The Power of Twitter and SEO

Image: Glasgow City Council

Tweet Power
The power of Twitter and SEO, if I ever needed to see it for myself, happened to this blog over the last couple of days. This my blog received three months worth of hits in one day on Tuesday, and by yesterday lunchtime I’d seen another month’s on top of that.

Why?

I posted one tweet on Tuesday evening [click here to read] while watching coverage of the riots in Manchester and Birmingham, then went to make a cup of tea. When I returned, my timeline had been flooded with RTs and comments about what I’d said. There were literally hundreds flashing up the page before my eyes.

So I posted a link to my blog with the same hash-tags… BOOM! My statistics chart, which until then had been pretty up and down, flat-lined other than one massive spike reaching way up into the high numbers.

But that was only part of the story: a blog post I wrote back in May 2008 concerning Rangers fans rioting at the the UEFA Cup Final in Manchester [Rangers Fans Shame Scotland], fast became the most popular page on my blog with almost 2,300 hits in total—people were searching for the Manchester riots of 2011 and landing on this page, with my comment piece of the day, London Burning, being the second top.

Does any of this mean anything? Well, probably not other than visibility. It’ll be interesting to see if sales of any of my books spiked at the same time all this was happening. Somehow I doubt it.

Trees for Life
Last night I finished off the design of my framed haiku for the Trees for Life charity exhibition. It’s looking pretty decent, and while it’s not an actual piece of painted or visual art like everything else, it’s all about the words in my case, so hopefully they will add something to the charity. I’ll hand it into the artist later today.

Today
I have a LOT to do today and tomorrow. I have a lot of people to meet, things to be completed and some stuff to do around the house. All of it before the book festival starts on Saturday. I have the place to myself until Monday, as my wife, daughter and MIL all travelled down to London for a few days sight-seeing (they’re quite safe where they are), so it means I can get on with what I want with the music turned up!

Gig Review
If you’re a music fan you can still read my latest gig review of Aidan Moffat’s performance at Sierra Metro on Sunday, as art of the Edinburgh Arts Festival. Guide your browsers over to the Man in the East.

Book Fest
Two days to go until the Edinburgh Book Festival! I’ll be recording episode 2 of my podcast later today so it should go live by this evening. I dreamt last night that I lost all my tickets for the festival in a giant puddle. With all the rain and flood alerts we’ve been getting, I hope it wasn’t a premonition!

Finally
I finally took the plunge last night and ordered myself an Apple iMac. I’ve ordered a customised one with upgraded RAM cards and processor, and it should arrive towards the end of next week. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Right, back to work!

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