Blog Posts About: buzz

This is coming a bit late, but The Common Craft Show has been nominated for an Eddie - An Edublog Award in the category of Best Educational Use of Video/Visual.  The polls close tomorrow - we're hoping for a late-breaking victory. Thanks!

Update:  Thanks so much everyone.  We came in second, which makes us proud. You can view the results by clicking "view result" on the poll.  It wasn't even close really, Steve Spangler's Blog, which focuses on science education, got the lion's share of votes.  Congrats Steve!

Yesterday I had a great talk/interview with Jeff DeCagna of Principled Innovation for his P.I. Podcast.  We talked about the Common Craft story, but also about "Being Lightweight", based on the recent series of posts. Big thanks to Jeff for the invitation. 

Have a listen on Jeff's site.

Hi, I am a teacher at a middle school in Ohio, I just shared your electoral college video with my kids and thy got it!!!!!  Your explanation is the best I have ever seen.  Now my kids want more of your stuff.  Just thought you'd like a big cheer from Ohio.

Here's to kids getting it! Yay!  The video is here. 

Recently I spent some time with Jon Udell for an episode of IT Conversations.  Jon posted the interview today.  I just listened to it and nothing I said made me cringe, so I thought I'd share it here with you. :)

We talked about the evolution of the Common Craft format, different learning styles, off board brains and explanation problems, among other things.

Have a listen or download it on the IT Conversations blog post. 

Thanks a lot for the opportunity Jon! I think it came out really well.

I must admit that each time we post a new video, we go into buzz mode - What are people saying/linking/doing?  Where are they doing it? How many said something?  What do we need to say in response? 

Watching the reaction is something I anticipate and love about the process.  At the same time, I wonder if I'm doing it right.  I'm always looking for new ways to scan the web.  Here are some tools we use - please suggest ideas/sites/tools that you think would help.

Blog Comments - Of course, our blog is the home of the videos, so we pay close attention to the comments.  We've seen the number of comments per video decline in general, which I don't take as a bad sign. Personally, I think people are commenting in other ways, like on Twitter.

Blog Post Views - The views that the blog post receives are certainly a powerful indicator.  However, because the video exists on video hosts, these page views are not comprehensive.

Referrers - Our blog software (Drupal) tracks referrers - sites sending traffic our way. This is one way to see the sites from which the most traffic is coming.

Google Analytics - On a high level, this is how we measure the overall impact of the video over time. It's a very powerful tool and we look at a number of the stats, but the big one is impact over time - did the video increase views/visits? For how long?  To what degree?

Video Hosts - The views and ratings (and to a lesser degree comments) on the video hosting sites like You Tube and Vimeo are always useful in measuring traction, etc. You Tube has been our vehicle for having the video shared on blogs, though that may soon change.

Technorati Reactions - We have a persistent Technorati search for "commoncraft.com." Whenever someone links their site to Common Craft it (hopefully) shows up in a Technorati search. This gives us a view of who is linking to us, what they're saying and how influential they are.  Often, this is how we identify discussions in which we should participate. We use Technorati every day.

Diggs - When a new video is posted, we usually include a button with the video that allows people to Digg it. We've seen this produce amazing results, but only if the video makes it to the "popular" list and the front page. Otherwise, it almost seems like a distraction.  You have to be pretty provocative to get the Digg community's attention.

Del.icio.us Bookmarks -  Bookmarks are another way we gauge popularity.  Like Digg, if the bookmark can make onto the popular list, it can drive more traffic and bookmarks.

RSS Subscribers -  This is more of a long range stat. We pay attention to how the number of subscribers changes in the days after the video is posted.  This can be powerful conversion metric.  If we're doing well, we turn a more and more visitors in subscribers.

Twitter @Replies -  Twitter has become our #1 resource for understanding perceptions about our videos.  We always announce the videos on Twitter and the @replies are our first look at what people think.

