Article Metrics: First Week After Publishing & More
Openly sharing metrics and what I'm learning from them about content creation.
Hey there! I'm gonna give you a little sneak peek into some stats for my website, YouTube channel, and social media accounts. We'll chat about what's been goin' well, what's been a bit of a flop, and what I've got cooking for the next few months.
Let’s get into it!
Article: Primitive Obsession
On May 6, I decided to stop tweaking and publish the article.
Overall, I'm pleased with the article and the feedback has been very positive. The article allowed me to experiment and try out some new ideas. However, I’m still not happy with the length of time it takes for me to produce a single piece of content.
More on that later, but first - let’s take a look at some of the metrics.
As a reminder, my current content strategy only contains a few channels:
Website
As expected, my blog experienced a slight increase in traffic after the publication of the new article. Within a few days, it attracted 1.5k visitors and gained 2k total views, with the new article alone receiving 1.7k views.
Given I’m just getting started with content creation, and only have a small audience, I’m super happy with this and how the article was received. I gained lots of positive feedback, but I also gained many new newsletter subscribers and Twitter/X followers.
Other
Indirectly, my subscriber count here on Substack grew from 51 to 85, and my Twitter followers grew by 60 to 1,460.
My subscriber count on YouTube also grew by +12 (going from 2,945 to 2,957) and Discord grew by -1. Yes, that’s growth (I kicked the Patreon bot 🤣).
Thoughts
It's intriguing to me that the primary Call to Action (CTA) on the blog post is the newsletter, yet it grew 50% less than Twitter.
Twitter is the main platform I use for content distribution, so I'm pleased to see it grow. However, my reach on Twitter is very unpredictable.
Currently, the tweet has:
18.8k views
6 replies
39 reposts
113 likes
66 bookmarks
Without the interaction and sharing of the tweet, I'm sure the reach would have been limited. I’m thankful to everyone who engaged and helped share my work.
The numbers mentioned here may be small compared to other content creators, but we all have to start somewhere.
I regularly say:
"Perfection is more of a verb than a noun - it's something we strive for, not something we inherently are."
In the spirit of growth, it's essential to review what worked and what didn't. I hope that being transparent about these metrics and my interpretation of them will help me improve, while also assisting others.
Going forward
I’m not quite done with Primitive Obsession just yet. You see, it took me 4 months to create this blog post. That’s a huge investment when viewed in isolation. However, what many people may not realise is that many of the assets for the article were created for the YouTube video.
The camp fire is part of a larger cave scene used within the opening intro. The Homer Simpson and Donut cards are part of a larger deck of cards which will be used at multiple points throughout the video. The hammers are used in a scene to emphasise the reliance on a single type and the pseudo code and code snippets are part of the video.
The way I see it - an article can loosely define the script for a long-form video. The research is the same. Since my goal is to create timeless high-quality content, there is no reason to restrict this to a single platform. I have built up a series of processes and tooling which helps me create the same content across multiple different platforms.
Even though I’m happy with the article, I’m not content with investing 4 months to produce a piece of content. Even once I produce the video, I still believe investing 5-6 months is too much time.
I don’t yet have the answers, but I do believe I now have all the information needed to improve my content production processes.
So, going forward, I’m going to take a short break from Primitive Obsession. For a little while I’m planning to create a few YouTube Shorts and Twitter threads. Focusing briefly on short-form content will allow me to conduct a few experiments with a quick feedback loop.
My goals for Metaphorically Speaking are still the same - to help software engineers build mental models of concepts in a fun way using metaphors and analogies. I am still committed to YouTube being my primary channel. However, for longevity, I need to be pragmatic and improve my systems if I am going to have the longevity needed to be successful on the platform.