reached around the world.
More places to go?
In March this year, I celebrated FOUR MILLION readers. Just 8 months later, I have accumulated another 1 million views, averaging 3,967 per day! Note, apart from January and February 2016, all monthly statistics are down on 2015.
Click here to expand the graph and take a closer look …
Perhaps I’m not writing what people want to read anymore? Or could it be argued that there are now over 5,000 recorded, education bloggers (at least) in the UK and there are more places to read/learn/share? Either way, it is great to be part of an online community; the website bounce rate (bounce rate % – the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page) is consistently 3%.
Data range: November 2015 to November 2016
As a rule of thumb, a bounce rate in the range of 26 to 40 % is excellent. 41 to 55 % is roughly average. 56 to 70 % is higher than average, but may not be cause for alarm depending on the website.
This means, users come to Teacher Toolkit because they want to and tend not to leave. When looking at the graphic above, you will see that readers typically go on to read/view 3.31 other webpages on this site. I can only think 3% is an exemplary bounce rate?
Growth:
You can see from the image below (click to expand) that there is a clear growth over time. A quick analysis shows that on average, this blog receives 120,000+ views per month and 4,000 every day. The highest audience in May 2015, reaching 203,000 views! This translates into 30,000 to 50,000 views per week and between 2,000 and 6,000 readers every day.
Click to expand
WordPress features an insights analysis into blogpost frequency. This shows that the vast majority of readers visit the blog on a Sunday and that the most popular hour is in the evening at 8pm! You will see from the ‘blue dots’ below, that I am not blogging all the time, but content is frequent. 790+ blogs in 4.5 years.
Most Popular:
The most popular blogs over the past 12 months are;
- 20 Years of Educational Fads – 24,600 views
- 101 Educators to Follow on Twitter – 16,400 views
- Resilience Assembly – 14,900 views
- 10 Marking and Feedback Strategies – 14,700 views
- High Impact Ideas – 12,900 views
Over the past 12 months, this blog has been viewed in 219 countries.
Worldwide Rankings:
Finally, Teach 100, who rank and score hundreds of education blogs all over the world, provide an interesting analysis of who’s who in the world of education blogging/bloggers. Teacher Toolkit is consistently ranked in 30th position on Teach 100. The vast majority of blogs listed are from the USA with 2 or 3 others from Canada. I’m pleased to see – other than The Guardian Teacher Network and a few other blogging machines – that this blog is representing (individual) education bloggers and is consistently ranked number 1 in the UK.
Of course, this all comes at a small price, with hours of time and investment in website tools, widgets and domain management. However, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it and now that I know you are reading and sharing my ideas and resources, this has become my motivation.
Thank you to all readers for following and most of all, for regularly reading this site.
TT.