Twitter Search - I don't know what we would do without Summize and/or Tweetscan.  We track the search results for "commoncraft " and "plain English " on these services. Often, this reveals how the videos are being spread through Twitter and what people are saying.  When we see people asking questions, we do our best to reply to them.

Twitter Subscribers - Did we see more subscribers after the video?

Viral Video Countdown - These days, getting onto the Viral Video Countdown front page is a goal and we look for it with each video.  It's one of our consistent, objective ways to see the degree to which the video is being shared on blogs. The Social Media video made it to #2 yesterday. Ice Rocket's Popular Video List is something we check too.

dotSUB translations - We share each of our videos on dotSUB, where they can be translated into multiple languages.  We love to see this happen and check in often to how many languages are present.

What else should be using for tracking reactions?

Well, as of today it has been exactly one year since all this video craziness began.  On April 22, 2007 we published RSS in Plain English.  We never guessed these videos would take us so far - it was just a problem that begged to be solved.  Did you ever see a blog post with the same name from 2004?

Since our work is in front of people often, we both feel a little self conscious in talking about the numbers behind the videos. We don't want to seem ostentatious or too self-promotional.  But, at the same time, I think that exposing some of the figures provides context and hopefully examples of the power of Social Media.

So, let's take a look.

First, please note that the #s of views are rounded and cumulative across hosts. A single video exists in multiple places and those views are added together.  These numbers comes from our accounts on You Tube, Blip.tv and dotSUB.  We use other hosts, but these are our core.

Totals April 2007-April 2008: 

Total views (including client work):  3.9 million views
Total views (excluding client work): 2.4 million views

Most viewed Client Video: Google Maps for Mobile 834,000 views (includes UK version)

Most viewed Show Video: RSS in Plain English: 755,000 views

Breakdown of Views by Video (Common Craft Show only):

RSS: 755,000
Wiki: 436,000
Social Networking: 207,000
Social Bookmarking: 205,000
CFL Lightbulbs: 53,000
Zombies: 280,000
Blogs: 169,000
Photo Sharing: 42,000
Twitter: 223,000
Podcasting: 5,000 (published 2 days ago)

Breakdown of views by host (Show only):

You Tube: 1.3 million views
Blip.tv (embedded on our site):  772,000
dotSUB: 300,000

Incoming Links from Blogs

We would not have become popular without bloggers.  We've always aimed to create useful resources that bloggers can use to educate others.  One way that we track usage by bloggers is Technorati.

According to Technorati (today) for CommonCraft.com:

Technorati Authority: 3,040 (incoming links over 6 months)
Technorati Rank: 170 (170th most linked-to)
Blog Reactions: 15,000+

Here's how "Blog Reactions" looks across videos (rank/authority isn't always available)

RSS: 462
Wiki: 786
Social Networking: 452
Social Bookmarking: 560
CFL Lightbulbs: 45
Zombies: 151
Blogs: 444
Photo Sharing:100
Twitter: 535
Podcasting: 34

Search Results 

We've been surprised to appear on the first page of Google searches for these terms:

RSS
Wikis
Social Networking
Social Bookmarking
Zombies
Twitter

Our SEO secret? Make content people want to see. 

Language Translations:

One of the resources that has been very important to us dotSUB - a free way for our videos to be translated into multiple languages via subtitles.  We're so excited by these language figures:

RSS: 27 Languages
Wiki: 30 Languages
Social Networking: 25 Languages
Social Bookmarking: 18 Languages
CFL Lightbulbs: 12 Languages
Blogs: 20 Languages
Photo Sharing: 9 Languages
Twitter: 15 Languages
Podcasting: 4 Languages

So, this past year has been a blast and something we never expected.  We just make the videos - you share with friends, you link, you view. We owe you - big time.  That's what I love about the social web - everyone contributes a bit and those bits roll up to bring visibility to content that may have never been discovered otherwise.  Thank you so much for an awesome year!