A Slight Design Refresh and a Bit on No Film School's (Social Media) Traffic

You may notice things look a little different around here today (if everything looks the same, you might have to hold Shift and click your "refresh" button). Note there are no major aesthetic changes -- I switched the titling and typography (I was always more of a sans-serif kind of guy, whatever that means), and there are now Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon badges on single posts. I've also created a No Film School Facebook Page, which now has a home in the sidebar. Many of these changes have been driven by a look inside the analytics of this site, so let's look at No Film School's recent stats:

Statistics for the month are displayed on the left. ((The stats are from last month, as I wrote this post last month in preparation for these design tweaks, which took a bit longer to implement than expected.)) Statistics for the year are displayed on the right, revealing No Film School is growing, thanks to you! Up until January of this year it was "just" a personal blog, so I'm glad to see my efforts to making it into a more interesting and helpful site are succeeding.

Despite this growth, however, I'm well aware it's going to be impossible to maintain that growth rate as just one person who isn't working on this full-time. So I dove into the traffic using Google Analytics -- which is free, and easy to implement on Wordpress sites using the Google Analyticator plugin -- to see where this traffic was coming from. Where am I doing well, and where could I improve? Of the past 30 days of traffic:

  • 3% came from Facebook
  • 4% came from Twitter
  • 26% came direct (someone typing in No Film School.com into a browser)
  • 28% came from Google

New Media Douchebaggery

These numbers mean a few things: the first is that I'm not doing a very good job of being a new media douchebag. I only joined Twitter a couple of months ago and I only added a Facebook page for No Film School a week ago. Part of this is because I was doing an experiment where I wanted to see if posting 4 times a day would organically grow traffic, ((Verdict: yes, posting 4 times a day did grow the site's traffic, but not by a huge amount, and I felt I was just reblogging other news instead of writing anything intelligent.)) and part of it was because I simply didn't have the time to implement a comprehensive social media strategy while trying to put together a feature film project at the same time. But I'm getting better at it and I'm planning on rolling out even more social design elements at some point -- and as always I'll share what effect these tweaks have on traffic. According to the statistics, Facebook generates the majority of all social sharing traffic, followed by StumbleUpon at #2 (note that Twitter is likely underreported given many people use applications and mobile devices that don't show up as referrals from twitter.com):

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Social Media Market Share

To that end, please "like" No Film School in the Facebook box at right! And of course you can also find me on Twitter. In the future, please use the badges at left to share posts around.

Not seeing the badges at left? That's because your browser window is too small to allow the badges to float to the side, in which case they automatically shrink and reside at the top of the post. I stole this flexible behavior from Mashable, although in my case I'm using a custom implementation of the Digg Digg Wordpress Plugin. If you'd like your own version of these sharing badges, try the Digg Digg plugin or the Smart Sharing Plugin from WPBeginner. In theory, these "floating" sharing badges are superior to versions that scroll off the page, because they're persistent.

Google Traffic

Beyond Facebook and Twitter, the other thing to note from the above numbers is that Google is No Film School's #1 source of traffic. However, if you drill down a bit deeper, you can see I'm not doing a great job of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The site is focused on independent filmmaking and, at present, DSLR content; it should follow that people searching for DSLR-related content end up at No Film School. However, here are the top search terms that result in visits to NFS:

  • macbook pro fan noise
  • No Film School
  • no film school
  • dslr cinematography
  • macbook pro fan
  • macbook pro loud fan
  • macbook pro noisy fan
  • dslr cinematography guide

Of the above, most of these terms are being entered by people who have already been to this site and are just looking to come back. Typing "nofilmschool" or "dslr cinematography guide" into a Google search box isn't generating new traffic -- these searchers have already been here and are just using Google as an easy way to find their way back. The only content that is really directing new visitors to this site is an article I wrote long ago about replacing my Macbook Pro fan, and these visitors generally aren't independent filmmakers (and aren't going to stick around).

Search Engine Optimization

Going forward, it'd be nice to figure out is how to better optimize my site through backlink generation and better SEO copywriting (which involves monitoring keyword density). One good solution to keeping track of all this might be to use the Wordpress plugin Scribe SEO; if and when No Film School starts making money and hires additional writers, I can definitely see that being a handy tool, but right now that would be overkill. As it is, my strategy to split the DSLR Guide into 28 pages probably hasn't helped, as search engines see each of the pages as a separate article instead of scraping it all at once. I'm getting a lot more pageviews by virtue of the pagination, but is it possible the guide could be pulling in exponentially more visitors if all of the content was assigned to one URL?

