I was wrong about Facebook

When I started writing this blog last month, my strategy was simple.  I wanted to write clean, intelligent posts and share them on Twitter to get people listening.  My first few posts would be quiet, because I wanted to have a few in the bank before anyone visited my site.  Then, as I got more comfortable with my blog-writing voice, I was going to slowly start linking my site to different social media platforms, and gain a small but loyal following.  My goal was 1,000 views over the course of the project, and even that seemed lofty.

My strategy didn't really consider sharing content on Facebook.  I imagined that if I shared the link it would be widely ignored (which probably would have been true with any of my other posts).  With so many people writing their own blogs nowadays, I thought it would just seem like spam and dilute the readability of my other Facebook posts, without actually driving that many people to read it.

Last Sunday night, I found myself finishing up a post about the Oscars that I felt really proud of.  It was topical, relevant, and something that I thought might actually interest a few of my friends.  So for the first time since the inception of this blog, I posted a link to Facebook.

Imagine my shock when the post escalated quickly through my friends, and on to their friends, ultimately driving over a QUARTER OF A MILLION views to my site (sorry, that had to be shouted).  Once it picked up momentum there were other sites responsible, but I know I couldn't have done it without my Facebook network.  For proof, here's a chart of the top 10 sites that referred people to my blog:

All-time referral stats of Monday's Oscar post from Google Analytics
(Facebook logo isn't actually displayed on GA's chart, I added that for clarity)

It is HUGE that Facebook accounted for 67% of the total traffic to my blog.  My post was the opposite of ignored.  Theory, meet window.