Freshly Impressed

My inbox is rarely bombarded, but it received the hammering of its life yesterday, as I suddenly began to receive what seemed like hundreds of emails from WordPress informing me people had liked or commented on a post. Every device I have connected to my email account (there’s a worrying number) beeped, pinged, vibrated and tinkled all afternoon and evening.

This never happens. Surely I haven’t written anything that interesting? Or offensive?

It was only when I spotted one of the comments congratulating me on becoming Freshly Pressed that I realised what was happening. Somehow, my blog post regarding blogging buddies had made it onto the homepage of WordPress.com.

For those that don’t have a blog, this might seem trivial… dull, even. But for fellow users of WordPress, its quite a bit deal. I just didn’t realise how much of a big deal…

In one day, I received nearly 1200 page views, 37 comments, 28 ‘likes’ and 8 new subscribers. A single day’s activity increased my total page views of all time by around 30%. Now, that might not sound like much in these days of statistical prowess but for TheBoyEllis Blog, it pretty much smashed my admittedly pathetic previous records. I think the busiest day before yesterday was around 26 visits and two comments. I was pretty happy with that.

The post that got pressed was written fairly hurriedly and wasn’t something I wasn’t hugely happy with technically, but it goes to show that it’s the content that interests people. Content is king here and I hope lots more fellow WordPressers get to experience the rush of interest I received (which is showing little sign of abating) as a result of WordPress noticing an interesting post. If you have something you want to put down – just do it. Don’t be afraid to hit that big blue publish button. You never know who’s reading and where it might end up!

Get writing.