Who knows. If I get too deep into search engine optimization I risk being a blogger who never gets a film made. However, the reason I'm doing all this -- other than to see if I can keep growing this site -- is because I believe this knowledge will come in handy for marketing, distributing, and monetizing films. The world needs more filmmakers who know how to self-sustain.

Are you a blogger? Do you have any traffic tips you'd like to share, or do you have any questions about anything I've shared above? Let me know!

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Your Comment

28 Comments

Hi,

The site breaks in Chrome. FYI.

June 29, 2010 at 1:13PM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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What it does is that the header and the sidebar scroll up but not the body or the content.

June 29, 2010 at 1:14PM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

3
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Thanks Ajit. I'm viewing it in Chrome right now -- what happened for you?

June 29, 2010 at 1:14PM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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Ryan Koo
Founder
Writer/Director

Very weird. If you hold shift and refresh, does it resolve the problem? I can't seem to replicate.

June 29, 2010 at 1:15PM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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Ryan Koo
Founder
Writer/Director

Thank you for keeping us posted on this stuff. I find it quite useful.

I'm also on Chrome. Initially, the box showing how much this was tweeted showed code but shift+refresh solved that.

June 29, 2010 at 5:55PM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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L

Hey Ryan, I'm curious as to what percentage of your visitors are weighted towards iPhone/iPad users. As I use both I'm biased in thinking of the viewing experience from the limitations of those devices, plus my gut tells me that filmy folks are more likely to be on those devices. We're thinking about a complete overhaul of DN in the coming months so it's been on my mind.

Thanks for sharing your stats, reminds me that I must try harder!

June 30, 2010 at 4:07AM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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MarBelle, here are the breakdowns for my site (over the past 30 days instead of all time, so it doesn't skewer away from recent developments in the Android/iPad world):

57% Mac OS
37% Windows
2% iPhone
1% Linux
1% iPad
0.5% Android

We're very Mac-heavy, but not particularly mobile!

June 30, 2010 at 9:13AM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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Ryan Koo
Founder
Writer/Director

Yup, that did it. Thanks.

June 30, 2010 at 9:17AM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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That's pretty good growth dude

July 1, 2010 at 9:03AM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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Wash

Congrats.
You might wanna try a commenting system like IntenseDebate or DISQUS - they're really adding some interactivity to the commenting process. I'm personally a fan of IntenseDebate, because it's developped by a Wordpress division and it has more integration options with WP.

July 8, 2010 at 11:05AM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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Boyan, I've looked at both on and off for the past couple of months. I'm not enamored with the designs of either, and so it's been one of those things that slips until something puts me over the edge. I've also been looking at Echo lately, but they keep changing their pricing. Curious if you have any thoughts on Echo (which is $10/month instead of being free, but in the scheme of things that's not a big deal).

July 10, 2010 at 12:18PM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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Ryan Koo
Founder
Writer/Director

> I'm not familiar with Echo, but from what I saw it's close to ID/DISQUS. Moreover, if it's just functionality - you can customize those with CSS as you like. $10/month can be a decent hosting plan :)

July 11, 2010 at 9:07AM, Edited September 4, 7:26AM

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Thank you for taking the time to share, All the best... Christopher D

October 18, 2012 at 11:02AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM

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Great Site - enjoying it a lot and the honesty is refreshing.

October 27, 2012 at 10:35PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM

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M.Young

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May 25, 2015 at 5:28AM

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74

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June 12, 2017 at 5:20PM

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November 6, 2017 at 11:14PM

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December 5, 2017 at 6:35AM

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December 27, 2017 at 7:45AM

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it possible the guide could be pulling in exponentially more visitors if all of the content was assigned to one URL?
I believe it will be great if that happens. Will boost the readers engagement to the content and will display actual strength of your article.
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January 11, 2018 at 6:55PM

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Muhammad Bilal
Freelance web designer
8

No Film School is becoming more popular day by day, keep up the good work and become the leader in film making community.

April 4, 2018 at 11:07PM

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Al Muheet Al Aam
IT Manager
81

Whats the point of plugging in the same area as everyone else ahaha https://www.mistersaad.com/

Doesn't make any sense!

November 27, 2018 at 11:43PM

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November 13, 2019 at 10:21PM

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I'm yet to embrace social media to promote my website. Your stats are encouraging.
Thanks for sharing

January 5, 2020 at 3:19AM

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Abdul Haseeb
Web designer And SEO Expert
1

Under the bright
But faded lights
You set my heart on fire

June 7, 2020 at 11:23PM

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The traffic surge is phenomenal. Yes, I agree it's difficult to keep the same pace. If you are able to sustain the same traffic that would be great too in my opinion. I too was able to gain a lot of traffic increase on my website ahdesign.ae with SEO and google ads compaign.

December 7, 2021 at 9:21PM

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Abdul
1