You may have seen @steemrollin 's post covering user engagement in these past few days. He's flat out right that user engagement is crucial for the growth of a website like this.
And where that traffic is coming from is just as pivotal in the growth of a website.
What we'd like to see his moderate to high "direct" traffic. That means people are coming to us first, either through a bookmark or a direct URL in a search bar. Either way, it means people meant to end up here and are committed. However, it makes a lot of since that right now, we're still a bit behind some of the really big names in content consumption. But when you really look at the chart below, we're right behind AND all our traffic is coming from the right resources.
The free kind.
We're getting referral links from websites talking about what a great idea and community this is. People are pumping us on social media like you wouldn't believe! By the way that's roughly 15% for steemit to less than 3% for reddit. That's YUGE!
A breakdown of referrals and what needs to shift in the future:
It's a little difficult to look at, and I wish I had access to the data to make it more clear, but the majority of our referrals are coming through Internet and Telecom categories, roughly 73%. So the persons who are coming here likely all have similar interests. Something that can make it difficult for varying content to really take hold. Again, for the stage we're in, beta, a term primarily used by gamers and testers, this makes sense. We're getting hype for being new and original. We need to use that to our advantage and continue to be a welcoming community for our new members, so they can help us grow. Along with that we need to encourage those people to publish original content, so that others can refer to us on a host of topics.
Social Traffic, EVERYONE LOVES US!:
I don't have much to say here, except it's great that users are coming from all different types of social media. It means we're attracting different types of users. That's exactly what you want in a new community. It allows different bonds to take hold. Varying groups foster growth by making it easier to find someone you can connect with. This is very positive, and likely shows why in @steemrollin 's article our user engagement has blossomed.
But here's where things could be better:
Organic traffic. Those are straight google searches that might bring steemit towards the top. A lot of this comes from quality content, people asking questions we've answered, or just general curiosity that we haven't yet piqued.
This is expected, and it shows on our site. Every time a new tag or topic graces our pages it's often met with some serious voting power. It's down (likely) because we need more content, and it needs to be diverse enough to attract even the oddest of internet users (which we likely are anyway). Normally we'd want to make sure we're all tagging our articles to maximize their exposure, but, from my perspective, the only people who aren't are looking to make some quick steem cash by linking articles where it's popular.
Conclusion:
We need to keep on doing what we're doing, cause we're doing it right. Despite what a vocal minority might believe the direction this site is moving in is the right one. Especially for how new it is. Things will start to shape up in our community, as will the look, feel, and content of our site. That's something I firmly believe.
If you want some actionable steps, be sure to tag your content appropriately(!!!), make sure you're referring others to steemit, don't just upvote but link steemit content to other sites you use.
Edit: Please feel free to ask any questions. Or if you're interested in any other analysis let me know!
